Robert Phoenix

Wings and Prayers

I’m feeling a lot like Otis Redding (Virgo) in his posthumous hit, “Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay” during Mercury Retrograde. I’m pondering the whys, wherefores, whats and whens of my life and this blog. The path that I started out on, nearly two years ago when Sah (Immanent deity of Orion) Ra (Egyptian sun god) Palin entered the election, coming from seemingly out of nowhere, just as Barack Obama did. I did Palin’s chart and my stats went through the roof. I didn’t look back. Over the course of the past two years, I covered everything from Albert Pike to Lady Gaga and have done my best to wrap it in a blanket of stars, meaning that there was usually some sort of astrological through line. The blog has become part of an awakening process for me as I hope it has been for you, but I am not sure how much more I have to say along these lines, especially as it relates directly to astrology. Mercury in my own sign, retro has me reflecting on the meaning of it all.

Last night, I spoke with Katie Gallanti and she and I were in agreement that so much has transpired over the past two years and the awakening process has become viral. Here on the day of the Pisces Full Moon, I read a piece by Dahr Jahmail, the terrific journalist from the Middle East. He traveled to Mississippi and spent time with shrimpers who not only refused to go out on their boats to catch toxic shrimp, but held their own press conference, called for the resignation of Dr. Bill Walker, the head of Mississippi’s Department of Marine Resources for lifting the ban on shrimping and fishing. Their first hand accounts of sea life trying to out swim toxic waters is riveting. They are indicative of eyes opening wide across this country and world. Nearly ten years ago, a good friend kept me at arms length when it came to my “crazy” ideas. Fast forward. He’s that guy now. The great awakening is taking on a momentum of it’s own.

As the sleepers arise from their trance-like-slumber, I’m thinking about the next phase, catching the next wave. Once we’ve awakened, what can we do?

When I was young, I had a deeply romantic and naive vision of enlightenment. Occasionally, I still do. I thought that enlightenment was the key to true magic and the conscious application of man’s and God’s will in a perfect execution of integrated energies for truth, beauty and service. I still think this to some extent, but what I never quite factored in on the enlightenment side of the equation was waking up to the horror of the world and the attendant suffering, then deconstructing the architecture of the invisible prisons that we inhabit, how we got there and who helped erect and stand over them. That’s the not-so-fun side of waking up.

There’s the initial rush, you know, the one where you get to live in a Robert Anton Wilson epic for a while and then realize that it’s just another step in the process, a seductive Bardo that can yield some really surreal and juicy nuggets. There’s a high that comes along with it. It’s the inverse of solving light’s riddle, but comes with the attendant giddiness that “you’ve figured something out.” There’s plenty of black diamonds in that mine, trust me. But my wandering soul is restless again and I’m not wholly satisfied with discovering that Barack Obama might be the son of Michael Rockefeller and Cleopatra. After a while, uncovering more illusion only begets more illusion.

Perhaps this is the dialectical dance between my Sun in the 10th and transiting Pices Moon in the 4th. I’m doing my best to ground the arc between the spark of mystical unity and the practical tools of building a better world than the one we allowed to go to hell. Part of me wonders if it’s even possible at this point? I’m considering surrender as the most efficient move-letting go of all my strategies and systems, letting the flood just crash over me. I’ve been here before. I know it. I feel it.

On the other side of letting go is a sense of freedom and release that I can only begin to articulate. The dynamic push/pull between the Sun and the Moon is creating a tension, a torsion, a bi-polar magnetic field that holds the flux of possibility.

The Pisces Full Moon wants us to get cozy at a cellular level, while the Virgo Sun wants to know if it’s a phillips or a flat head? The Pisces Moon is full credit in faith, diving head first into the ocean of oneness, swallowing duality whole. Dick Cheney and Tony Hayward are merely dark angels on the road to redemption. Aware of the depths of the darkness, the Pisces Full Moons beckons immersion and trust. The Virgo Sun wants to make sure that you’ve got a map for the backroads out of town, a tent, sleeping bag, water, a couple of weeks of food and tank full of gas. This is kind of where I’m at. An uneasy station on the cross. But I do know this–there is plenty to live for. I’ve had glimpses of a very different world coming our way and trust me I want to be there. Surrender does not mean giving up–it’s more like giving away.

It’s been a while since I’ve done some Full Moon Scopes, so in the spirit of giving practical form to the numinous, here’s some light bon-mots of astro-advice for each sign over the next 24/48 hours.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sold mates?

