The Year Of The Sheep, The Silence Of The Lambs, Jupiter Retrograde And The Return To Innocence

Fa-fa-fa-fah-fa . . .

The unwritten law for movies throughout the years was that at the end of a film, the monster or the bad guy got his just desserts in the end. It didn’t matter if it was Frankenstein, Dracula, King Kong, HAL 2000, or The Predator, the monster was put back in the box. This was a classic element for dealing with our shadows and fears as they were exercised and exorcised on the silver screen. In a tradition that stretches back to the Greeks and the whole notion of catharsis within the human drama, projecting demons into our observational consciousness for a limited period of time, turning them loose, and then vanquishing them back into the collective unconscious has been a critical component to not only maintaining our psychic health, but also closing the portals of imagination and deep summoning.

The only film which I can remember breaking ranks with this when I was very young, was Don Siegel’s, “Invasion Of The Body Snatchers,” which to this day is still one of the most chilling films of all time. And whether it was Phillip Kaufman or Abel Ferrara’s version, the original, sans special effects and visceral gore is the one that made me look under my bed at night for a week after, to see if I had a bulging pod with my name on it. In that version, Kevin McCarthy is being gas lit, his sanity questioned, the alien replacements conspiring at every step of the way to make him appear crazed and irrational. McCarthy thinks he’s vanquished the alien invasion only to jump on a truck hauling a massive load of the pods to the nearest small town, unwittingly ready to receive their extraterrestrial doppelgangers’.

The monsters were not put back in the box.

IOTBS was supposed to be a classic sci-fi noir that was a narrative for the fear of communism. Blank faced alien doubles stood in for good, kind hearted and respectful Americans. That was the common analogy used for the film, but perhaps, Siegel was being quite literal and the movie was an example of hidden-in-plain-sight cinema. Maybe, just maybe, people were being replaced. But that movie, as good as it is, is not what this post is about. It’s about a movie where the monster was not put back in the box and all hell has been turned loose since then.

On February 13th, 1991, “The Silence Of The Lambs” hit movie theaters across the country, replete with the monarch symbol and Clarice Starling (bird programming) and of course, Hannibal Lecter. Anthony Hopkins became the villain of all villains, a complete and total sociopath without any shred of conscience whatsoever. And like the most complicated villains of history, there was a certain noblesse oblige about Lecter. Even though he could skin you like a cat and eat your liver with Fava Beans and Chianti, there was a polished urbanity about him, which was more college professor than Jeffrey Dahmer. The audience bonded with Lecter as he, ahem, handled Clarice’s investigation with style, with, intelligence, aplomb and even some empathy. There is something deeply insidious about how director, Jonathan Demme frames Lecter, even more devious in Hopkins’ portrayal of Lecter. We’re drawn in and since there’s a worse monster on the loose (Jamie Gums) and another young woman being traumatized, we take Lecter in. He’s the lesser of two evils, or really, he might not be the lesser, but in the moment, he offers both Clarice and the audience, insights that only a deeper sociopath can tap into. We bond with Lecter just as Clarice does. Justice is served, but then Lecter punctures our membrane of trust, skinning a guards face, obscuring his own identity under a mask of flesh. The next time we see him, he’s in Haiti, land of voodoo and human sacrifice, and a veritable playground for Lecter. The movie ends and the monster is not back in the box. He is turned loose and amongst us. The line between good and evil was permanently smudged against the screens of our own minds–in millions–millions of minds. The smiling sociopath, David Byrne’s “Psycho Killer” fa-fa-fa-fa-fa fah, Fava beans, was out there, lingering in the liminal, leering at the edges of our cellular membranes.

It could be argued that the Reagan era was when the sociopaths congregated, from G.H.W. Bush, to Cheney and Rumsfeld. But nobody really liked them. Oh sure, the upper 15% adored them and their tax light policies, but much of America was as polarized by Reagan as they were by Nixon. Coming in from the back end trauma of the Carter administration and Iran/Contra, many Americans just wanted the 70’s to be over and done with. Reagan represented a return to another era, an older time, an America that made sense.

In 1992, just one year after the release of SOTL, America had a new president, another Southerner, this one, just as smiley as Carter, but younger, hipper and with a brassy, competent, wife. Hilary was the anti-Nancy Reagan in oh-so-many-ways.

It would take a few years, but the bloody tales and the body count surrounding the Clintons would emerge, with Vince Foster right at the top of the hit parade. Bill’s exes came forward and his Arkansas, state trooper bodyguards went down. Waco was razed–all of this was in the back draft of Lecter’s free pass. We were officially living in the era of the professional sociopath and nobody gave a shit.

Now, we have James Spader doing his own version of Lecter on “The Black List.” We lauded the likes of Tony Soprano, loving the realness of him and his sociopathic pals. Dexter allowed us to align with a psychopathic killer, with a perverted sense of justice. We went from the antihero to the villain as hero. This was a major pole shift and it can be traced to that film that was released on 2/13/91. That’s interesting day in it’s own right.

In 1920, Israel purchased the majority of The Dead Sea Scrolls form Syria. In 1940, Earl “Fatha” Hines released “Boogie Wooogie On St. Louis Blues” which would qualify as an early taproot of Rock and Roll. In 1945, Dresden was firebombed into oblivion by the allies. In 1967, The Beatles released “Penny Lane” and “Strawberry Fields Forever.” In 1974, The SLA demanded whopping $70 per person be given to every needy individual in California, for the release of Patty Hearst. In 2009, ARRA, or “The Stimulus Act” is passed, offering up $782 billion to the sociopaths that stole the collateral on the negative liquidity of toxic debt. February 13th could be a finalist for “World Sociopath Day.”

