Dear Subscribers,

In a few days, Neptune will re-enter Pisces and stay there without retrograding back into Aquarius.

Neptune is the Mystic and Saint, but like all the planets can be expressed on various levels, ranging from amorphous and confusing to compassionate, insightful, and holy. Neptune's sympathies are consistent: the underdog, downtrodden, unfortunate, disabled, handicapped, orphaned, and abandoned of all species. Neptune can never be understood through ego or intelligence since the gateway to the mystical realm entails surrender of self to the divine. Surrogates such as drugs and alcohol tend to initiate the user into illusion or delusion, but, of course, the world of mist and fog can look real to the those who see it.

Since its discovery in 1846, Neptune has completed only one journey through the Zodiac and the last time it entered Pisces for the "duration" was 1848. A very quick look online gave rise to a curious set of words referring to that year: it was the era of "spring revolutions"; and the revolutions, which were ostensibly not connected one to another, eventually involved 50 countries. Two years earlier, there had been crop failures and famine. Life in rural areas had become nearly impossible. About one million people died and two million emigrated. Others moved to cities in search of work. They slaved for 12-15 hours a days and lived in slums. Over half their income went for food staples, bread and potatoes, but the prices had soared due to food shortages following the potato blight.

It might be a detour but maybe something to consider: potatoes are not native to European culture. They were introduced from the Andes where they were evidently cultivated 7000-10,000 years ago. They are exceptionally easy to grow and wild varieties can be found throughout the Americas but they all hail from the original Peruvian variety. They were introduced to Europe in the 16th century and very gradually became a staple, particularly among those who were very poor since a small amount of land could feed a family living predominantly on potatoes, but here we have a superb example of lack of diversity and when the blight hit, underlying vulnerability was exposed.

Since fungi are most likely a Neptune-ruled organism, it might be worth noting that the culprit behind the potato blight was explored as a bioweapon after WWII. All that would be required to activate dormant spores is a very little bit of warmth and two days of high humidity. This is how fragile our ecosystem is!

Other Parallels

In the first half of the 19th century, there had also been surges in technology that made ideas more accessible to the disenfranchised as well as middle classes. These included improvements in printing presses, invention of the telegraph as well as typewriter, Braille, longer hours for reading due to many new types of lighting, and countless other precursors of modern efficiency.

Just as the famines have their parallel in recent years, it is tempting to compare the technological advances that allowed the publishing industry to expand in the 1800s to development of the Internet in our times. Basically, everyone can be as informed as he or she chooses to be and due to the wide range of material posted, people today can nourish their curiosity with whatever fits their persuasions.

Now, returning to some themes from recent posts, Marx and Engels published their Communist Manifesto on February 21, 1948. Since our minds have been conditioned to fly off the handle over the word "communism", let's see if we can put ourselves into the circumstances of a have-not in the mid-19th century. Life was very hard. In Europe, the aristocrats had serfs and in their many colonies elsewhere in the world, they had slaves.

Democracy, Liberalism, Nationalism, and Socialism

There were four buzz words in 1848: democracy, liberalism, nationalism, and socialism. Wikipedia has done our homework for us by defining what those words meant in the mid 1800s. Democracy, alas, pertained mainly to male suffrage. Liberalism, however, has real punch: consent of the governed and restrictions on the influence of church and state. Nationalism probably requires some sort of modern interpretation. In a world that was emerging from feudalism, there were countless states of varying degrees of stature. For instance, in what we now know as Italy, there were once — such as during the Renaissance — the hugely influential city-states, with names like Florence and Venice, as well as many kingdoms, Papal States, duchies, etc., some of which were ruled by Austrians.

Once one starts detouring, all sorts of stunning bits and pieces of information emerge. The Pope at the time was Pius IX, basically a liberal, but he would not take a position against Austria and ended up fleeing for his safety. Ultimately, he returned and had the longest reign of any pope in history . . . and it was during his reign that papal infallibility and the Immaculate Conception became dogma. I never knew that these concepts were introduced so late in the history of the Church.

The French Second Republic came into being at this time. The famous author, Alexis de Tocqueville, wrote, "society was cut in two: those who had nothing united in common envy, and those who had anything united in common terror."

Once more, I do not want to spend my time digging up quaint pieces of information in order to draw parallels to the present. Anyone interested can surf the web to see what happened in this period of history. However, a few details are just too stunning, including that there was a pervasive urge to transfer power to workers and give them more say in both politics and production. This was "socialism" — and it is not nearly so outlandish to see why countless politicians and economists are today deliberately triggering gut reactions by using words that have a charge on them when they could say something to the effect of, "Doesn't it make more sense to invest in job opportunities rather than stripping the middle class of its assets so as to bail out criminals in the banking system." Technically speaking, the sentiments embodied in this statement could be construed as socialist, but in reality, we are merely considering the direction that funds flow: they are either going upwards or downwards. Regardless of the language used, we are still talking about a gap between a privileged class with little or no feelings for the downtrodden and an immense number of people in third world countries — as well as developed countries with crashing economies — who seek meaningful reform and whose fuses are almost too short to measure in some places in the world.

Given that the ruling class likes to remain in charge, we can assume that they have infiltrated every movement and organization on the Planet. However, even if they can see the lay of the land, they still have to gamble on what would happen if the demands of the masses are not met. Obviously, it is their intent to use every crisis to consolidate their power, i.e., offer to create a new system with even more centralized power with the promise of checks and balances. Now, we have to ask whether or not we can believe the promises made.

To be continued in Part II

Many blessings,

Ingrid
http://www.space.com/12249-neptune-completes-orbit-discovery-1846.html

Copyright by Ingrid Naiman 2012

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