Did I mention it was Mercury Retrograde? It’s not alone. With Saturn and Pluto also doing the cosmic tango in reverse, we have a ourselves a veritable menage-et-trois of bassackwardness. Just remember, Crowley said that if you want to understand the truth, then you need to learn to think backwards. Re-engineering social systems of influence and control takes some practice, an eye for detail and the risk of looking silly, but the rewards can be pretty rich, if not downright strange and entertaining, because when you have the largest group of educated workers in the modern era, sitting at cafes, sipping coffee and surfing the net, idle minds like to re-arrange the furniture in the holodeck.

Learning to think backwards, we hold a mirror up to the pundits on Sunday morning and their words reveal themselves in reverse. Whatever they’re saying, you can simply turn-it-around, infer the opposite and you’ll get the message. So, it’s time to look backwards, just a little. It’s time to look at Scott Brown, D, Massachusetts, the pick-up driving, former male model that bested a Dem for Teddy Kennedy’s seat in the senate, where his hallowed and widening fanny sat for decades.

People were aghast when Brown beat Martha Coakley, the local Dem drafted to replace Kennedy. They blamed the defeat of Coakley on Obama, those nasty Tea Baggers, the karmic payback for the world series that roided up Red Sox like Big Papi and Manram stole. All hell was going to break loose and Health Care would NEVER pass and Scott Brown would cock block any bill thrown down by The Dems. Pair Scott Brown with Sarah Palin and you get the Ken and Barbie of the republican doll party. Kinda scary isn’t it?

But lo, if we step back and look back at Scott Brown’s recent voting record, he’s voted in accordance with The Dems and Barack Obama. He voted for a watered down version of “The Jobs Bill” and also voted to extend unemployment. He’s still on record as being pro-choice. The conservative core of the repub side, the Tea Bagers are getting restless with Brown as he has sought to distance himself from them, since his populist putsch landed him in D.C..

Should we be at all surprised?

Scott Brown did what others have done before him to get elected. He was vetted and approved by AIPAC. The blog, Solomania has covered Brown in depth since his election and it is clear that his position is neoconical and sounds a lot more like George Bush than Cynthia McKinney, or even Ron Paul for that matter. Brown was stamp approved by the most powerful lobby in Washington, D.C.. Did I mention that he owns five homes, including one in Aruba? Scott Brown, with cozy ties to the defense industry, blessed by AIPAC, with lots of mortgages and loans, is as far from a grass roots populist as you can get. While he never claimed to bleed tea green, he certainly didn’t disabuse anyone of the notion that he might just dump some sippin’ herb into Back Bay out the window of his pick-up, on the way to Washington. In essence, Scott Brown is just another pol, using his good looks and DNA to get a seat at the table, especially if that table might be two miles beneath the surface of The Earth, for when the shift hits the fan. Read the rest of this entry »

They’re curing cancer down the street.

Saturn is at least temporarily out of Virgo for now. It will return for one, brief, curtain call in April of 2010 and that’s where it will stay until June, when it finally moves into Libra until it transitions into Scorpio in October of 2012. It’s time to take a look back and just slightly ahead.

When Saturn was in Virgo, the healthcare debate moved front and center and while people were busy arguing about who gets and doesn’t get it, who has to pay, who doesn’t have to pay, if it will be enforced or if there will be a public option, no one ever really brought up the quality of healthcare into the debate at all. It was assumed that the present system afforded to those who could pay was the one that provided the best medical solutions available. But is it really? Is allopathic or western medicine the panacea for all our individual and social ills? Is wellness vs illness ever part of the discussion at all? It wasn’t and when congress reconvenes after the first of the year to discuss the Obama healthcare plan, I doubt it will get addressed then as well. But to understand the nature of allopathic medicine and what it entails, which is a high preponderance and emphasis placed on surgery, technological interface and prescription drugs, one must also have a greater understanding of homeopathic and naturopathic methodologies. I wasn’t as keenly aware of this until I watched an amazing documentary called, “Hoxsey.”

“Hoxsey” is the life story of Harry Hoxsey, the founder of an alternative cancer healing method handed down to him by his father, on his father’s deathbed. Hoxsey’s dad had been a vet and watched one of his cancer stricken horses begin to tug and gnaw at plants growing in the field. The horse had not previously eaten these select plants prior to the cancer. But the elder Hoxsey watched in amazement as the horse recovered from cancer. He then explored the properties of the plants themselves and came up with two cures. One was an external paste made up of blood root and cascara. It served as an escrotic and burned the cancers away from the skin, leaving the non-cancerous skin alone. The second was a serum. also based on roots and herbs. Iodine also played a role in Hoxsey’s serum as well. In addition to these two things, he also had his patients get off of wheat, sugar, fried foods, alcohol and vinegars, while scaling back salt. At his clinics, a feeling positivity and well being was encouraged from the moment that people walked through the front door. According to Hoxsey, he had a 80% cure rate. Many of his patients that came to him were deemed terminal.

