In early January 49 BCE, then Roman governor Julius Caesar crossed the river Rubicon with his army, in violation of the Senate’s edict prohibiting the entry of armies into Italy; the Rubicon then marked the northern border of Italy. In so moving his men under arms across that frontier, Caesar triggered a civil war that resulted in him becoming dictator for life over Rome. In the modern idiom, the phrase “crossing the Rubicon” suggests that someone is passing a point of no return on a path to intended tyranny.
Last Thursday evening in Philadelphia, in a campaign speech billed ahead of time as one aimed at unifying Americans in these troubled times, President Biden excoriated “MAGA Republicans” at great length, villainizing them as existential threats to the Constitution, the rule of law, and democracy. He claimed Trump supporters “represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic.” He followed with: “[T]here is no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, and that is a threat to this country.” Such blatantly scurrilous “J’accuse” languaging was mean, lurid, and inflammatory — even inciteful. And the staging of the event was redolent of totalitarian leaders’ public speeches in the 20th century: A crimson-red backdrop and two Marines flanking him in the background standing at some form of parade rest, whether truly per-protocol or contrived. And so, with them, themes of anger (rage?), absolutist authority, the military’s support, and implied psychological intimidation were salient. As Tom Fitton, president of the civilian government watchdog Judicial Watch later observed, the combination of abusive rhetoric and totalitarian imagery serves to paint a target on Trump and tens of millions of supportive Americans for political suppression and worse. All this in the United States of America of 2022, just two months ahead of the mid-term elections.
No speech like that one given by Biden has been ever delivered at any time by a sitting president in American history. Even when the Republic was threatened with impending civil war in the mid-19th century, President Lincoln never resorted to rank vitriol and scorn demonizing the Confederacy, its leaders, or Southerners in general. Biden’s vituperative speech was as unique as it was explosive.
But it was not unexpected. The president has been scapegoating Americans who disagree with his plans and policies as “white nationalists” or “white supremacists” since early on in his administration. Underlying both terms of calumny is the cardinal sin in America today: “racism.” Disagree with any Democratic Party initiative emanating from the White House, Congress, or any federal agency and the challenger will be vilified publicly as a “racist”, regardless of whether there is any tangible nexus between the given issue and veridical racial discrimination. “Racism” is used as the all-purpose cudgel with which to beat down (“cancel”) anyone or any group or any organization that advocates for any viewpoint at variance with the “revealed truth” announced by any modern Democratic Party policymakers. On all issues — political, social, economic, technological, and moral — without exception. And the nation’s Big Media, Big Tech, Big Entertainment, and Big Business amplify all the charges and excoriations relentlessly and without restraint.
World history is instructive as to where such concerted assaults on a labelled group lead over time, however generalized and elastic, or particular and selective, the targeted members may be. Once the objects of an officialized ire and loathing have been identified, personalized, and isolated, the path forward for the scapegoaters becomes easy. Historically speaking, that path’s destination is always the same: destruction of human beings. Neocommunist activist Saul Alinsky described the process of agitation with doric clarity in his revolutionary guidebook Rules for Radicals, even as he omitted the eventual certain outcome of its protracted use over time.
In Mein Kampf (1923), Adolf Hitler infamously wrote: “The art of all the great popular leaders has always consisted in concentrating the attention of the masses on a single enemy [because] the masses are blind and stupid. [. . . .] The only thing that remains stable is emotion and hatred.”
His maxim had historical precedent even then: In 1789, the French Jacobins demonized the nation’s clergy (and royalty and aristocracy), and in 1917, the Russian Bolsheviks demonized the bourgeoisie (middle-class workers and merchants). Like so, and well before 1933, Hitler’s Nazis demonized the Jews and the communists. Later, starting in 1966, Chinese Communists demonized the bourgeois revisionists, and starting in 1975, the communist Khmer Rouge demonized the educated (including all wearers of eyeglasses). Much more recently, in 1994, the Hutus of Rwanda demonized the Tutsis, a minority black tribe in that African country.
Each time, regardless of who did the social demonizing and who was socially demonized, the result was eventually the same: Mass killings of innocent people, based on mass formation psychosis – a psychological, emotionalist conversion of throngs of otherwise pacific individuals into bestial killers.
Since early 2021, President Biden and America’s Democratic Party leaders have been demonizing “white nationalists” and “white supremacists” and the “privilege” and “status” supposedly accorded them based on their white skin color. But, in a reflection of just how twisted, contrived, and willfully tendentious such labels really are, even black conservatives such as attorney and gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder and author and social media celebrity Candace Owens have been tarred with the same opprobrious brush. Just for dissenting from the dictates, mandates, and potentates of the Democratic Party. They are, of course, not alone. And it’s still 2022, just the second year into the Bidenista regime.
America and all its inhabitants, legal and illegal, are now skating on dangerous ice as a society. The nation’s populace is increasingly polarized by ideology, moral values, the roles to be played by the federal government, the honesty and impartiality of government agencies, the fundamental integrity of our election processes, the notion of what a nation is, and even the nature of national allegiance. As a matter of history, these are the portents of not just a national decline but dramatic schism and overall collapse, to be followed by some form of brutally authoritarian, centralized control.
Indeed, as of this year to date, all indicators are that the metaphorical Rubicon has been crossed in America. Major agencies of the federal government that directly affect most Americans’ lives (viz., IRS, ATF, CDC, FDA, FBI, DHS, DOJ) have become covertly politicized and weaponized against dissent in word and deed by everyday citizens — and even against many of their customary and traditional practices of living, recreating, working, getting educated, and doing business. And now that Democrats in Congress have recently approved – completely unilaterally — the hiring of 87,000 new IRS agents, it may be said of Biden’s regime that it will have, once again in American history, “erected a multitude of new offices and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.” (ref. the Declaration of Independence) The American people mightily resisted just such an onslaught beginning in 1775 and for six hard years afterwards, emerging victorious only after much toil, strife, and devastation.
Will the Democrats hear the modern American people “singing a song of angry men [and women!]” against a new, encroaching enslavement or adamantly continue enacting their program of total control, quite oblivious to it? The next two years, through the elections of 2024, may well be much more than a euphemistic “inflection point” in our unique American story; they may, in fact, constitute a pivotal passage of redemption in the history of self-governance by free peoples everywhere. With wisdom in both action and prayer, a national existential crisis may be averted. Only time can tell.
This is the last entry in my small portfolio of reincarnation experiences for which I have direct experience correlated with some kind of paranormal (aka “psychic”) validation. In June 1993, I embarked on a three-week trip to the State of Israel. The first two weeks were spent touring with a group on a preplanned itinerary of sightseeing, recreational outings, and lectures and viewings, followed by a week on my own, first with a couple of friends visiting more of the Galilee and then by myself in a rental car.
One of my favorite places in the country is the city of Tiberias, which sits on the southwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee (aka “the Kinneret”). This large freshwater lake figures prominently in the Bible and is very picturesque, its shoreline once shared by both Israel and Syria. Post the 1967 Six Day War and Israel’s later annexation of the Golan Heights, this body of water is wholly contained within the geographic borders of Israel. Swimming in its water is palpably refreshing, which I did on several occasions to my everlasting delight. The water is clean and crystal clear, and it felt very fresh on my body’s skin.
