What Do You Mean, ‘Yourself’?
In this article, open to all readers, I discuss the main ideas I work with in Trust Yourself, and look at three landmark charts of late 2024 that the readings are based on.
But above all, my brothers, do not swear, either by Heaven or by Earth or by any other oath, but let your “yes” be yes and your “no” be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation. — James 5:12
Dear Friend and Reader:
While I am working on the Trust Yourself readings, I thought I would share a bit from the rich territory I’m exploring through the astrology of the next six months, and how it relates to the problems of living our lives in the digital environment.
The readings are coming along. Once I get started, I get going, and I’ll update clients on the ETA soon. This is one of those long-haul projects (14 recordings at about 45 minutes each) and I am settling in for the journey.
Later in this article, I’ll offer an overview of the big charts I’m working with, the ones that describe the territory as we emerge from the year of Somewhere In Between. In choosing that idea for the 2024 annual readings, I was (and am) describing a transitional year between two major phases of personal and collective history.
If you recall, the first half of 2024 included the total solar eclipse conjunct Chiron in Aries; the second ingress of Pluto into Aquarius; and the entry of Jupiter and Sedna into Gemini.
We could measure this next transition by Pluto, now in its final stage of moving from Capricorn (where it arrived in 2008), into Aquarius (where it will be until 2044). This is our reminder that we are past the point of digital no return.
I’m not here to be pessimistic. If I speak, it’s to the human soul within you, still self-aware, still growing and learning — and perhaps wondering what has happened.
This Week’s Photos | Most of this week’s pictures were kindly supplied by the World Economic Forum (WEF) of Klaus Schwab and “Great Reset” fame. WEF was one of the key architects of the “COVID-19” scenario and seemed rather pleased with itself for shutting down the world thanks to a virus that only exists in a computer program.
If It Seems Like Something Is Missing…
There’s a scenario from the science fiction novel Hyperion by Dan Simmons that has lodged into my memory and my senses, wherein some of the characters in the tale encounter a replica of “Old Earth.”
The original planet we live on was said to have been destroyed when a team of physicists (in Kiev) created an artificial black hole in a laboratory, which then plunged into the center of our planet and started consuming it from the inside out.
The reader is treated to eerie visits to a replica world, a copy of the Old Earth, where they explore the great cities, now devoid of people. This is so well-described that it’s impossible to forget. Often when I roam around our planet in our time, I feel like I’m in a replica world. I have this sense that something is missing. And that missing something is social. Something human. The mini-black hole of digital has crashed into the center of something, which is psyche.
Whatever this is, it does not seem to affect dogs. I meet many, and most are their same old congenial selves. While rescue animals have a wide diversity of personalities as they learn to trust, they’re still dogs, and most are as engaging and affectionate as ever. It’s the people who often seem like they’re being consumed from within by some invisible force.
However, This is Not About The World
The thing that has gone missing in the digital environment is oneself. Or rather, the idea of ‘self’ that most of us grew up with, having the distinct feature of inner awareness. Yes, for many this was tenuous — but there was enough to work with, and it was possible to go deep.
In the digital environment, this awareness has largely been externalized. I’m not saying that there are not self-aware people, but there are fewer of them. Many who think they are self-aware are walking around in a kind of projection because the inner self has largely been captured by the effects of technology.
I cannot prove this; it’s not a scientific fact. To my knowledge, it’s not being studied, and there is unlikely to be a baseline reference to work from. I am merely observing what I see and feel. What, exactly, is going on in the psyche, individual and collective, of a society of people glued to their phones — in public?
What’s going on with people unaware of one another, because they’re somewhere else? What happens to a person who carries their brain and their memories in their hands all day? What of all the blank stares from people walking down the street who pretend I’m not there?
This is the least of it, though. The alienation, abandonment and sorrow many people are suffering through is all around. The suicide and thoughts of it. The sense and the reality of having no friends. The street drugs. The pharmaceuticals. The alcohol.
When We Say Love, We Mean Trust
This may seem like a world where the love is evaporating. But the idea of love has been vastly complicated, and I think the concept has lost most of its meaning. Yet my sense is that when we say love, what we really mean is trust. Trust plus affection is the most sincere kind of love. Passion is not required. It’s nice, though not trustworthy.
Trust is the essence of human connection. You don’t even have to like someone, but if you trust them, you are experiencing a genuine kind of connection that a dog would understand.
And it is trust that seems to have been dealt the harshest blow by the overexposure to the digital environment. It was not doing so well before, but now we live in a world where, first, we are thrust wholly into the digital environment, which has transformed our minds; and where anything could potentially be fake.
I mean anything. When I break a big story (usually about scientific fraud), it’s amusing to read the comments of people, including some prominent presenters, who claim that I am an asset of the Deep State. In digital consciousness, anything at all can be accused of being fake, including the world itself. There are people who believe that we are living in a simulacrum, a replica of something.