So why is he talking about “Silence Of the Lambs” and when is he going to talk about astrology!!!

The “Year Of The Sheep” is upon us (I’d get there sooner or later). In the Western system, the sheep corresponds to the sign of “Cancer.” The two signs share a great deal in their overall meaning, vibration and definition. Both are related to the domestic life and the concept of nurturing. The sheep is a full service partner in creation. It gives us wool, milk and meat. Unlike the cow, which must be slaughtered for its hide, the sheep merely needs to be shorn. The female of the species (Ewe) is generally regarded as placid, unless her lambs are threatened and not too unlike the sign of Cancer, whose natives are known to ferociously defend their young, so too will a Ewe. Sheep have for stomachs, which allow them to regurgitate their food, aka cud and digest it again. Not many Cancers, I know do this, unless they’re under the age of two. Like Cancers in the West, the Chinese sheep native is creative, artistic and dreamy. They do much better when they are surrounded by a solid, home environment.

When we talk about sheep, we’re dealing in the nature and essence of the feminine, since the sheep is the female of the species. The qualities of nurturing, care, repair and sustenance, all done creatively are the hallmark of this Chinese New Year, 4712, the year of the “Wood Sheep.”

There is some controversy over whether or not the year is represented by the sheep or the goat. Apparently, the Han region of China, the people refer to it as “The Goat” but the whole of China seems to prefer the lovely, fluffy, sheep. It is considered an auspicious animal in the Chinese pantheon of the animals. Unlike the Ox, which has to toil and work hard, the Sheep does not and there is always plenty of grass for sheep. This sets up a bit of a conflict between these two animal types. The Ox actually resents the Sheep because of this. Not coincidentally, the Ox in the West is Capricorn, while as we have noted, the Sheep is Cancer.

Unlike the Year Of The Horse, which galloped into our consciousness at full speed last year, replete with the Denver Broncos getting trounced at the Super Bowl, in a ritual slaughter, the year of the horse rushed upon us and sped by. How many times in 2014 did you check your calendar and watch, only to find that time had slipped by? An hour, a week, a day, a month, a year, and so it went.

The Year Of The Sheep will feel slower, even if time itself seems to undulating under a different sort of compression. There will be moments that bleed into dream time and the level of collective, psychic awareness will also be much higher. The veil between worlds will be much thinner than the Horse year and this heightened sensitivity will have an interesting affect on the masses.

Certainly, amidst the hype and propaganda, from Charlie Hebdo to Measles, the push to move people into a position is not just depressing, but debilitating. The mainstream media, as always seems to be in lock step with whatever program is being pushed. Notice how the debate went from children and measles to adults getting forced vaccinations. In the background, looming beneath it all, we have the whole issue Net Neutrality rising to the surface again. Like sharks that move as shadows beneath the surface of the sea, the threat of forced inoculation, boots on the ground in a foreign land or the censorship of alternative news sites by corporate third parties, it is an incessant blitz that gets repelled at most times when we kick and scream and make enough noise, but they rarely, if ever go away. One wonders when we can actually get some peace on Earth. Rhetorically speaking, it’s when “they decide it” because the only way the pressure will ever let up is when society is transformed into a one-world-system that represents corporate interest and the rule of law, where choices are manufactured and personal will is a set of parameters that will be determined by intelligence, psychological batteries, bloodlines and any number of x-factors. If the individual shows any variance, they will be given a schedule of drugs, which will help them, conform socially, while achieving their pre-set goals and duties as ordered by the state. It is only in this version of the world timeline where there will be man’s peace.

Over the course of my life I have realized that there are other planes of existence, other dimensions, realities and yes, timelines. What synchronizes all the timelines and reality variables? I’ll you what it is; LOVE. L-O-V-E. Jupiter is headed backwards in Leo and if there is one sign that epitomizes love more than any other, it’s the lion and Jupiter of course expands. Moving backwards in time, in an expanded space, well that’s Jupiter in Leo. Its symbolic import is a return to innocence. How does that grab you? In a world that is becoming more and more increasingly insane, devoid of true emotion and genuine, human warmth, what’s the most subversive thing you could do? It is to love and care without censor or restraint. While Saturn gets much respect as the Marquis-de-Sade of the zodiac, the original, “50 Shades Of Grey” one has to remember that the teacher of the stars is Jupiter. Yep, that’s right. Jupiter is the ruler of Sag, teacher of the cosmos.

Jupiter is ascending.

If you go back in time, circa 2001 A Space Odyssey, the hero of the film, “Dave Bowman” Yes, Bowman = Sag, he travels to Jupiter, where he gets into an accelerated, aging trip, ala Capricorn, but then, guess what happens? He returns to Earth, reborn as a child. There’s wild and rampant speculation about the meaning of the cosmic baby floating back to Earth, but it’s widely suggested that the baby is the symbol for the New Age and collective return to innocence. Just as Lecter strolled off into the Haitian sunset at the end of SOTL, the conception of the cosmic baby in 2001 left it’s own cinematic seed in our consciousness and Jupiter is the key, then and now. Just for kicks, Stanley Kubrick is a Leo. While most of America digs itself out of the dreary ice fields of winter storm Thor, the burning hearth of Jupiter in Leo takes us back into our past and delivers the gift of innocence, love without guile, passion, wonder and the longing of the human heart to touch, feel, laugh and play. This is the key to right now as we enter the vortex of the mid March fireworks–more on that next time.