When I left Tiberias, I travelled the two-lane highway that leads south through Israel into Samaria (aka Shomron or “the West Bank”) to Jerusalem, Israel’s capital, for my bus ride and airflight home. I had ample time to make the return drive, and so I drove at a leisurely pace. It was in the later afternoon, the sun shining brightly on a clear-sky day, when I spied a small, white roadside sign on a pole with an arrow end pointing to the right, about 12 miles south of Tiberias. It simply read “Belvoir”. My knowledge of the French language was sufficient for me to recall that this literally meant “beautiful to see.” Curious, I made the right turn and snaked my way up a hilly incline till I reached a small guardhouse hut on the other side of a rise in the terrain. A man standing in it sold me a ticket and waved me into the open parking area behind him. At 4:00 PM in the afternoon that day, I was the only person visiting whatever this site was.
Belvoir was a Crusader fort that was erected to protect this frontier of the Holy Land against the Muslim invaders under Salah ad-Din (aka Saladin) in the 12th century CE. All that remained in 1993 were stone walls and concentric embankments with many interior partitions made of the same material. Mostly sand but some green grass underlay my feet both inside and outside of the many structures. No explanatory signs were then in evidence about anything, and I do not specifically recall receiving a brochure at the entrance that offered any real details concerning Belvoir’s history or significance.
Alone in these ruins that bright summer day under a lowering sun, I wandered amongst all of the walls and structures in quiet awe. It had obviously been quite a construction in its time, and the ambient setting was peaceful and picturesque, looking as it did out over the Jordan River Valley about 1,600 feet below.
Inside the most interior wall, I viewed smaller areas that been partitioned, their floors barren of any structure or accoutrement. However, upon regarding them, I began “remembering” that it was in these discrete rooms where “we” had variously stored our foodstuffs; our swords and shields, lances, and battle armor; our water supplies, and where “we” had stabled our horses. Excuse me, We? It was then that I “remembered” being there, being a part of those who had garrisoned this fort. Climbing up onto the top of the east-facing outer wall, I gazed out over the beautifully serene river valley below, the setting sun casting magnificent shadows onto the hills in Syria across the river. Then, hearing the year “1200” in my mind, I “recalled” again that I had been there before, that I had been a knight of some kind, and that we had all been conquered by the Muslims at some point. In a gesture of mercy, the victors had allowed the knights to take their individual horses and go home (presumably to Europe via Jerusalem), but the common soldiers (whoever and however many they were) were ritually slaughtered.
Whoa! Was all this “remembering” merely a figment of my imagination, just an overly lurid daytime reverie? There was no way to tell that I could figure. And, how to validate such active imaginings?
Walking among the ruins some more, I left there much later, the sun then being hidden behind the hills to the west but not quite dusk, noting that the ticket-giver had vacated his hut for the day, nowhere to be seen. I drove back to Jerusalem in a somber mood, glad for the time spent in, on, and around the stonework of Belvoir, but still somewhat unsettled by the strength of my apparent recalls. I believed in the reality of reincarnation by that time, having had some vivid past-life regressions by the hand of a skilled regressionist and Ph.D. psychologist who was then the training director for the Association for Past Life Research and Therapies (APRT, later known as IARRT). This was not the first time that I had experienced “direct knowings” of past events and other things, but this was an epoch and train of events I was only superficially familiar with.
Today, the online Wikipedia website provides a concise history:
The Knights Hospitaller purchased the site from Velos, a French nobleman, in 1168. As soon as the Knights Hospitaller purchased the land, they began construction of [the] castle. While Gilbert of Assailly was Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller, the order gained around thirteen new castles, among which Belvoir was the most important. The castle of Belvoir served as a major obstacle to the Muslim goal of invading the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem from the east. It withstood an attack by Muslim forces in 1180. During the campaign of 1182, the Battle of Belvoir Castle was fought nearby between King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem and Saladin.
Following Saladin’s victory over the Crusaders at the Battle of Hattin [on 4 July 1187], Belvoir was besieged. The siege lasted a year and a half, until the defenders surrendered on 5 January 1189. An Arab governor occupied it until 1219 when the Ayyubid ruler in Damascus had it slighted. In 1241 Belvoir was ceded to the Franks, who controlled it until 1263.
Another Wikipedia entry provides an explanation of the Knights Hospitaller. In pertinent part, the “Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem” (aka the Knights Hospitaller) was a medieval Roman Catholic military religious order that arose in the early 12th century CE under its own papal charter. Originally formed to administer a hospital in Jerusalem that cared for sick and injured pilgrims to the Holy Land, and headquartered there until 1291, it became charged with the care and defense of the Holy Land after the success of the First Crusade.
That the Muslims under Salah ad-Din may have spared the lives of at least some of the Christian defenders of Belvoir is evidenced by this Wikipedia entry for the Battle of Hattin, which had concluded with the Muslims’ victory just a year and a half earlier:
The Crusader king, Guy of Lusignan, was taken to Damascus as a prisoner and granted release in 1188, while the other noble captives were eventually ransomed.
After executing Raynald of Chatillon, Saladin ordered that the other captive barons be spared and treated humanely. All 200 of the Templar and Hospitaller Knights taken prisoner were executed on Saladin’s orders, with the exception of the Grand Master of the Temple. The executions were by decapitation. . . .
Captured turcopoles (locally recruited mounted archers employed by the Crusader states) were also executed on Saladin’s orders. Though the prisoners claimed to be Christians by heritage, Saladin believed the turcopoles to be Christian converts from Islam, which was only punishable by death under the form of Islamic jurisprudence followed by the Ayyubid state. Modern historians have corroborated Saladin’s belief that the turcopoles in the Ayyubid–Crusader wars were mostly recruited from converted Turks and Arabs.
The rest of the captured knights and soldiers were sold into slavery, and one was reportedly bought in Damascus in exchange for some sandals. The high-ranking Frankish barons captured were held in Damascus and treated well. Some of Saladin’s men left the army after the battle, taking lower-ranking Frankish prisoners with them as slaves.
My own at-that-time untutored “memories” of Belvoir circa 1188-89 only sparingly coincide with the history described above, even if not totally at variance with it. But, more importantly, without some reasonable form of independent validation, all of these recollections could easily be attributed to mere fanciful mental meandering on my part. Just my imagination run amok on a quiet summer afternoon in an ancient foreign land with a long and storied political and religious history. I was thus left not knowing what, if anything, may have been true for a long time.
Flash forward to December 2007: I had a reading with a friend of mine who has been training to be a psychic with a company called Psychic Horizons located in Boulder, Colorado. Denise G. was a successful businesswoman with Xerox who had demonstrated a natural ability in reading people who sat with her, detailing significant events and people in their lives with an uncanny accuracy. That day, she read me “blind”, that is, without any frontloading by me of any details of my current life or issues of concern. When I asked her about any past lives of mine that she could discern, she replied as follows:
It appears that you had a life as a Templar knight during the time of the Crusades. Your fort was captured by the Muslims, but your life was spared. You returned to Europe a broken man, likely to Germany, and you died there very sad and lonely.
