© Dianne Lancaster|Written July 22, 2016
And She Urgently Needs Your Attention
We Were Warned
In Greek mythology, Cassandra was a prophetess. The power to foretell the future was given to her by Apollo as an expression of his desires… and Cassandra received the gift, promising to comply with his desires. But then she spurned Apollo’s advances, and he sought revenge. He could not rescind her gift of prophecy because the creed of the gods was that divine favors once bestowed could not be revoked. What Apollo did, therefore, is arrange that while Cassandra’s gift of foretelling would remain, she never would be believed.
Cassandra’s fate was to know when disaster was coming but be helpless in averting it. The most widely-known dismissed warning was her telling the Trojans that a Greek army was hidden in the giant wooden horse. Cassandra’s most widely-known and not dismissed warning came later when she knowingly entered a house where blood was known to flow upon the floors. Foretelling her own death, it was there that Cassandra was murdered.
What the Politicians Knew and When They Knew It
Our nation has been warned so many times; and so many times we have deferred best practices for worst case scenarios. For example, the current debt and deficit crises were accumulated slowly and calculatedly. Beginning in the late 1980s when an unusual and unnerving assembly of planetary influences had a message for the world economy, an unusually astute congressman, (D) Rep. Edward Markey from Massachusetts, had a message for the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, David S. Ruder.
In 1987, as Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance, which had financial oversight responsibilities, Rep. Markey was deeply concerned about overall global volatility and specifically, he wrote, recent “precipitous drops in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.”
Citing the previous day’s drop of 91.55 points – 3.7% of the Dow – on October 7, 1987, Rep. Markey wrote to SEC Chairman Ruder that with both the Dow increases and its declines so great, it was “possible that their sheer magnitude, coupled with the market’s ever-increasing volatility, could affect investor response and create a near free-fall situation that feeds on itself.”
“Frankly,” Chairman Markey continued in his October 7, 1987, letter, “I remain unconvinced that program trading might not someday play an important role in a rapid uncontrolled market decline.” And added to his communique: “I suggest you also consider the potential effects of foreign investment on the stability of our markets” … and … “it would be helpful if [this] Subcommittee could receive a response by November 2, 1987.”
Like slogging through warm mud, the wheels of the bureaucracy turned with breathtaking slow motion. The Dow continued to tumble, and on “Black Monday,” October 19, it crashed by 22.6%, losing 508 points as investors lost $500 billion that same day.
What We Didn’t Learn from Black Monday 1987
The trading proclivities Rep. Markey warned of continued, and in Orange County, California, they made worldwide headlines. To avoid raising taxes, the county had borrowed heavily in order to speculate… on interest rates staying low or declining. As rates instead rose, the county’s losses were so dramatic it had to file for bankruptcy in 1994. Losses for many individual investors were crippling. Loss of jobs for 3000 employees was devastating. Serving as a precaution against such future vulnerabilities, advisors such as the Professional Risk Managers International Association emphasized that in addition to bond ratings, which typically and reliably indicate risk, new investment disclosure policies would have to be adopted and new rules would have to limit the riskiness of taxpayers’ monies being invested.
Thanks to Orange County, the term “derivatives” came into the public’s consciousness because that is what got Orange County in trouble. Its very name, derivatives, should have been a warning: the value of one thing determined by the fluctuating value of another (i.e., Orange County bonds would be more valuable if interest rates declined… but they didn’t).
So Congress called in the then-Chairman of the Federal Reserve to assess whether, and indeed how, such recommended new rules and new disclosure policies on investment risks would protect taxpayers who bought bonds for schools, roads and bridges and such. Chairman Alan Greenspan cautioned: “The trouble with legislation is that it is very likely in this type of market to become rapidly obsolete, and could very readily become counterproductive to the required flexibility that we need to address the types of problems that we are addressing.”
Such circuitous thinking was applied so extensively, although not unquestioningly, that in 2007 “the Great Recession” hit the U.S., ultimately reverberating to the global economy. Because, in the U.S., large amounts of mortgage-backed securities (which were supposedly ranked for investment worthiness, but without necessary legislation, that protection failed), and large numbers of derivatives (remember: with no intrinsic value, only a value derived on two or more things working together in a manner anticipated to make money), all combined with greed, hubris and recklessness. And it can happen again.