While Hoxsey succeeded, opening 17 clinics across the country, his detractors grew in ranks and rancor. Hoxsey’s most active nemesis was Morris Fishbein, head of the AMA and a man that would personally ruin the wonderful work of Royal Raymond Rife.

It must be noted that during the early part of the 20th centruy, The AMA was simply a small group of doctors who were trying to create their own version of a trade union with the power to lobby. Their great fortune and perhaps not ours, was the ascent of the industrial revolution as new mechanical devices like iron lungs and later x-ray machines would capture the imagination and pocketbooks of industrialists like Getty, Carnegie, Rockefeller and Morgan. These giants of manufacturing and commerce saw the medical field as a way for them to essentially move more product and thus they put their full weight and wallets behind Fishbein and The AMA. Its ironic to note however, that John D. Rockefeller never visited an allopathic doctor. His father also made the first of the family fortunes selling “snake oils” at county fairs. But nonetheless, JDR was willing to live by two standards instead of one.

Fishbein went after Hoxsey hard, but Hoxsey was not one to lie down and roll over. He had his own camp of support, including a radio evangelist who promoted his cures to millions around the country. The AMA might have been obstinate but they weren’t dumb. They knew that Hoxsey had something and they wanted to buy his serum from him. When Hoxsey asked that a provision be included that no matter who was sick or what they could or could not afford to pay, they would get the treatment. The AMA would have nothing of the sort, since they simply wanted to bury the formula. Hoxsey refused to sign and the simmering feud, erupted into a full scale battle.

Fishbein went after Hoxsey at every turn, meanwhile, Hoxsey and his methods were winning over people in the right places. A city attorney from Dallas, one who had been going hard after Hoxsey had a brother develop cancer. His brother went to see Hoxsey and was cured. The attorney went on to become a judge and one of Hoxsey’s biggest, local supporters. Fishbein went too far. He slandered Hoxsey in an article. Hoxsey sued and had his day in court. Day after day, witness after witness they came to attest to the his method and how it saved their lives. While people were lining up to support him, his defense did a little fact finding on Fishbein and it turned out that Fishbein hadn’t even passed elementary anatomy and never even treated one patient. He was forced to resign in disgrace. Hoxsey had won, but the battle wasn’t over.

Once the AMA lost, it was the FDA’s turn to have a go at Hoxsey. They shut down his clinics in the various states based on interstate trucking laws. They would do something very similar to Wilhelm Reich in a few short years. Hoxsey could not fight each case individually and only kept the Dallas clinic open. When he was old and ready to step aside, he passed the Hoxsey baton onto Mildred Nelson, a longtime nurse in his Dallas clinic. Nelson relocated to Tijuana and renamed the clinic “Bio-Med” where it still stands today.

The film also goes onto explore how the FDA in conjunction with The AMA have strong armed alternative medicine and healing with increasing powers and draconian oversight throughout the 20th century. While the medical reform bill is in a temporary state of abeyance, I would urge as many people as possible to watch this film and ask whether or not allopathic medicine is the right approach to the future of health care and if we can hand our health and well being over to the same agencies that have historically determined this policy, often resorting to everything from intentional and misleading disinformation, to mob-like, strong-arm-tactics. I shudder to think what the alternatives for alternative medicine will be in a top down, highly controlled system of standardized healthcare.

Watching the Hoxsey doc online is extremely difficult. There are versions out there, mostly low rez. Google even disabled a version on it’s video service. You can however find a few copies at Amazon for sale. I highly recommend that you purchase this very important document of not only one of America’s most fascinating self-made-men, but also to gain a further understanding of what’s at stake with our health and how some of our most immediate and important remedies may be affordable, less invasive and promote wellness than merely approximate a cure.

Hoxsey; The Quack Who Cured Cancer
CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE A COPY OF HOXSEY.