And that was it. A stunningly clear confirmation, if again spare in the details.
Later, I related this episode to an older female friend, Pat L., who was also a long-time believer in reincarnation, she having had dreams and readings that seemingly indicated a past life as a female European royal who had been sentenced to death and was beheaded. She believed a former romantic partner in her current life had been her illicit paramour in that earlier life, and that I had signed the death warrant in some official capacity that authorized her decapitation. For myself, I had no memory then or afterwards of any such act or such a life, so that remains an unsolvable mystery at this time. However, she also related that she had seen me in a dream as a Templar knight in another life, signified as such by a tunic I was wearing with a red Maltese cross emblazoned on it. More she could not say.
So, what does all of the foregoing prove? It is hard to assert that these two anecdotes validate beyond a reasonable doubt that I lived an earlier incarnation as a medieval Templar or Hospitaller or Teutonic knight and served in the Holy Land defending a Crusader fort (“castle”) against a massive Muslim army bent on reclaiming it for Islam. Still, the close correlation between these psychical anecdotes and my original ruminations while walking the site of Belvoir castle in June 1993 is inescapable. Given my earlier experiences with reincarnation and their independent-source validations, all as detailed in earlier posts I have made to this blog, it seems likely that I did experience a lifetime in some medieval military order’s service to Christ and Christendom against Salah ad-Din’s Muslims in what is today the modern State of Israel. All I can think to say is, Praise Christ I survived the siege of Belvoir!
Running for President in 2024?CPAC 2022 Straw Poll’s Top Two Contenders
AWAKE, NOT WOKE. Sounding this defiant and clarion meme, the American Conservative Union once again, for a second time, hosted its annual gathering in Orlando, Florida, this year at the Rosen Shingle Creek resort hotel from February 24 -27, 2022. The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is the largest yearly conclave of proudly patriotic Americans who are unabashedly conservative, adoring of America as originally conceived and traditionally understood, and not at all chary of proclaiming its foundational exceptionalism. In the face of the most radical-left regime ever to rule this nation, conservatives and libertarians have needed a collective, metaphorical “shot in the arm” (no thanks to “Dr.” Anthony Fauci) to inspire sustained, principled civil resistance and counterforce to the onslaught of absurd, delusional, and destructive policies emanating from the White House and Congress since January 20, 2021. This they got in spades at CPAC 2022. The parade of luminaries with great things to say was stellar and galvanizing, providing a robust springboard for the coming midterm electoral battles later this year. Clarity of purpose, perspective, and position was palpable in every speaker’s remarks, whether a current officeholder, candidate for elective office, pundit, or policy wonk. CPAC always delivers the core conservative message, of course, but this year it did so especially well.
The impetus now for conservatives to gather, get inspired, get energized, get organized, and get working to elect conservatives at every level has never been greater, being loudly demanded by the increasingly disorienting times we live in. After only one year of total control of the federal government by hard-Left Democrats, the regime of Joe Biden threatens to erode, cleave, and subvert Americans’ liberty, prosperity, security, moral cohesion, and sovereignty. All conservatives and other sane, sensible citizens must rally in the face of the rolling insurrection against this constitutional republic that began in earnest on Inauguration Day 2021. Presto!, this CPAC provided the counterrevolt with a loud and splashy launch.
The speaker line-up was particularly compelling, with a multitude of celebrity pundits, commentators, wonks, and strong conservative candidates for elective office across the nation. But early on, one of the most convicted advocates at this or any other year’s CPAC confab was the current governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, already a conservative icon in his first term for his many principled actions in signing legislative bills and issuing executive orders that honor and will surely work to guarantee Floridians’ safety, security, election integrity, public morality, and educational sanity. In a 20-minute stemwinder, DeSantis cited his aggressive countermoves against “Faucian dystopia” (disavowing the federal vaccine mandates and passports), electoral subversion (outlawing ballot harvesting and the privatizing of election management), Big Tech elitist censorship (penalizing it criminally), public street chaos (criminalizing political rioting), transgender ideology (protecting women’s athletics), radical demographical transformation (banning sanctuary cities and removing illegal migrants to Delaware), and usurpation of parents’ child-raising authority (banning the teaching of Critical Race Theory and child sexualization in K-12 schools). In addition to emulating President Trump’s appointment of three jurists to the highest court in his state, DeSantis has halted the onslaught of “progressive” efforts to rob Americans of their rights, freedoms, jobs, businesses, and sovereignty. In less than four years, he has set a template for a 10th Amendment defense of Americanism that all states should act to follow. At CPAC, he was rewarded for his raw combination of smarts, courage, creativity, and steadfastness: In a straw poll conducted among the attendees for their preferred nominee for president in 2024, he outpolled all other new possible contenders combined, besting everyone except Donald Trump. With Trump eliminated as a choice in a second round, DeSantis cleared the table even more dramatically. America has a bold new champion in the event Trump decides not to run again in 2024.
Another striking highlight was a speech by journalist/author Julie Kelly, who chronicled the partisan authoritarian abuses and derelictions of the Biden regime since the sensationalized riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. From the mass arrests and incarceration of peaceful patriotic attendees at that event without due process, bail, legal representation, speedy trials, and humane treatment to the abject failure to hold criminally accountable any of the rioters, looters, arsonists, and killers who tormented so many American cities in the summer and fall of 2020, Kelly painted an Orwellian picture of an administration selectively sanctioning political violence, censoring opposing views, resisting legitimate inquiries, suppressing video evidence, misusing law enforcement, and eroding and ignoring many sacred legal norms and constitutional protections. She exhorted the audience to recognize how very critical to the future of American Liberty the upcoming elections this year are: Failure at the polls is not an option if our free republic is to survive.
The critical issue of energy supply for the nation was spotlighted by Governor Kristi Noem (R-SD), an ardent advocate for American energy production and independence. Cataloging the stream of injurious restrictions, permit withholdings, and project abrogations of the O’Bidenistas, she reminded attendees just how essential to prosperity a free and thriving domestic energy-production market is. Along with Governor DeSantis, Noem acted throughout the Covid scare of 2020-21 to maintain her citizens’ freedoms to conduct business, attend their jobs and schools, worship, and avert all mandates and lockdowns. Her clear-mindedness, staunch pragmatism, and firm reliance on traditional American precepts of governance will likely make her a serious contender for higher office in the coming years.
