Saturn in Virgo vs Uranus in Pisces, Meaningful Work (Dharma) vs The New Plague Part 1

What is Dante trying to tell us here?

The big face off is here. Saturn vs Uranus. Opposition. The sexy take is nagging conservatism (Saturn in Virgo) vs. enlightened progressivism (Uranus in Pisces). That’s almost too easy. We can draw a line in the sand and start extolling the virtues of one versus the other. Joe Wilson (nagging conservative) calls Obama (enlightened progressive) “a liar.” Nagging conservative, Glen Beck, leads a public storm front against enlightened progressive, Van Jones. Dig in your trench, the culture wars are upon us and if you’re not in one camp or the other, you just might wind up as collateral damage. But is this right (Virgo) vs left (Pisces) what the sturm and drang is really about or is it simply the reactive conditioning of the system that has become increasingly polarized since 2000, when George Bush was elected? What if there was another meaning we could pin on the opposition that we may be overlooking?

Turn back the clock. The year is 1339 and the month is September. What makes this date in time unique? It marks the beginning of The Bubonic Plague. Where was Uranus? In Pisces, at 23 degrees, just two degrees off of the current opposition. To understand “The Plague” we have to get a better idea of what culture in Europe was like before the plague:

EUROPE PRE-1300

This period is known as Europe’s “High Middle Ages.” Knowledge that had been preserved in the monastic schools, was flowing outward. Religion began to co-mingle with reason. Euclid began to be translated in the 12th century, from Greek to Latin and it’s the early influence of Euclidean geometry, which inspires the great arcitechture of The Middle Ages. Glorious monuments of the spirit, like Chartres, and the great cathedrals of Rome rise to the skies during that golden age. The weather was turning for the better, which meant that crops were growing, which meant that the population was rising, which meant that economies were also on the rise. Urban centers like London were starting to boom. Trade routes were opening up with The East and new social models outside of the feudalist states were starting to take hold; “In places where the trend toward freedom was blocked, attempts were made to establish it through violence. In 1070 the people of Le Mans formed a commune and rose against their lord — a rebellion that failed. In 1077 people of the town of Cambrai rebelled against an Episcopal overlord. And in 1112 a bishop in England who tried to suppress a commune was hacked to pieces.” (Macrohistory Of The World). There was also a rise in trade guilds, town charters and even privately raised armies to protect cities and towns. In short, the social character of Europe was headed in a direction that could be determined outside of monarchical rule, or at the very least, considered a prospective rival that under the right direction and organization could challenge the feudal model through a more communitarian expression.

Two of the great literary works that mark this period come from Dante. The first is the love sonnet to the Middle Ages itself, “LA Vita Nuova” or “The New Life.” It begins his romantic dialectic with ‘Beatrice” which was code for “soul” or in the alchemical tradition, “The Divine Feminine.” Of course, he would follow his muse deep into the heart of “The Divine Comedy” which would represent the zenith of the “High Middle Ages” upon it’s publishing in 1330. While there was a great deal of momentum towards growth in all areas, there was also new problems arising through more and more human contact and interaction. As the population swelled, so did a new breed of diseases, especially as the trade routes opened up from the east.

Now it’s historically kosher to assume that it was black rats and fleas that brought the plague westward and thus decimated the population and put a screeching halt to the rise of any kind of common wealth. But was that really the case?

THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR AND THE PLAGUE

Dead Man Musings is a pretty interesting site (though supposedly loaded with viruses) that charts the history and modern machinations of folks like “The IIluminatti,” “The Masons,” “The Knights Templar,” etc. Dead Man posits the theory that after the Knights Templar, who were gaining significant power through banking and lending and were mostly disbanded during “The Inquisition” of 1307, and the subsequent death of Jacques De Molay on Friday, October 13th, 1307, were more than a little miffed and wanted to exact some payback on the church and the rising monarchies, so they used Sardinia to quarantine and foster diseased travelers from the trade routes and then unleashed them on an unsuspecting Europe.

THE CUSTODIAL RACE STEPS IN

In “The Gods Of Eden” , a seminal work in the vein and spirit of Erich Van Daniken, William Bramley looks at numerous episodes throughout recorded history where there are peaks in culture and civilization, only to be knocked back by some disaster or plague. The Bubonic Plague takes up a great deal of space in Bramley’s work. He talks about personal accounts of peasants seeing wraithlike figures in fields with what resembled scythes in the field, but strange mists being emitted from the scythes. Here is where we get our classic visage of “The Grim Reaper” which has symbolic resonance with another major astrological aspect of our time, Pluto in Capricorn. It’s Bramley’s implied contention that “The Grim Reaper” belonged to some outside agency, and when I say outside, I mean beyond the the blue ceiling of familiar atmospheres. Bramley believes that just when “humanity” is getting it’s shit together, the requisite smoting is soon to follow. I’m simplifying his research and work to a great extent and doing a slight disservice to it as a result, but I have to condense it for your sake.

One of my good pals, Lawrence has been on the cutting edge of alternative health for years and we have had some to and fro regarding another modern plague, “Lyme Disease.” There are a number of people in the Lyme community who believe that the lack of salt has fostered and festered the growth of Lyme in their bodies. Lawrence told me that the royals during the plague kept salt from the masses to insure that they would fall ill, thin their numbers, etc. I could not find any proof of this, however, Nostradamus was credited with saving numerous lives during “The Black Death” while he never fell ill. Coming from a wealthy family himself, did Nostradamus know about a simple cure that was kept from plain view? In any event, the plague wiped out masses of people and initiated Europe into “The Dark Ages” out of which the so called “Enlightenment” would arise and powerful figures like Locke, Hobbes and Descartes would set the standard for the rise to power and ascent. It would be executed by those best set out for the task; “the economic and intellectual elite.”

Tomorrow, we’ll look at this opposition again, especially as it lines up with the new, modern plague, “Swine Flu” and the end of the worker oriented society.

Stay tuned.