From here to infinity

The Karen Lundegaard tale has gotten deeper and is taking on a more multi-dimensional shape and presence in my life. It’s starting to overlap and sprawl into different realities like a Charlie Kaufman film. It’s moving through the internet, my waking world and the spirit world, as they all seem to be morphing into one, contiguous domain. The “Other Karen” aka “Joan Of Arch” seems to be also deeply embedded in this, (whatever this is) as there is a reference in Amy Tan’s book about a housewife from St. Louis, which is where the “Other Karen” dwells. It was the “Other Karen” that seemed to be the bridge for this interplay between time and space, dimensions folding onto one another. Last night, as I thought about Karen Lundegaard, the DVD case next to my computer literally fell off my desk next to my computer, with no prompting on my part (If you haven’t followed my Karen Lundegaard story, please see my previous post).

Without any foreknowledge, I posted the story on October 3rd. I stayed up until 3 AM, Saturday morning to push it live, but I did, on October 3rd. I later found out through Karen’s daughter (and others), who commented here, that Karen Lundegaard passed from this plane on October 3rd, 2003. I have no answer for this save that Karen has been contacting me from the spirit world, through any means necessary. If more details arise around this, I’ll post them here. In the meantime, I will cherish this rare and enlightening series of confluent events. Now onto other business.

While I laid low during Mercury’s river dance on my central nervous system and ability to create meaningful and clear syntax, one synchronistic event took place that was so clear, that I had to remind myself to write about it afterwards and another event, along the same, astrological axis also of note took place. To understand these two events, we have to re-invoke the opposition of Saturn in Virgo and Uranus in Pisces. Read the rest of this entry »

Is this man the first victim of the new, “Black Death”?

Instead of going into deep connect-the-dots mode, let’s just stay with what’s topical: Saturn in Virgo vs. Uranus in Pisces. The key thread in the previous posts has been the Uranus/Pisces, 23 degrees, in September of 1339 when “The Black Plague” officially killed it’s first victims;

“The first named victims of the plague died in 1338 and 1339 in the area around Lake Issyk Kul (Lake Baikal) in Russia, where a grave marker says, “In the year of the hare (1339). This is the grave of Kutluk. He died of the plague with his wife, Magnu-Kelka.”
Facts About The Black Death

Of course, the allusion to “Swine Flu” is an easy and timely tap. But how about this for timeline/aspect continuity?

American scientist studying the origins of the Black Death has died from an infection related to the plague he studied.

Published: 12:59AM BST 22 Sep 2009
Chicago health officials said there was no sign of any spread after the death of Malcolm Casadaban, a genetics researcher at the University of Chicago.

But as a precaution, antibiotics have been offered to co-workers, friends and family of the scientist.

The 60-year-old died on Sept. 13 after being exposed to a weakened form of the bacteria that causes the plague. The strain, which has been used as a vaccine in some countries to protect against bubonic plague, is approved by the US government for lab studies.

Casadaban’s lab has been sealed off while authorities investigate.

Officials have said it is unlikely that anyone else would be infected, and a Chicago Department of Public Health spokesman said on Monday the window for that happening is almost over.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is also investigating.

The Black Death, one of the deadliest pandemics in history, swept across Europe between 1348 and 1350. The plague, believed to be caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, killed as much as 60 per cent of Europe’s population.
Guardian U.K.

So what’s going on here? Are we witnessing the re-cycling of history through a conscious application of cosmic cycles? Are the cosmic cycles determining the re-cycling of history? Is this just some perverse synchronicity? Perhaps the answer lies in it’s opposition, Saturn in Virgo?

Happy birthday to my birth mates!

The equinox is upon us. Blessed balance as we descend into the dark, we give thanks for the bounty of our lives no matter what the conditions of the outside world may portend, pretend or attempt to dictate. Today is a day to affirm your balance in all things. As above, so below, as within, so without. Your divinity is nothing that can ever be diminished, only your perspective of it and lack of recognition that you are the steward of your soul can darken your relationship to the light.

Mercury is doing strange flip-flops as it crosses backwards and hits Saturn in Virgo. We can expect more fractious dialogue in the healthcare debate and on a personal level, it’s actually a very good time to make sure that all of your parts are in good working order. On the work front, re-assess your skill set, make sure that what you’re doing lines up with who you are. Congruence is an essential component to balance. Open yourself to the power of balance.

Happy birthday to Joan Jett, Nick Cave, King Sunny Ade, David Coverdale and Andrea Bocelli.

From Dante to The Georgia Guidestones.

In our last episode of who started “The Black Plague” we came upon the most interesting fact that in 1339, the year when “The Plague” rampaged through Crimea and it officially became a European issue, Pisces was in Uranus at 23 degrees. In our time, Pisces is in Uranus at 25 degrees, just two degrees off of the September, 1339 date. And what are we dealing with again? The specter of yet another plague in Swine Flu, perhaps the first of many. Today, marks not only the new moon in Virgo, but along with The Sun and Saturn (opposing Uranus) Virgo encourages us to look more closely about the effect and impact of Virgo on this current cycle and what it looked like during the inception of the plague.