In one of his now-trademark 90-minute orations, President Trump delivered a rousing review of his manifold successes as president, warned of the plethora of threats Americans face under the Biden regime and Pelosi/Schumer Congress, catalogued the many electoral depredations orchestrated by radical Democrats and Big Tech that criminally deprived him of a second term in 2020, and urged his supporters to work for the resumption of the policies and acts that were making America a truly great nation again. Advocating for renewed energy independence, a completed border wall, strict migration controls, a pantheon of election reforms, new presidential termination authority over federal bureaucrats, a revitalized pro-America military, a strong and resolute America First foreign policy, full prosecution of violent criminals, an end to Covid-inspired mandates, the empowerment of parents to veto radical gender ideology in schools, and the legal breakup of Big Tech’s oligarchy, Trump had the audience repeatedly standing and applauding with giddy and gleeful approval. Rising in tempo and high passion, he responded to the aims of what he characterized as “the radical, power-hungry ruling class” to extinguish “our identity as Americans and rob us of our liberties” with this Churchillian peroration: “The People of America will not surrender our borders, our culture, our faith, our values, our history, our liberty, or our children to a small band of bullies and extremists who want to tell everyone else what to do.” It was, once again among many, a vocal tour de force , one that signals to this observer that Donald Trump will be running for president again in 2024. Coyness be damned.
The charge to CPAC’s attendees this year was annunciated loud and ringingly clear by many speakers throughout the conference. In perhaps the most succinct, stirring call to action to American patriots in 2022, North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, to tumultuous applause, exhorted the assembled throng to: “Stand Up, Lean Forward, and Fight Back!” If such brio fully materializes throughout the nation in the coming months, 2022 may well be a singularly pivotal year in American history. May this so “woke tyranny” be gone!
This observer continues to be skeptical that America, under the O’Bidenista regime, really wants any direct and open military conflict between Russia and America over Russia’s now two-month-old military invasion of Ukraine. However, Fox News Channel news host Tucker Carlson posited last night on his nightly show that President Joe Biden and the national Democratic leadership are actively precipitating such a conflict as a means of toppling Russia’s dictator Vladimir Putin and thereby securing total regime change in his nation. Why? As Democratic punishment for Putin’s and Russia’s covert complicity in Donald’s Trump’s presidential election victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016. This, despite the now widely acknowledged fact there was no Russian collusion in that year’s election that aided in Donalld Trump’s astounding win and that the whole delusional Russia-Trump collusion campaign was a cynically concocted, wholly seditious machination of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The evidence of a coup attempt is now in abundance and has been for some time now, but the serious federal prosecutions have yet to begin. The “when” can only be a matter of conjecture at this point, virtually sidelined by the press of many newer, late-breaking madcap events, both at home and abroad.
All that said, in the event of war between Russia and NATO and the U.S., qui bono? Well, China, of course. And with communist Chinese influence coursing through the D.C. intelligentsia, could this all be a ploy by China (with connivance by America’s woke elites) to eliminate its two biggest strategic rivals via a kinetic confrontation between them? One in which China would not at all be directly involved. Then, with both major adversaries much weakened — perhaps even destroyed (one or both) — China will surely emerge as the world’s only superpower. And then, in short order, it’ll be “Goodbye Taiwan” (perhaps without ever firing a shot) — and likely goodbye to every other free nation in the world as well.
Can we thank Joe Biden (and the man [men?] behind his curtain) for this real-life actualization of George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, both here and overseas, all at the same time? Maybe the Nobel Committee in Oslo should look into this unfolding tale of some Obamaesque “potential promise” for a new, even more demented Peace Prize selection of him — or better yet (much more sanely!), the International Criminal Court in the Hague for a wider inclusion of war criminals in the dock. The dusty Doomsday Clock of yesteryear’s Cold War is ominously ticking once again — only more suddenly now, more precipitously, and yet really no less precariously.
One of the hallmarks of American society since World War II has been the emergence of the consumer society, marked by explosions in the availability of both utilitarian and recreational goods to Everyman and Everywoman, and the ever-increasing ability of everyday people to acquire them. It was a triumph of free-market capitalism for all classes that metastasized in very short order, extending throughout the Western world and then beyond even to cultures scarcely vital economically. Who can forget images of Arab terrorists sporting Nikes as they warred in the streets of Beirut or Baghdad, and using modern cellphones to detonate car bombs? Or Asian dictators driving Mercedes Benz sports cars while sporting Rolex watches? Or Russian oligarchs luxuriating aboard mega-length yachts complete with helipads? Consumers’ prosperity, for all or a few, is epitomized by the possession of things: Cars, watches, audio and video equipment, sporting goods, musical instruments, recreational vehicles of all types, boats, and even airplanes and helicopters. Not to mention two or more homes. As people get more money for their personal labor, creativity, or entrepreneurial acumen (or from investments), their inventory of possessions grows apace but, given the “miracles” of consumer credit and other modes of deferred payment, often exceeds their ability to pay timely — if at all — for all they acquire or have acquired. In time, viewing our modern society from high above, a sincere, disinterested observer might well ask: Does any given person own his or her possessions, or do they, in reality, own him or her?
It’s more than an ethereal philosophical question. In one vein, the matter has to do with how a person chooses to spend time in their finite lives; “finite” because all of us are indubitably temporary sojourners on this planet; indeed, the vast majority of people live many fewer than 100 years. So, apart from the act of purchasing or inheriting possessions, they draw on any owner’s time, apart from their enjoyment: They must be acquired by purchase, contract, or the process of ordering, and they then need servicing/maintenance, repairs, and upgrades or customizing or modernizing, not to mention storage and, often, work at preservation against deterioration and devaluation over time. There can, of course, be great joy and satisfaction in all of these activities, even if such fulfillments seem exceedingly mundane and ephemeral. Still, people down through the ages have marveled and continue to marvel at possessions of the famous or unknown owners of yesteryear, whether the royal artifacts of King Tut’s tomb, the brace of flintlock pistols gifted to George Washington by General Lafayette, the first Polaroid camera, or, I suppose, even the first Commodore personal computer. Admittedly, any red-blooded American man may well covet the first Corvette Stingray off the assembly line, the first Browning A5 shotgun ever made, or even the first commercially available cabinet color television set. Certain possessions understandably do evoke a deserved admiration for, variously, their aesthetics, functionality, innovation, craftsmanship, and intricacy. They are all, after all, testament to humans’ inspiration and inventiveness, and our specie’s intrinsic drive towards ever-greater efficiency and effectiveness, ease and comfort, beauty and style, and unique creativity. So, with that all said, what’s the bother then?
The bother may be with “focus in life”, if living life really has some deeper meaning. If a whole people becomes overly preoccupied with its possessions and all the necessary attentions attendant on owning and possessing them, what gets sidelined, neglected, deflected, or even willfully ignored as a result? The answer may well be severalfold: interpersonal relationships, one’s relationship with one’s self (to include spirituality, mental/emotional health, and personal soul evolution), and beneficial service activity to others, be they family, friends, or organic personal or national communities.
