Note: for those of you using mobile phones use URL: soothesayer.com/july-2021/
The Summer of Childhood’s End:
Venus and Mars are transiting fiery Leo while the Sun moves through Leo July 23 through August 22. In the Western hemisphere, this brings with it the joys of the Summertime, sporting events, hiking, camping, swimming, and playing. It favors the self expression of the young – the fine arts, music, theater, romantic encounters, youthful rebellions, risk-taking, feeling invulnerable, and holding onto an overpowering belief that “everything will work out.” Youthful Leos love to “be in charge” – to go where they want to go, get what they want to get, and mate with whom they wish to mate. They wish to “rule” themselves, and not necessarily anybody else. Their theatrical dramatic entrances and exits entrance their audiences. Many actors and “stars” are born with Leo planets in their charts. They do not worry about the consequences. However, the world they live in today was formulated and set up by older generations with unprecedented challenges within the scope of human history.
Pluto’s transit in Capricorn (2008 – 2024) has a completely different point of view. He is all about “consequences”, fear of deprivation, the long haul, those of advanced age and experience, and obtaining a sense of “security”. He is frequently represented by people who hold concentrations of wealth and power, and who impose their collective will on those who are unschooled, inexperienced, and basically broke. Capricorn presents itself as the persons who have worked hard to position themselves among the authorities and who have “paid their dues”. At their best, these people are highly successful and wish to share their information with others and better their societies. They have earned respect and admiration. At their worst, they will manipulate the system to hold onto their wealth and power at any cost, whether they hold a prominent position in governments or reside in the billionaire class of bankers and CEOs. Their ruler, Saturn, who “naturally” resides in the 10th House of Career and Recognition will hold on to this position at all cost. Many astrologers see this sign as the true sign of “royalty” whose position “entitles” them to the real estate at the top of the ladder.
Neptune’s current transit in the sign of Pisces (2012 – 2026) may be many things, but is also “none of the above. He takes pride in being nebulous, capable of nothing and everything, and, when in an ecstatic state, peers into the heart and soul of the universe itself. He is not concerned with “status” or recognition, but is more connected to inspiration. With his two fish swimming in opposite directions, he is familiar with Heaven and Hell, and understands the territories of both. He is the “last” sign of the Zodiac – in which the ice melts and the world is deluged by the Great Flood. His sensitivity may lead him into grand hoaxes, religious cults, and he may even abuse alcohol and drugs to escape the burdens of life itself. If he resists these dark temptations, he may access information and happiness that await him at the highest and brightest levels of wisdom and understanding.
What Now?
Decisions made by older generations (Capricorn) who have held power within governments and corporate giants have created economies whose money has moved to the top of food chain, depriving younger generations (Leo) of access to a shared prosperity and a faith in their future. The birth rates in the industrialized world have dropped; marriage has been postponed; wages compared to profits and stock prices have fallen; job security is a distant memory; health care costs have risen; college loans have plunged young people into long term debt; and the human created climate crisis effecting the entire planet has created an existential uncertainty that may be devastating to many intelligent well informed young people whose fate on earth is now in question.
Former Pres. Trump (Leo rising) will be making appearances this month everywhere he can and will continue to rant and rage against the “system”, all the while up against indictments of his business and colleagues. Pres. Biden and the Democrats are trying to pass infrastructure and voting rights bills. They have recently announced some success in this endeavor, but with Mercury square Neptune on July 8 and opposition Pluto on the 25th of this month, they still have conflicts ahead.
This Summer’s extreme heat, drought and fires will sweep the Western US with no solutions in sight. We will no longer be able to ignore fresh water shortages throughout these regions. The first week of July will present another “infrastructure failure” as Mars forms a T-Square with the Saturn Uranus square and another “hacking crisis” with Mercury square Neptune and there is a generally accident prone environment. Last month’s collapse of a condo complex in Florida reminds us what needs to be done. Ocean waters are rising and will continue to have a severe flooding effect on Florida, leaching into areas inland as well as the coast. Climate scientists have been warning us for decades that glacier melting would raise the sea levels and Florida is already battling seawater rising on its beaches. I would expect this is, in part, the reason for this collapse. Unfortunately, we will likely see more of these emergencies. Currently, people seem to be moving to the most threatened areas in both the Southeast and Southwest. Within the next decade, there will be movements of families inland and to the North.
