Forecast: Late Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, October 1-3, 2012

Sun in Libra and Moon in Taurus, 2012

Beginning Monday 1 October at 4:27p PT|7:27p ET|11:27p UT
through Tuesday and Wednesday, 2 and 3 October
/moon goes void-of-course Thursday 4
/at 12:45a PT | 3:45a ET | 7:45a UT
until Luna enters Gemini Thursday at 4:48a PT|7:48a ET|11:48a UT

|Difficult, stressful third of this week| ends Wednesday 3
at 1:50a PT | 4:50a ET | 8:50a UT

\From Indolence to Intrepidity/

The two T-squares already mentioned continue in full force. It is rare to have two of these at once. This could explain whatever unusual difficulties you may be facing. Rather than analyze them directly, I will let them influence in a major way what I say in the rest of the forecast.

Although the |specially difficult third of the week| continues through Tuesday and is ended by Wednesday, on that day Luna opposes Mars and squares Venus so there may be a realization of what is behind whatever has been bothering you about human relations, for one thing, and perhaps money matters also. This will not be easy but could be helpful. Other factors in the chart are certainly soothing. It would be interesting to know how many people are happy with their love lives or marriages while Venus has been square Mars (September 4 through October 17). I would guess not many, so if you are, you are among the lucky few. Those tensions continue especially because Neptune is added to the configuration as the male-female planets both hit it with hard aspects. A neat symbol of this could be, Two lovers are unhappy with each other and to escape their mood get inebriated together, then get into a harsh argument which nearly comes to blows. This could apply to same-sex friendships also. As for the better outcome, I leave it to you to imagine; it would require patience, love and a stretch of tolerance on both sides.

[View Ahead: The next period, covering Thursday, Friday, and most of Saturday, looks better in many ways, especially Thursday and early Friday, because the moon will be void-of-course from Friday afternoon until Saturday evening. After that, quite good again. Remember, the rest of this forecast is for late-Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.]


Oracle for Aspirants

How to escape might be your overweening question and motive. What do you want to escape from? It's for you to decide. "Life" is a little too broad an answer! Suicide is not an option. If you could put in words as clearly as possible what you want to escape from, this could do you good. Then a way of escape may become transparent.

Broader philosophic questions of human freedom--are we free or merely imagine ourselves so?--could be discussed, but have been already in millions of pages of carefully reasoned analysis. Is the world much the richer for all that? I myself think that 19th-century thinkers, not 20th or 21st, have faced the problem most effectively. Studying Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy (the last two of course novelists rather than primarily philosophers, but philosophic novelists) might do more to answer the question than any of the very dull rational-analytic discussions of the topic in 20th-century philosophic journals. Nietzsche however was a madman, so reading him requires big doses of salt (or alcohol perhaps, but be careful). Hegel and Kierkegaard, opposites in so many ways, probably provide the best dialectic for understanding human freedom. Their answers were radically different but they shared an x factor I won't try to discuss here. There is obviously not a simple answer but the complex thoughts of these two are a sine qua non for anyone investigating the question on his own.

Then there is the answer of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, sometimes called The Fourth Way, which has implicit interest and can be a partial (not a complete, in my estimation) path for some. Another Russian thinker, Berdyaev, was more philosophically sophisticated and in fact well-acquainted with authors I have just mentioned.

The occult answer involves the doctrines of reincarnation and karma, of course. Those who have the patience for that might find it the best answer of all. Then there are the salvationist answers, of which the most prominent is Christianity. (Berdyaev subscribed to this in his own way.) Yes, the Saviour gives us freedom: The Truth shall make you free. I myself do not find this to conflict with the reincarnation-karma teachings, if one understands both sides of the matter sufficiently. Hegel and Kiekegaard both understood the Saviour, each in his own way, one might say in almost opposite ways.

I don't believe the above is a digression from the forecast. These questions are likely to be afflicting you either consciously or beneath the surface. One thing you might ask yourself is, "Am I just going to sit here and complain and whine? Isn't there something better to do, and some other understanding which will enable me to do it?" Perhaps each of us has brought himself into prison by his or her own acts, in this and previous lives. And so the way of escape has to be by correcting those acts insofar as they were mistakes. Who can see his mistakes? "Cleanse thou me from secret faults" cried David in a Psalm.

Complaining and whining could bring one into a worse condition, by dropping the activities which might help. Fainting and failing is all too easy. A little bit of intrepidity can invoke divine wisdom. The man who says "I am going to do this because it seems right," and proceeds, is invoking divine wisdom to help him. He decides to be his own military commander, his own commanding officer, and proceed with a mission which makes his life more real to him. This is self-affirmation leading to something of worth. If one's powers seem inadequate to the goal, they become more adequate by pursuing it.

At some such pass we find ourselves. We don't have to be harsh with ourselves but it seems that to escape the confinement we have brought on ourselves we need to fire ourselves up to more strenuous acting. The way out of the prison is not marked with an open door. One has to carve the path, remove the obstacles, and proceed through quagmires and over fences. Each day and hour is a re-beginning.

{Late Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday} /From Indolence to Intrepidity\

Cosmic Piper