This writer is a political conservative with a strong libertarian streak, yet firmly anchored in the Judaeo-Christian values paradigm, if not its informing theology. What that means is, I espouse the right of every free man and woman to spend their time and lawfully gained wealth as they wish, unfettered by any capricious “shoulds” dictated by the fiat of state or church. One Essential Liberty’s key quoins is every individual’s ability to exercise their G-d-given free will to acquire what they want, within broad yet still cognizable moral and legal constraints. So, yes to gaining expensive cars and other fossil-fuel-powered vehicles, consumer electronics, firearms, boats, and airplanes (and gaudy, flashy clothes, footwear, and jewelry), but no to highly addictive and death-dealing drugs, child pornography, and high-yield explosives. Manifestly self-evident risks to one’s personal health and well-being, children’s and teens’ mental and physical safety, and the general public’s overall security provide common-sense guardrails to the generalized liberty of open acquisition. All individual freedom, after all, if it is morally comprehended, requires commensurate personal responsibility. It does not – and cannot, if it is to be sustained personally and societally — encompass licentiousness. Any unrestrained license leads inexorably to total ruination, as a matter of the historical record of experience.
More neatly put, the relentless acquisition, accumulation, storage, and ongoing maintenance of things for things’ sake must eventually distract people from their souls. By which is meant their ability, opportunity, and ultimately purpose to actuate their divinely conceived blueprint, embodying the deeper purposes that inhere in living a human life on this planet. Of course, what that looks like for any given one of us is a matter of individual path, best discernable by each person. But, if one views each human life as a vehicle for the ongoing evolution of clarity and consciousness, are way too many of us, especially in our First World societies, wasting too much of our valuable time on what is meretricious and inevitably alienable?
All the stuff that is more transcendental, however defined via thoughtful deliberation, ought to matter — indeed, be eminently honored by us — a lot more. Virtu, anyone?
Early on in high school, I discovered the 1960s political fiction of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Allen Drury, reading in quick succession the first four novels of his famous Advise and Consent series (Advise and Consent, A Shade of Difference, Capable of Honor, and Preserve and Protect). Showcasing the intricate machinations of America’s politicians in federal government, he drew his characters boldly and starkly while centering on the ideological divide between nationalist conservatives and internationalist liberals in the Cold War era when the Soviet Union posed the preeminent menace to world peace and individual freedom everywhere. The struggles these characters endured were energizing to anyone who had the conservative, pro-America worldview, and I took away from them a lifelong maxim annunciated by his favored protagonist, the anti-communist Senator Orrin Knox: “Fear not what life may bring, for men of character have the strength to do what must be done.”
But before his later novels in the series came to be published (Come Nineveh, Come Tyre and A Promise of Joy), I sought to read other works written by him. The one work I found in my school’s library was a nonfiction book he had authored, titled A Very Strange Society: A Journey to the Heart of South Africa. This volume recounted the author’s time spent in the Republic of South Africa in 1966-67 at the height of the white-nationalist regime’s power, interviewing political, social, and religious leaders of all races and viewpoints concerning apartheid and interrace relations there in general. At once poignant and insightful, the account had me enamored of the country and its peoples, its long pioneering history, its beautiful landscapes, and its seemingly insoluble problems. I hoped to be able to travel there myself one day for some direct exposure to it all.
I ultimately got my chance much later in 1983, just after I had graduated from law school and was undecided about which state’s bar exam I would study for in order to practice law. Knowing that South Africa’s summer weather commenced in early November, I planned a trip there for the last two months of that year. Till then, I continued to work as a law clerk at the patent law firm that had employed me during my final school year. The money earned would help pay for the trip, as well my acquisition of a newly introduced American Express credit card that, amazingly, would provide no-interest payments on a balance for six months.
So off I went, with only one night’s hotel reservation booked in Johannesburg, but with a large pocketful of names, addresses, and telephone numbers of numerous relatives of friends, friends of relatives, and relatives of relatives and friends of friends in several cities in the country. With a rental car at hand, I proceeded to tour the nation for two months, going where my interests and curiosities guided me, and stayed mostly with local residents. And, from Jo’burg to Pretoria, down to Pietermaritzburg and Durban, and across to Port Elizabeth, the Garden Route, and on to Cape Town, every South African I met of whichever race and ethnicity was unfailingly gracious, kind, and helpful to me. I was touched by people’s generous hospitality towards me, and I was awestruck at the exquisite topographical beauty of the country everywhere. I was not at all unmindful of the harsh political oppressions of apartheid and the third-class living status of all nonwhites, especially as I spent some time in the all-black townships of Soweto and Imbali. But, through both observation and conversation, I found myself in empathy with all of the hardships of blacks, mixed-race “Coloureds”, and Indians and the fears and insecurities of whites, both English- and Afrikaans-speaking. A very strange society for me too, surely, even as a mere visitor.
Indeed, late on my first night spent at the “international” hotel in Jo’burg (so-called because it was a rare place where all races could congregate socially without the usual strictures of petty apartheid), I wandered into the bar and was invited to join a small group of black men who were drinking at a table. As we were talking, me feeling very comfortable amongst them, I noticed a table of white men nearby, one of whom asked me who I was – presumably because he overheard my American accent. By my reply, it opened up a broader conversation between the other whites and blacks seated at their tables – a little hesitant at first and then testy at moments, but nonetheless civil as I posed some open-ended questions to the overall group. But what made this “group encounter” particularly poignant was that all the white men were Afrikaners who had once been members of the South African Police. As such, they had been the hated enforcers of petty apartheid, which included the pass laws that controlled all blacks’ movements in the cities outside of the ghetto slums (aka “townships”) where they were forced to live.
After about an hour, everyone needed to take their leave, as all of them were working men and the next day was a weekday. The “disbanding” was equally civil, and I left the event wondering how it was that I seemed to have been a minor catalyst in getting two profoundly estranged cohorts of South Africans to have a peaceable interaction with each other, for one evening at least. I felt good about it in any event and ruminated about whether this would be a portent of good things to come on the trip that was about to begin the next day.
There were many good things to come, but the most enduring was this deep sense of familiarity I had with everywhere I travelled in the country. Whether hiking in the Tzitzikama forest and down to Die Eiland near Knysna, standing atop Table Mountain in Cape Town, walking the beaches at Plettenberg Bay or strolling along the Durban waterfront, listening to the hyenas’ shrieks in Sabi game park at night, or just ambling around the rustic towns of Paarl and Stellenbosch, I had this persistent feeling of really being home. Most particularly the Cape province, but the entire country sang to my soul. No place I have lived or travelled in the United States or Canada, or later western Europe, has ever evoked such a deep sense of connection, before or since. (Only once, in the stone ruins of an old Crusader fort called Belvoir in Israel have I been filled with such strong feelings – but that, a story for a later retelling.)
Perhaps because of my American origin, I was able to have many deep and candid conversations with South Africans of all races, instigated by sincere questions from me asked from a place of open, curious inquiry. When I queried people without any prejudgment on my part about South Africa’s issues and dilemmas, I received what I felt to be honest answers, spoken with a range of attitudes that varied from sadness, regret, compassion, cynicism, and anger. Whether at the beginning or the end of every such interaction, each person wanted to know what I thought of their country and its “very strange” society.
