Saturday, January 25, 2014

Sitting in Traffic Destroys the Soul

This is the first sentence of 'The Talk of the Town" in The New Yorkers January 27th edition.  How many of us can relate to that? What is it about the time spent sitting in traffic that is so unnerving?  Elizabeth Kolbert wrote a piece on the GW Bridge lane closings and Governor Christie, whose sentence is quoted here, the whole first paragraph of which put me in stitches of laughter. But not everyone in New Jersey is laughing most especially not Governor Christie..

Looking at things from an astrological perspective is always fun and sometimes enlightening. We do not have a birth time for Christie but know he was born on Sept 6th, 1962 in Newark, NJ. We also know he had a Solar Eclipse on his natal Neptune last November 3rd. Solar eclipses are very potent New Moons whose effects last for years. Neptune is the planet that influences us towards sainthood or addiction. We live in so much of an idealized world that we loose all sense of reality. We want to escape, we long for a Utopia, our dreams are big, our delusions huge. We can commit fraud, be deceived, cheat, stretch the truth, or just not see the truth clearly. When an eclipse hits a natal planet those issues come to the forefront for that time period.  Nothing changes anyone's life more than having an eclipse fall on a sensitive point in our natal chart. And so it is now with Gov Christie and his ability to see and speak the truth.

The Port of Authority is run by officials from both New York and New Jersey. When Christie came to the governorship of New Jersey in 2010, he appointed nearly 50 of his own supporters in the lucrative positions, whose governance had been severely reduced by the 9/11 tragedy, as Kolbert explains. The Port Authority owned and were headquartered in the Twin Towers and when the then executive director and eighty-three other employees lost their lives, the Authority was obviously severely impacted and weakened. Governor Christie's high school friend, as the agency's interstate capital projects director, was the one who ordered the lane closings (he has since resigned). Last Thursday seventeen subpoenas were issued to officials of the agency and those in Christie's personal staff..

Experiences with Neptune are, if nothing else, humbling experiences, which demand a subsuming of all ego, a "letting go". Anyone with Neptune eclipsed, as his was last November, is going to experience either a highly spiritual sensitive time, or a confusing time where one is not sure of anything and is walking around in a fog, or a time where an element of sacrifice is present. One's version of reality will be severely tested. Situations arise that demand honesty.

Governor Christie is also somewhere near the end of a 30 year long Sun/Moon cycle, at the Balsamic Moon phase to be precise, where endings and closures are pronounced. It is a wrap period for the previous 30 years, a transition with intimations of the future. More a time or reflection and introspection, where we distill something we have learned. 

He was also born with a retrograde Jupiter. He has to come to terms with his overinflated self image. Jupiter will turn direct June 15, 2015. The fact that Jupiter will apparently change directions in his normal life span, which is not always the case, is significant. His life up until June 2015 can be seen as being a review, inner reflection or as a treading water in regards the moral and ethical systems he was born into. He will be forced to look inside and evaluate how well he operates within his social world and on what it means to have ethics (moral principles or values to live by). Even though Jupiter, (think religious values, morals, ethics) was in Pisces at birth and of very fine quality, meaning he has a hugely compassionate side, the retrogradation and Jupiter's conjunction with Chiron, the wounded healer, tells us that he has much inner work to do in the ethics/morals/values/social compact area. The fact that Jupiter will turn direct gives us hope that Gov. Christie will use this opportunity to correct his "overextended" self.

These issues are intensified by his progressed Venus which went retrograde March 2009. Christie has some reevaluating to do. What are my values? What messages have I unconsciously or consciously allowed to trickle down through my staff and within the administration that gave them permission to behave with such rampant disregard for the lives of thousands and thousands of people over the four days the lane closings occurred?  I do not see this as the end of his political career forever, as he has Pluto conjoined the Sun and those people have an amazing ability to regenerate themselves, but this event is definitely a defining moment, he will turn a corner, close a chapter.

If politics is an extension of morality, as Roger Kennedy states in his book, Burr, Hamilton and Jefferson; A Study in Character, then is it too much to ask of all our politicians and office holders, whom we assume intend to effect the common good, that how they do so be in a manner that does no harm?  This can only come about with a thoroughly honest appraisal of the values, standards and ethical moral codes we choose to live by. Of course our leaders are no more perfect than ourselves, but their willingness to put themselves in the public eye demands they do the work. When they have not done so, events occur which make the need to do so imperative.   


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