Tuning In Instead of Out
This election year is like a hydra. We are a nation lurching toward electing a new leader who will have responsibilities for imbalances in the economy, budget, national debt, and trade deficit. That person will be faced with a treacherous foreign policy challenge, a national unrest of epidemic proportions, and so much instability in so many facets of governance that it is vitally important for each of us to pay attention: to know how to listen to those who offer promises and solutions and subject them to the highest truth we can access… because the future is in our hands and we must do something with it.
The underbelly of the U.S. financial world is basically unregulated, and that is a problem like the foregoing examples describe. The new administration will appoint a Secretary of the Treasury and a Secretary of Commerce, along with someone to take care of Homeland Security, Housing, Labor, State, and all the other ways our forefathers and generations since have carved out responsibilities for the government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” It’s just not working that way right now.
So your individual consciousness and courage are needed: to beam into the conditions hovering over this nation, for you to know and understand and care, and then be guided… because if you tune in “up there” you will find your guidance waiting.
Honesty: A Collective Assignment
Diogenes of Sinope lived in Greece in the period 412-323 BCE. He is best known for preaching the doctrines of self-control, and for strolling the streets of Athens holding a lantern in the daylight, explaining that he was “looking for an honest man.”
We as a nation are looking for an honest leader; but because we have so compromised our values and integrity, courage and principles, we have gradually left room for what is being portrayed before us daily: None of the above.
So we must pay attention: listen carefully, choose wisely, contribute widely and courageously, and help to create a consciousness that will envelop the one prevailing as it accomplishes slow death.
We Were Warned: Slow Disintegration | Part Two
In the late 1980s, the heavens were hosting a convention in the Zodiac sign of Capricorn. Saturn, the planetary ruler of Capricorn – the teacher planet, the Lord of Karma – was the designated Keynote Speaker. Those in attendance included Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. The only members of the Solar Family unable to attend were Jupiter and Pluto. (Jupiter did make it to Capricorn in 1996 and 2008, to assist in the Recession, and Pluto arrived in Capricorn in January 2008, to ensure the Recession. The farthest-out and slowest-moving planet, Pluto will stay in Capricorn until 2024, and that is becoming a most memorable visit… as much of this writing describes).
Capricorn generates a “lean and accountable” message. When the nation’s collective ego resisted Capricorn’s message in the 80s, the savings and loan crisis hit, Speaker of the House Jim Wright was ousted, “bosses” in the Congress were disgraced and indicted, and Japan proceeded to purchase both U.S. Treasuries and U.S. treasures: Rockefeller Center, Columbia Pictures, Firestone, Pebble Beach Golf Course, the Citicorp building in New York, the Biltmore and several other luxury hotels, and lots and lots of prime real estate. Japan’s stock market crashed in 1989 as a result of fiscal imprudence.
Lording over the U.S. economy these days in the Zodiac sign of Capricorn is the creative destroyer-of-imprudence, Pluto. That matters because in the U.S. astrology chart, its Sun, Venus, Mercury, and Jupiter are all in Cancer – so planets transiting Capricorn oppose all those Cancer planets… Saturn as a teacher; but if the lessons aren’t learned, Pluto addresses issues unforgivingly. Those planets that gathered in Capricorn in the late 80s sent out a message to be learned: be careful, be prudent, be balanced, and most of all, be honest or you’re going to get caught.
Eight planets in Capricorn is impressive, but Pluto in Capricorn is the last-resort planet. The Universe sends out warnings when other planets visit or collide with the U.S. astrology chart of July 4, 1776 – and the various heavenly bodies have been making those visits for years, warning the U.S. and besieging the U.S. to halt the imbalances and “right the ship of state.”
By now, having arrogantly disregarded the heavens’ messages, we have Snowden and Isis, Newtown and Orlando and more, Trump University and Hillary’s emails, Citizens United and immigration uncorraled, Anonymous hackers and nuclear weapons… all of which say not only, “We’re not in Kansas anymore;” but with that reality also comes a Bette Davis-like travel warning: “Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”
Based on the planets and the over-arching influence of Earth moving from the influence and lessons of the sign of Pisces, where it’s been for 2000+ years and is now inching slowly into the next sign, the New Age of Aquarius, the Universe is indeed bumping and grinding its messages into our psyches and souls.
The Fox | The Fixer
Donald J. Trump says he can fix everything almost immediately. He doesn’t say how. He doesn’t know how, as his business model applied to governance showed spectacularly. “They don’t pay? Then don’t give ‘em anything…” he postured, appropriate perhaps for a Trump Tower transaction, but colossally clueless and dumb for the leader of the free world to say of the decades-long U.S. commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO: a multi-member global military alliance which partners nations to defend each other, share intelligence with each other, and prevent another World War.