In his 1987 book Your Past Lives: A Reincarnation Handbook, Michael Talbot posited that one broad if imprecise indicium of a person’s past life is if he or she has a special attraction to or resonance with a color, a fashion, an animal, a time period, a country, or anything else. In other words, everything can have potential significance of a past lifetime, but what any single thing means in a more concrete sense requires other tools of exploration and discovery to discern. Techniques such as dream interpretation, guided meditation, hypnotic regression, Akashic Records readings, and psychic or channeled information transmission of various sorts are the usual such tools.
While I have experienced dramatic past-life recall via hypnotic regressions and direct remembrances, a most striking event happened in the fall of 1986 when I was introduced to a trance channel in Denver by the name of Janet Pfister, also later known as Janet Laurel. Janet was a music teacher by profession and betrayed a very pixie-ish appearance; short, lean, and sporting short dark-blond hair, she was very down-to-earth and unassuming. Her channeling began quite spontaneously about a year before, the entities (yes, plural) coming to her in a meditation and asking if they could speak through her. At first, I was told, the verbal transmissions were stilted and rather fragmentary, but by the time I had met Janet, these entities were speaking fluidly and sonorously. Her early followers had dubbed the entities “The Critters” because of Janet’s great affection for her terrestrial dog and cat; this affection was carried over neatly to the entities by these attendees at Janet’s sessions.
By the time I first encountered the Critters in November 1986, a protocol for interacting with them had been established: In her basement with the lights dimmed, Janet would sit cross-legged on the floor in front of a semicircle of at most six other people, one of whom would be the “Critter-sitter”—the person designated to work a tape recorder so that each attendee could receive a cassette tape of the session or at least those parts of it that pertained to him or her, at the end. Upon closing her eyes, Janet would start by drawing several deep breaths and then briefly pause. Whereupon, she would begin to speak in a voice unlike her own — soft, sonorous, evenly paced, and with a diction that seemed somewhat formal.
“Good evening, we are pleased to be with you this evening and happy that you are here”, is how they would typically begin. The Critters would then start a short oration of about 10-15 minutes concerning an issue or a spiritual ideal or principle that was apparently applicable to all the persons in attendance that particular evening (virtually all sessions were conducted after nightfall). Having never been in physical form themselves, they would talk about “people in your world” being, behaving, or acting in ways that either aided or impeded spiritual growth and awareness; they said that they were learning from us what it meant to be physical beings as we were learning from them what it meant to be an ethereal being. At no time did they ever (in my own experience of them) evince any judgment or raw emotions about any person or situation presented to them; their communications were always marked by compassion and objectivity. Their words were unfailingly wise and paternal without a hint of being paternalistic.
Following the introductory talk, each attendee serially would then have a period of personal interaction that would last from 20-40 minutes, depending on the quantum of learning that needed to be imparted to each person. Questions proceeded from every component of human life, from health and wellness matters; financial and job concerns; to family, business, and romantic relationship issues. No issue was off limits, and the information conveyed was often very specific – and decidedly transpersonal in nature. That is, the Critters related how many life challenges emanated from past-life experiences, both for the person themselves and in connection with others they knew in the current incarnation.
In one instance, a woman related that she was having interminable difficulty in quitting smoking and wondered why, even though she was seriously motivated. The Critters explained that she had died of exposure in a jail cell in a previous life, and her attachment to smoking in this incarnation was her way of keeping warm air in her lungs. They opined that if she worked on healing that past life’s physical trauma and came to recognize that she no longer needed that “insurance” of warmth, she would be able to let go of her unhealthy habit more easily. Another, younger woman complained in despair of being unable to get pregnant even though her physician saw nothing wrong with her anatomically or physiologically. The Critters told her that in her last life, her children had been taken from her in the Holocaust by force and killed; thus, her seeming inability to conceive was a psychological defense against any possible recurrence of the theft and sacrifice of her offspring. Again, she was advised to work through the emotional trauma that attended the earlier life’s atrocity and that her attempts to conceive a child would then eventually be rewarded. In both of these cases, as well as others I heard, I was in no position to adjudge whether what was told to these women by the Critters was authentically true. However, if “hearing truth” and reacting emotionally are an indicator of its veracity, these women’s subsequent outpourings of crying tears in response to the Critters’ pronouncements speaks loudly in their favor.
On an early occasion with the Critters, when my own turn came to dialogue with them, I chose to avoid any cues or other substantive hints about what I wanted to ask about. In this way, I would honor my innate skepticism and obviate any obvious opportunity for them to confabulate in their monologue answering me.
And so, three years back from my two-month sojourn to South Africa and Zimbabwe in November-December 1983, I asked the following question on January 25, 1987: “I have this strong affinity for a certain place in the world. Can you please tell me what that’s all about and what I am to do there, if anything?” In so doing, I relayed no clues about where that place might be, and so there was none of what modern remote viewers would call “frontloading” of details that might aid in the answering by the Critters. They replied, in synopsis, as follows:
I interacted in past lives there with extraterrestrials, tens of thousands of years ago, and sought to have those experiences again to achieve a certain level of centered awareness and spiritual completeness. That’s why southern Africa felt so much like home to me. During those contacts, I worked with seeing and dealing with energy and participated in time-travel experiments that went awry: Instead of moving a few years into the future, I instead moved several thousand, encountering a “transoceanic trading and exploration society”, but as neither a white man nor a black man. Nonetheless, I had affinity for those who were more technologically advanced, who presumably were white. Thousands of years later still, in another lifetime, I had been an English explorer.
Hearing all of this, I was stunned. Having prefaced my question with no substantive cues or clues about what geography had intrigued me, any of my paranormal interests, or my predisposition towards the notion of past lives, I was tantalized by how the Critters seemed to be reading my soul’s history, and so effortlessly so. It was though they were scanning a computer diskette or, in more modern search argot, doing a Google search of the Internet. The Internet being my soul’s history.
Here’s why: As a child growing up in Canada, I studied British history in primary school. In the 5th grade, I recall studying the east African nation of Tanganyika (later Tanzania) and even made a plasticine figure of a native tribesman, with a large bald head and small frame. I was attached to that figurine and was upset when it somehow got lost. The next year in 6th grade in another school, we studied the history of European exploration of Africa. I thrilled to the oceanic seafaring exploits of Prince Henry the Navigator, Bartholomew Diaz, and Vasco da Gama, but as I read of the expeditions of the English explorers Burton and Speke, and later David Livingston and Henry Stanley, in particular, I experienced déja vu. They all seemed so personally familiar, as if had lived them myself. The determination to find the source of the Nile River, the heat, the humidity, the disease, the unsuitable attire for the tropics, support and supply issues, and financing challenges – it all seemed like memory to me. All very anomalous for a 10 year-old kid who had never travelled outside of North America to that point in his life.