Too many of our cherished young people are escaping into drugs and alcohol (Pisces) or religious affiliations based on ancient racial and tribal hatreds organized around the “blame game” – rather than looking clearly at the challenges we all face together and must unite in order to solve. They have lost faith in our society’s institutions. Many “escape” into political and religious cults. A record number of young people have either died of drug overdoses or committed suicide. They sometimes simply “lose it – and go on shooting sprees in public places, a fate we have been witnessing as gun violence has escalated this past year.
All these historic trends will be in the forefront this month and beyond. Realizations will dawn and many of the young people will find pathways to make the necessary changes. The timeline for this great “shift” in consciousness is between now and 2026. Those nations and people whose climate is devastated will lose millions of lives even though there will be many immigrating to other locations. We will become aware that all the excitement about embarking to Mars and riding around in space will not fix our own planet – the only place we can live, that supports biological life as we know it. Fish are currently going extinct in our polluted oceans and waterways – a prelude to what is to come – until we stop fighting each other and, instead, come together, collecting and implementing big solutions to big problems. I think we have a shot at correcting our course.
The Economy:
There is a lot of talk out there with respect to inflation, which is certainly taking place. The big bubble in the real estate market continues, mainly because interest rates will remain low for the time being and Federal Reserve Chair Powell continues to “assure” us that inflation is temporary. The stock market is following suit. Both personal and government debt is expanding. Food prices have escalated because climate changes have dried up crops, reducing the food supply. Gas prices went up because OPEC raised the price of oil, a pipeline went down a couple of months ago that has been restored, and gas prices generally go up during the summer months. Leo is an “optimist” and will likely keep the “bubble” expanding. For investors thinking a little outside the box, I would look into investing in metals such as rare earths, copper and aluminum that are so important in electric cars and infrastructure in general. Gold and silver are a hedge against inflation which is upon us (no matter what Powell says.) The biggest investment for the future will be in water conservation and purification. These are areas that will be seen as necessities in the coming years. However, people who manipulate these markets will continue to do so.
The very end of this month, Mars goes into Virgo, joined by other planets in Virgo as we go into August. This is a health care sign and more fears will be generated about COVID or some other infectious disease. It will also create a more “realistic” spin to the stock market. This is enhanced by Jupiter’s retrograde position back into Aquarius. Entertainment and sports industries will expand this month. I would be cautious about the Olympics to be held in Japan since the transits in Virgo suggest more outbreaks. I will elaborate on this in the August newsletter.
The economic and infrastructure stimulus package Pres. Biden and the Democrats are working on lacks the necessary taxes on the very rich since the Republicans are insisting on avoiding this. Pres. Biden said he would not sign the infrastructure bill without adjacent legislation taxing the rich to pay for it.. He has since said he would sign it. It has been recently reported that the USA’s richest billionaires literally pay no income tax.
A friend of mine sourced an online article and sent it to me entitled “The Wealth Detective Who Finds the Hidden Money of the Super Rich.” ( https://get pocket.com/explore/item/the-wealth-detective-who-finds-the-hidden-money-of-the-super-rich ). In the article, two outstanding economists, Gabriel Zucman’s and Emmanuel Saez’s extensive studies on the economy reveal their latest estimates on the distribution of wealth. They show that the top 0.1% of taxpayers – about 170,000 families in a country of 320 million people – control 20% of American wealth and the bottom half of Americans combined literally have a negative net worth!
Zucman has also found that multinational corporations presently move 40% of their foreign profits, about $600 billion a year, out of the countries where their money was made and into lower-tax jurisdictions. He sees ominous signs in the rise of the far right – the threat that has preoccupied him since he was a teenager on the streets of Paris. Inequality, he says, paves the way for demagogues. The causes he’s identified for the widening gap in the US. are a host of policy changes that started in the 1980s: lower taxes on the wealthy, weaker labor protections, lax antitrust enforcement, runaway education and health-care costs, and a stagnant minimum wage. America’s skyrocketing wealth disparity, he says, reflects that “it’s also the country where the policy changes have been the most extreme.”
Science and Technology:
In the June 2021 Issue of Scientific American, an impressive article was published by Ashish Kothari, a founding member of Kalpavriksh, an environmental organization in India. It is entitled: “A Tapestry of Alternatives” directed at solving global inequities and poverty and massive environmental destruction. He states: “Making peace with the biosphere will require building communities and relationships that are focused on sustaining life – human and nonhuman.” Self-reliance, local organic gardening and farming using heritage seeds, and an environment in which people are at peace with one another and nature may enable us to walk away from “the cliff edge of irreversible destabilization of the biosphere.”
Globalized industrial agriculture using petroleum based fertilizers, the burning of fossil fuels, etc. we now all know is threatening life on earth. This article offers an alternative way of life that, as climates change and many nations’ environments collapse, may eventually become the norm.