Trump assures America that he will stop the violence that has been escalating for decades (centuries if you factor slavery), and he will halt it very, very soon. He doesn’t reveal his plan. He doesn’t offer his solutions. He doesn’t analyze why so many of his predecessors have tried so many different ways so many times and yet been unable to get underneath or on top of the problem… but he will, he says.
So we can expect that the radicalized will stop killing the innocent, the police will stop killing Blacks, Blacks will stop killing Blacks, Blacks and Whites will stop killing, everyone will stop killing, and Black Lives Matter will realize, “Oh, everything’s been solved,” and disband.
Outraged, deranged, assault-weapon-armed anti-Everythings will get the memo that their complaints have been heard and the conditions they rage against have been transformed exactly as they want. Right?
Of course, no. Donald Trump actually thinks his model for success in the entrepreneurial arena – where he hires who he wants, fires who he wants, buys what he wants, and files lawsuits against the rest – is going to work with a multi-faceted, multi-layered, multi-entrenched bureaucracy in a multi-cultured, multi-divided, multi-wounded and multi-disenfranchised world.
An astonishing ego-delusional feat.
He will need Congress to pass his legislation, which they won’t do if it’s as ridiculous as his public proclamations are. He will need Cabinet expertise to guide him, which they won’t agree to do if they realize he wants to rip up the big picture that he doesn’t understand. He will need industries and egos to cooperate with his “Make America Great Again” plans, which they won’t do if he tries to negotiate by grabbing the bowels of their societies… which they protect and defend because that is their power and their identity, their security and their purpose.
We Are Warned: She and He | Part Three
Hillary Clinton knows the system. She has worked the system. She has milked the system. She has infiltrated the system. So She knows how it is structured and, yes, rigged. But labeling it is not what will change it. Barking at it from afar will not change it, either. Nor can it be bludgeoned into submission. She understands that. He doesn’t. She will be resisted. He will be denied. She may not even make it through the next congressional investigation because, unlike her FBI statements of no wrongdoing, She will be under oath and grilled by former prosecutors who have evidence to back up their attack.
He, on the other hand, will encounter seasoned diplomatic- and governance-savvy representatives “of the people” who watched the Republican Vice Presidential candidate pledge allegiance to NATO and the next day heard Him say there’s no deal. As will be the norm if He becomes President, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who immediately reassured an aghast nation and global community that the United States will comply with the NATO accord, will do the clean-up (er, rescue) again. And this is just for starters.
We have been asleep at the wheel. We have not voted, not paid attention, not asserted, and maybe not even been concerned… and now we must must must.
So pay attention. Listen. Watch. And care about this nation that we were incarnated into. We must register our consciousness here and help. In order to do that, we have to understand what’s going on, who the players are and what the stakes are, because we must help steady this ship of fools.
Cassandra Re-Do: 2016
She was given the gift of knowing what was going to happen. But after jilting the one who gave her that gift, it was taken away. She would continue to know events in advance – she would continue to warn people of pending doom – but Apollo had arranged to have her information denied.
Let us not now deny.
We do know what is going to happen because it is happening: The old is crumbling and the new is awkwardly trying to take its place. It is indeed a match made in heaven; but with Pluto presiding over this ceremony, it is not, not an easy fit… for the nation or the players.
We may not individually have a direct role in the process, but we have a most important role in the periphery. We too are awkwardly helping a new vision, a new system of values and principles, take root. Maybe our role is only on a consciousness level, but what else is more needed than some consciousness inserted into all of this?!
So tune in. Wait for the connections you can make. Wait for the opportunities for you to say what you know and Be who you Are. Someone is looking. Someone else, too, needs to join hands and hearts and contribute to bringing forth a higher consciousness set of “what we can do now” guidelines. It will happen because the future is in our hands and we are to do something with it.
Picture an America riding sidesaddle on a Trojan horse. Lend your awareness, your wisdom, your courage, your integrity, and your contribution. They are all urgently needed in this nation we call home.
© Dianne Lancaster|Written July 22, 2016
Dianne Lancaster is the former publisher of The Times Ahead, an economics newsletter for the spiritual community, and a former economics columnist for Planet Earth Astrology Magazine and several business and women’s magazines.