I had also developed an early interest in both time travel and the UFO/ET phenomena. As a preteen, I watched the prime-time television series The Time Tunnel and when I heard of the H.G. Wells novel The Time Machine, I quickly acquired a copy and read it through voraciously. My interest was much less in the story than in scouring the pages for a description of how to build the machine itself. None such existed therein, of course, and so I was greatly disappointed. Similarly, the series The Invaders, about a man bedeviled by UFO and ET sightings and the reluctance of anyone in officialdom to believe or protect him, fired my young imagination. And so I began reading about real-life anomalous encounters in Flying Saucer magazine and in topical books such as Incident at Exeter and Flying Saucers: Serious Business. The several books by alleged ET 1950s “contactee” George Adamski also caught my attention, but I was never inclined to believe his accounts for some reason. In any event, my interest in these matters has persisted to the present day, especially the latter, and I have attended many conferences and related events over the years. I even befriended for a time a man who credibly claimed to have had many direct encounters with ETs, for which, unfortunately, despite some modest fame he ultimately paid a terrible price vis-à-vis his privacy, his health, and his ability to lead a stable life.
But the piercing question remains: How did the Critters know what they knew? If my personal life stories serve to validate the authenticity of all they related to me, even if just circumstantially, their transcendental discernment beggars the imagination. They claimed to come from the 5th (and later the 6th) dimension and, having never taken physical form, they declared that they were learning about us as physical beings in much the same way we were learning about them as discarnate sentient entities. It was a fascinating and very transformative period in my life, but which lasted only a year and a half, to my and many others’ deep regret.
(In 1988, Janet Laurel, the Critters’ channel, was told by her spiritual teacher, John Roger, head of the Movement for Spiritual Inner Awareness (MSIA) in Los Angeles, on a visit to Boulder, Colorado that she was more spiritually evolved than the Critters and so should desist from channeling them any longer. She acceded to his request and thereafter began a spiritual counseling practice based on her training in spiritual psychology from an academic program affiliated with MSIA. After a short time, she became ill with cancer and passed on a few years later, at age 54.)
In December 2018, I sought further validation of the Critters’ assertion that I had had a past life as an English explorer on the African continent at some time in the last two centuries. Having heard of the famed channel Kevin Ryerson (who figured prominently in Out On A Limb, actress Shirley MacLaine’s book-length account of her mystical experiences, later made into a made-for-TV movie), I was able to enlist him for a personal reading. He channels a discarnate entity called Atun Re, who purportedly lived as a human being in ancient Egypt as a wise high priest. When I asked him what he could tell me about a previous life as an English explorer, he related the following:
“You were amid a small group of people . . . an explorer, and entrepreneur too. You went to South Africa to explore the area and its potential. You did map some trails but only led so far up to Zululand [in east South Africa]. You had some past military experience but more as a mercantile individual. You were among a group who established a colony in Zululand, as an attempt to establish contact with the Zulu to set up trade; you met with Shaka Zulu [the Zulu king]. Through the period of his reign, his successors did establish some ties with British trade interests. You witnessed some of your fellows [be] executed by the Zulus, but you survived these incidents. You were involved in establishing diplomatic relationships with that nation for the brief time that it survived as an empire.”
After my reading with Atun Re, I did some research on Shaka Zulu, which yielded some very tantalizing information: Shaka Zulu had been the founder of the Zulu kingdom, ruling it from 1818 – 1828. As the most influential chieftain of the Zulus, he consolidated many communities and reorganized his military into a formidable fighting force. Britishers Nathaniel Isaacs, Henry Fynn, and Francis Farewell were the first whites to penetrate Shaka’s Zulu kingdom in 1824; Fynn and Isaacs’s published diaries later became the main source of information about the Zulu leader. The goal of Farewell, a former British Royal Navy officer, was to travel to Bulawayo, the Zulu capital, to open up ivory-trade links with Shaka. Joined by Fynn, a determined adventurer, and Isaacs, an ambitious teenager, Farewell convinced Shaka to grant Farewell and company a vast parcel of land for the establishment of a trading post at Port Natal. On a later expedition in September 1829 to the area, Farewell first visited Nqetho, chief of the Qwabe, who had fled south after rebelling against Shaka’s successor. Once there, just before dawn on the next day, Farewell, two other white men with him, and five native servants were unexpectedly massacred by the Qwabe chief. Another white man in their company, John Cane, a Port Natal settler who had been left to guard their wagons some distance away, was apprised of the treachery by one of three escaping native servants, and so he had time to flee and fortunately escape a similar end.
The synchronicities between Atun Re’s account of my reputed past life as an “English explorer” and the established historical record concerning Britons’ exploration and settlement of southeast South Africa are truly startling. If, as Atun Re asserted, I witnessed and survived an execution of my “fellows” by the Zulus, it may suggest I might have been that man named “John Cane.” While not literally a witness to the slayings of Farewell, et al., he did, as the only other Britisher present there, survive the grisly event that happened nearby and live to return to Grahamstown, an established town in western coastal South Africa.
More research is needed to determine what role, if any, John Cane may have played as an “explorer”, “entrepreneur”, or facilitator of “establishing diplomatic relationships” with the Zulu nation during the reign of Shaka Zulu and his successor in the years spanning 1824 – 1829. It is possible that there was another historical personage who better fits that biographical sketch, and I hope that further research yields that identification. For the time being, I pay a nod of tribute to the pluck and courage, save the greed, venality, and amorality, of the man who led the first expedition to Zululand with the goal of new, peaceable commerce in a then uncharted land.
Francis George Farewell (1793 – 1829)
As for the Critters, I still continue to marvel at their preternatural ability to read me and others as souls having multiple human experiences, lifetime after lifetime, whose essential purpose appears to be an ethereal “program” of individual soul growth through evolutions in awareness and consciousness. My realization of this fundamental paradigm has aided me immeasurably in understanding not only my own life but in contextualizing so much of what happens to people everywhere in our world. With a bigger context in which to view life, a lot more of what happens to any of us becomes not only more bearable but potentially inspiring. At the very least, it serves to induce greater compassion, trust, and faith. And hope, even love, for both one’s self and others. Just maybe.
ADDENDUM
Here is the transcript, in relevant part, of my Critters Session on January 25, 1987:
“First of all, it is going to sound silly to you at first, but we want to put this into some perspective for you.
For the last 150,000 years, that place on the globe has been one of energy and one of strategic importance. There is part of your being that has dealt with this area in terms of both of those things previous to this life. One very specifically had to do with the sense of extraterrestrials; the other sense, the other times that we observe have to do with physicalness and human beings and “gateways to power.” It has been all of these within your experience.
There’s a part of your being that believes that if you go back there you get to interact with extraterrestrials again, which was exciting and bewildering to your human being, but acceptable to your spiritual being. There’s a part of your being that says that those who have lived upon the land for centuries do not know the value of their own land, and you have made some very discreet and indiscreet judgments about that in your being. And problem being that, in the overview, there’s nothing that you in particular are going to do to shift your inner belief systems into a place of nonjudgment by going there. In fact, probably, by going there you will increase your sense of judgment.
With that, then, in mind, it is to recognize that if you were to go there, it would be to re-experience that centeredness of energy and the centeredness of calling upon those parts of your being that have recollections of dealing with those outside of human experience in that place and coming to a certain sense of validation — that is what we would see in a spiritual quest, what would be the most important aspect of going there. That is, there are parts of your being that know exactly where to go and how to be of mind to attract energies that are not of this world, so to speak; and only in that aspect would it be likely that you would find a sense of spiritual completeness there. We say that there are other places upon the earth that you could also go for those kinds of experiences, but this is something that is definitely recorded within your being. The largest of permission coming from the cognitive mind to say that this could be so, hmm?
