THINK OF SEPTEMBER and October as a swirling, socio-economic drug trip whose howling sirens and dying fantasies are remarkably restful – even inspiring – once we decipher their compassionate, way-showing message: there’s a symbiotic relationship between grim realism and flash-in-the-pan escapism, miserable security and Ashley Madison. Every ego (and society) has a unique style of bipolar swinging between Saturnian sobriety and Neptunian intoxication, mercilessly time-bound productivity and matrix-dissing escapism.
As we collectively creep closer and closer to the next exact Saturn/Neptune Square on Nov 26, the rate at which outmoded structures, social contracts and half-hearted loyalties dissolve will increase and spread well beyond the stock market into our everyday lives, pushing everyone to ask, What are the grounded, Saturnian paradigm and practices that anchor me in relaxed, Neptunian faith, providing an unshakable sense of security and stability?
Warning: Don’t let the corporate media co-opt the astrological narrative. The world’s political and economic tumult did not arise from governments going into Neptunian denial and kicking the Saturnian debt can down the road. The problem is that we went into the wrong kind of debt: we lost touch with the soul-bridging beauty of personal indebtedness.
The Indebtedness that binds us together
Indebtedness is the glue that holds community together. It was the mediation of giving and receiving by impersonal institutions that brought us to this collective cliff. Here’s how Rebecca Solnit puts it:
Before money, people didn’t barter, but gave and received as needs ebbed and flowed. They thereby incurred the indebtedness that bound them together, and reciprocated slowly, incompletely in the ongoing transaction that is a community. Money was invented as a way to sever the ties by completing the transactions that never needed to be completed in the older system, but existed like a circulatory system in a body. Money makes us separate bodies and maybe it teaches us that we should be separate.
Do communities contain souls who get selfish and take more than they give? Of course. But, instead of economically punishing or disenfranchising them, traditional communities usually provide members with a integrity-redeeming pathway of service for the forgiveness of this debt. The Saturn/Neptune square cries for just this kind of neighborhood-sized system of giving and receiving. Will bank failures and supply shortages push us – out of sheer necessity – to re-weave this communal economy? Who knows? What we can say is this: It is time to be this: It is time to become a real “prepper” by flexing our community weaving muscles now, regardless of whether hard times befall us.
Ready to become a savvy trader in the sacred stock market? Try my new book, Fukushima Fortune Cookies. It’s a Lonely Planet guide for the tumultous times ahead. Divided into three sections, it will shepherd you, step-by-tenuous-step, from “Intelligent Groaning” to “This Howling Moment” to “Win Yourself Back.”
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