Another article in this issue that is worth reading is entitled “The Brain Electric” by Christof Koch, the chief scientist of MindScope at the Allen Institute in Seattle. This article discusses and reveals information suggesting “electrodes that stimulate brain tissue reveal the topography of conscious experience.” I have referred in previous newsletters information about Elon Musk’s company Neurolink having released a video showing an electronically stimulated monkey playing the computer game, Pong, without any controller. As we march into the Age of Aquarius, research and development concerning the brain and the nervous system and their enhancement through various technologies will grow exponentially.
The Headline article in this same issue of Scientific American is entitled “Deadly Kingdom” by Maryn McKenna, a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Human Health at Emory University. She reports:“ Killers of 1.6 million people every year, fungi; are emerging as some of the most lethal microbes on the planet – and we don’t really know how to stop them.” This is another overlooked and highly important area of infectious disease we need to address sooner rather than later!
All of you who have been following my books and newsletters know that I see Nuclear Fusion as the “Holy Grail” of energy, along with the development of the near perfect battery. Helion Energy (a fusion startup in Seattle) has recently received over $10 million in investment and Zap Energy, also a fusion startup located in Seattle has recently received $27.5 million. The billionaires are starting to take notice. I am of the opinion that multiple fusion installations will go online by 2026. This will effectively end the age of fossil fuels.
I have forecast in past newsletters that we are currently in a volcanic cycle. In addition of the Icelandic volcano that is still erupting, famous volcano Krakatau in Indonesia is currently erupting. This month’s inconjunctions of Pluto and Neptune to the Leo planets, suggest more of the same.
Final Thoughts:
The challenging times in which we are living and breathing are inhabited by all of us together – and fear lurks just below the surface in all our lives that we may not “make it.” I have seen and heard far too many people who have buried themselves in “conspiracy theories”, sources of accusations that many people they disagree with who are in power are murderers, child molesters, practitioners of the dark arts, lurking within vague accusations of evil – most of which are seen on particular sites on the internet.
Facts concerning these opinions are frequently absent. It is scarily easy for many of us to descend into this world of cults and Kool Aid drinkers, who trust these websites more than anyone who works for the government, the pharmaceutical corporations, medical doctors, and the press in general. The outlandish economic inequalities, environmental and climate collapses, and truly false information corporations have released in order to sell products and create profits at any cost have created a lack of trust and produced these understandable consequences.
It is arduous to figure out what the facts really are and many people lack the education or resources to sort all this out. To many, it is easier to “burn down” the institutions and destroy democracy (passing laws to stop people from voting or attack the Congress) than to simply delve into the situation responsibly and fix it. The French Revolution, the Communist Revolution in Russia, and the Chinese Communist Revolution are all illustrative of what can happen, i.e. replacing bad with worse!. Many of the Plutocrats here are so tone deaf to all this that all they can see is China’s giant economy, leading them to interpret our Western Democracies as irrelevant. I would ask: How many people are tying to get into China today? America is still the “hope of the world” to many who are escaping corrupt governments and collapsed environments in other nations. The big issue is: Will we live up to the ideals written into our Constitution and Bill of Rights, or will we fail?
Maybe I am a cockeyed optimist, but I think we have a real shot at success. The planets in Aquarius now and those we are moving forward into the future suggest a longing for self governance and democracy. These placements suggest promoting the idea of teamwork and friendship, working together and making use of our genius at mastering science and technology. We, however, cannot invent our way out of the economic and climate crises without respect for each other and a willingness to work together as a “team” invested in intelligent debate and mutual respect.
What resides spiritually within us is simply bigger and grander than anything else. Now is the time!
Blessings,
Linda
Important Points of Reference (for astrologers):
New Moon at 18 degrees Cancer semisextile Mars in Leo July 10; Full Moon at 1 degree Aquarius semisextile Jupiter July 24; Mercury in Gemini is square Neptune July 5, goes into Cancer trine Jupiter July 11, is sextile Uranus July 19, is trine Neptune July 24, and is opposition Pluto July 25; The Sun is opposition Pluto on July 14; Mars in Leo is opposition Saturn July 1, is square Uranus July 3, is inconjunct Neptune July 15, is inconjunct Pluto July 22, and goes into Virgo opposition Jupiter July 22; Venus in Leo is inconjunct Neptune July 15 and is inconjunct Pluto July 17, and is square the Lunar Nodes July 28, Jupiter retrograde is back in Aquarius July 29 (and stays in that sign until Dec. 29).