Q: But I like that place a lot!
Yes. And it feels like home, so to speak. That’s all we have to say on that . . . . Your perception that you might come to harm in going there if you were to bring up a sense of political issues and so on, we say would be fairly accurate; there are a few that owe you karmically, so to speak, but not necessarily that you need to work through it in a physical manner — that can be worked through in energy once you come to identify a little more what it is you are connected with there. And we see that as being a time process for you. (To work things out karmically does not require one’s physical presence because karma has to do with the sense of judgment that you have upon yourself first and primarily, and once you come into an understanding of what grace and love and acceptance are, then you don’t have to go by those rules so to speak, and you can release yourself from them in the midst of them.)
Q: The extraterrestrial connection is intriguing, but I felt I had an affinity for the people there.
Well, some of the natives had quite elaborate dances to deal with the extraterrestrials. That is, until, as you know it, the white man came in, most natives of the area saw energy quite well. They didn’t always deal with it well, but they saw it quite well, and part of the aspect was that they had many native dances that dealt with extraterrestrial energy. That they basically lost because of the change in tribal structure, etc.
Q: Then why would I have any affinity for the whites today?
It is not necessarily that they are with those. In a similar pattern that no longer exists in terms of any archaeology that could be dug up, but in a similar pattern to the Egyptians — prior to that, probably 45,000 years before that — you participated in that which is called “time experiments” — movement across time structures as the human illusion has been. These had to do with the movement of your place — your body, time, etc. -‑ into the future and back. They did not perfect it very well and you moved more than what you would say the next few years; you moved several thousand years into a place when there was first a sense of transoceanic trading and exploration, into a time when you weren’t exactly a white man at the time, but there were white men around you. You were at odds with both the natives of the area and the others that were there, but your affinity was for those who were, relatively speaking, more technologically advanced. That is the only sense of connection that we can find in your energy, and that you were an English explorer later on -‑ thousands of years apart.
Q: That tantalizes me! I’d like to know more.
If you would write some short stories about the subject, you might come to know some more information from within yourself, for, in fact, it does lie within yourself. It may seem to be fantasy, but then look at it with another “I”, so to speak.”
Pluto and its largest moon Charon superimposed on Earth.
Credits: NASA
From a mundane, objective perspective, the next two years will probably be very tumultuous for the world socially and demographically, economically, politically, and even militarily. The world is rife with evidence of big disruption. Based on what has notoriously transpired in just the last several years, it is not too far a stretch of imagination to prophesy major changes that will be truly paradigm-shitting for many, if not all, of the world’s peoples. For those of us with esoteric bends, astrology presents an extraordinary tool for gaining deep insights into, and over-the-horizon expectations and understandings of, such changes. The planets and other celestial bodies are in motion all the time and, according to the metaphysical wisdom of the ancients, “As above, so below.” Indeed, there is a veridical spiritual science behind life as we know it here.
What follows is an astrological profile of one major planetary transit in the near offing. There are significant others at work too, but this one will be particularly notable.
Astrology tells us the United States is set for its “Pluto Return” during the years 2022-24. Just like individual people have their own unique birth chart, so do countries. The birth chart of a country highlights its energetic vibrations and the themes that can be expected to unfold over time.
The issue with developing a birth chart for any country is knowing what date to use for its origin. The birth chart used by many astrologers for the United States is cast using the data of July 4, 1776, at 5:10pm LMT, in Philadelphia, which reflect the alleged date and time (and place) when the Declaration of Independence was signed, our nation’s founding document. As such, they could also be construed as sourcing the birth of the key memes, drives, and values of the United States as a nation.
According to this commonly used chart, the United States will be having its “Pluto Return” from 2022-24, which means that Pluto will be returning to the exact same position in the solar system that it occupied on July 4, 1776. Because a Pluto Return takes about 247 years to occur, this will be the first one that the United States has ever experienced.
Understanding Pluto
Pluto is the planet associated with death and rebirth. It is the force that destroys in order to build anew. As the Lord of the Underworld, Pluto exposes hidden truths, dark secrets, and all shadowy stuff. It brings the dark, the hidden, and the taboo up to the surface in order for it to be dealt with and faced. But Pluto is also highly creative, in that whatever is destroyed will give rise to something new, purer, and beneficially transformative coming to the surface. Pluto rules this overall process of transformation. Dark-night-of-the-soul moments will lead into a spiritual awakening and then ultimately a rebirth. Pluto’s energy is subtle and slow-moving, but when it is through with whomever or whatever it is working its potent magic on, we feel reborn, renewed, and recreated in some way.
America’s Pluto Return
Although our nation will officially experience its Pluto Return from 2022-24, it is already feeling the effects. Pluto will bring a revolution of sorts. Whatever intention was set for the country back on July 4, 1776, it is going to be revisited. The core questions will be: What needs to change, to be transformed, and to be honored?
We will be forced to look back to see whether the original intentions set for this nation are still being upheld or if anything needs to change. Readjustments will be required in one or more ways before we can move forward in a positive way. Americans may even have to revisit some of the energies that brought about the very need for the Declaration of Independence in the first place. And, because this Pluto Return is occurring in the sign of Capricorn, the spotlight will be on government, big structures, authority figures, and essentially anyone in a position of great power. A Pluto Return in Capricorn may manifest as the crumbling of a government or any established hierarchy, and then the building of a new one. It can lead to deep and lasting changes in the way that this country will be run and governed, and the rules and structures by which its citizens choose to live.
This energy will challenge the nation to face up to its dark side and expose any corruption of its highest values, best institutions, and ideal aspirations. While a Pluto Return can expose the shadows, it is also an incredibly powerful transit that can help a country to rise up and blossom into its fullest potential. While America will complete its Pluto Return by 2024, due to this planet’s slow movement it may take until 2028 to truly see what and how the metamorphosis has taken shape. That is when Pluto officially leaves the zodiacal sign of Capricorn for good on its eternal sojourn around the solar system.
Pluto Return Predictions for America
Based on what has unfolded in other countries that have experienced their own Pluto Returns, Americans can expect to see, among the following:
Exposure of deep corruption, betrayals, hidden deals/secret dealings, and injuries/injustices
Major changes in laws and shifts in governmental structures
Power struggles, even open civil conflict
Conflicts with other countries
Changes in national allies
New agreements/partnerships with other countries and/or breakups in same
Changes or even overhauls in banking, economic institutions, business & labor organizations, and education
Emergence of unconventional leaders, and the death or deposing of existing leaders
Ultimately, a Pluto Return is a very eye-opening, transformational, dark-night-of-the-soul experience. While it is likely to stir and provoke changes that may be uncomfortable, it can pave the way to the creation of a more balanced, free, fair, open, just, and safe country for all, in many tangible ways. Our times to come will certainly tell, and likely soon.
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