In September, 1339, Jupiter, not Saturn was in Virgo and it had just entered the planet of possibility and expansion. When we look at these cycles from a cultural perspective, as we’ll see from Saturn later on, it’s important to see how they are cast against the backdrop of the times. In 1339 at the peak of the “High Middle Ages” craft guilds, charters, communes, monetary systems, were all on the rise. Society in the west was in a deeply formative stage and the energy and possibility of a new world emerging from the darkness of “The Early Middle Ages” was a distinct reality. Read the rest of this entry »

Moby’s chromatic effect.

While Virgo is often considered to be the one sign that’s driven by an almost insane desire for perfection and purity, a fair number of artists that fall under the spell of it’s arc, from August 23rd to September 22nd, can rarely be called puritanical by any stretch. A quick check list sees Charlie Parker, the archetypal be bop mainliner, shooting junk while deconstructing the song book of his day to blistering triple times. Then there’s Gene Simmons. While Simmons has eschewed alcohol and drugs, the former Chaim Witz, has feasted on the flesh and venerates mammon. Can’t leave out Amy Winehouse, whose appetite for self-destruction is only matched by her detail perfect, post-modern-chanteuse, smokey jazz diva act. The inherent paradox and irony in these Virgoan musicians is plainly and painfully obvious as they are driven, almost obsessively by some form of perfection and and quest for purity. . . well almost. Simmons might seem like a lecherous, old rock god still on the prowl for your little sister, but he is as exacting and systematic in his approach for financial dominance and leverage in all of his deals as any good Virgo obsessed with control would be.

Then there’s Michael–poor Michael.

Driven by some horror from his dark and wounded past, Michale Jackson sought perfection in form, reshaping the face he couldn’t bear to look at in the mirror, a face doctors disfigured to the point of deformity. But while all of these Virgo musicians have a fatal flaw that seeps into the crevices of their psyche, we are not here to judge, nor mourn their humanity–no, we are here to specifically look at one Virgo that seems to have made peace with the infernal, internal and eternal critic that drives Virgos to the edge of obsession and even mania–we’re talking about Richard Melville Hall aka “Moby,” born September 11th, 1965. Read the rest of this entry »

999 Is Only The Beginning.

It’s been a rough start to Mercury Retrograde. First, I got sick, then our cat, who was ailing took a deep turn south, then my father has fallen ill as well. I’m tackling my health with some very efficacious alternative means. Our cat however, was not so fortunate. We had to put him down today. Like many cats, he adopted us. He strode into our living room one night when we had the front door open. He walked in like he owned the place and we never looked back. We called him “Amos” but later found out that his name was “Shady.” He was a pure, black cat. Unlike the commonly held superstition, I have always been fond of black cats. White cats however, give me the creeps.

“Amos” had been abandoned and was being fed by a family around the corner. He was more of a yard cat than a house cat. So when it came time for us to pack up and leave, my then wife pleaded with through tears to take him. So after a few glasses of Cachacha and lime, I steeled up the courage and off he went with us. He was my exes first, real pet. Wherever we moved, he always ingratiated himself with the neighbors. In fact, in Escondido, he was so popular that people were leaving him Christmas gifts at our door! He was the neighborhood good will ambassador, more dog than cat in some ways. In fact, if I wanted to let him, he would walk blocks with me, like a dog off a leash, except that he would dart in and out of bushes and doorways, stealthily shadowing me. We eventually called him “Secret Agent John Moose” which, when after my son arrived on the scene, pulling his tail, he simply became known as “Johnny.” So his transformation from “Shady,The Street Cat Hustler” to “Johnny, Respectable, Family Cat” was complete.”

A month ago, he stopped being able to move his back legs well. Shortly thereafter, he couldn’t walk at all. He had been diagnosed with a tumor, either in the spine or the brain.

His decline was rapid.

Today, as Saturn gets ready to fully oppose Uranus on, 9/10/9, we put Johnny to sleep. What is amazing about his passing was how it was an analog for my exes experience around the death of her mother, who passed away, far-too-young with ALS. Just as she was there to nurse and care for her mom, she was also there for our cat. The residual energy of family history got played out. An opportunity for healing. Mercury Retrograde, oppositions, life transitions. Let’s look at the big picture. Read the rest of this entry »