This includes hundreds of mental memes that currently exist — the Earth is flat, the Beatles and Rolling Stones never wrote a song, Pres. Biden is really living in a nursing home, and so on (and on). Many of these are recycled, and some things are in fact fake.
Sidebar: How I Handle the Strange New World
The love is all not gone, but social patterns have changed, due to digital, due to what you see in the images with this article (which are about the digital world) and due to the rising tide of desperation. This will intensify as Pluto goes deeper into Aquarius.
I have many approaches for how to handle this situation, which all involve pretending it does not exist. I gain an advantage in that I’ve never been a “socially popular” person, so I’ve learned many adaptations as an outsider that come in handy. And though I am in many ways an introvert, I have a gregarious nature. Such is possible.
So, first, I converse with anyone within or anywhere near my “social distancing space.” I acknowledge everyone who passes me on the street. I aspire to social proximity and will start a conversation with any pedestrian, retail clerk, postal clerk, meter reader, cop, electrical lineman, the guy painting lines in the street, the UPS person, etc. I once toured the local Shop Rite with the manager whose job it is to put abandoned grocery items back on the shelves. We roamed the store for half an hour, talking about the grocery business and life.
I live near the county courthouse and meet many judges, prosecutors, investigators, attorneys and sundry experts. I am welcome to sit in on County Court any time, even though I don’t need an invitation; I made sure I asked. I am welcome in government offices without an appointment.
Next, I meet every dog that comes anywhere near me. Not pet — meet, but they are free to sniff and slobber away and will often get a good ear and neck massage. Then usually there is a person with a strip of cloth or leather connected to the dog, and that will lead to a conversation.
Next, I try to meet anyone I know in the digital environment in person. I’ve met hundreds of readers and fans around the world. Show up in Kingston any day but a Thursday or Friday and it’s likely that we can go for coffee. Whenever possible, I prefer to have in-person meetings with people I do business with.
In short, the way I address dehumanization is to keep it human. You may be thinking, “This person is not an introvert.” But I promise you, I am.
End of sidebar. On with your article!
A Question for the Ages
The question really comes down to: do you exist? It’s one thing to ponder this philosophically, and it’s another to ask with all the sincerity of chewing bubble gum. And it is yet another to live with a gnawing feeling that something is missing, and that something is you.
While philosophers have investigated this question for centuries, it’s another thing in a world of fake voices and fake images and songs written in 10 seconds by a computer program. This thing we call “artificial intelligence” is really like a solvent for eradicating the emotional body, through which much spiritual and aesthetic awareness enters consciousness.
In researching the Trust Yourself theme, I found myself back to the world of an old mentor of mine, Chögyam Trungpa. In his work Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, he addresses the issue of self-trust in many original and revealing ways.
“The key to warriorship and the first principle of Shambhala vision is not being afraid of who you are. Ultimately, that is the definition of bravery: not being afraid of yourself.”
I am trying to figure out why he used the term “warriorship,” though clearly he does not mean “making war.” He means standing up to yourself and the world. We need a better word for this, though it would also be nice to get beyond the crisis of seemingly eternal warfare. That is not about bravery, it’s about fear and greed.
“Warriorship is a continual journey,” he writes. “To be a warrior is to learn to be genuine in every moment of your life.” And he adds, “True fearlessness is not the reduction of fear, but going beyond fear.”
Trusting Yourself Starts With Being Real With Yourself
One last thought before we go into the charts that define the next few seasons. A central theme of Shambhala is being true to yourself. People talk up the importance of this, but most of that is jive. Being true to yourself takes guts, though not being true to yourself undermines your trust in yourself and in existence.
This is challenging in a world where just about everything has been rendered meaningless; the notion of ‘meaning’ barely exists. But if you think that the whole world is a bunch of bullshit, that’s actually how you feel about yourself — and it’s not true.
“Self-deception often arises because you’re afraid of your own intelligence and that you won’t be able to deal properly with life. You’re unable to acknowledge your own innate wisdom. Instead, you see wisdom as some monumental thing outside yourself. This attitude has to be overcome. In order to be without deception, the only reference point you can rely on is that basic goodness exists within you already.”
Humans have always had a struggle of being alienated with themselves, and that alienation makes room for a lot of mischief. It’s that “little gap” between oneself and oneself that makes a person think that they are separated from the results of their actions.
And this is exhausting — especially if you figure out that you don’t like those results; that you’re spending most of your time dealing with them. Learning to trust yourself is a process.
The Trust Yourself series may be my most spiritually focused readings ever, though the astrology sure is interesting — and will include a preview of 2025 and 2026. But mostly I am going to stick to the core issue. The hour is getting late.
With love,
Three Central Late 2024 Charts: Trust Yourself
I’ve cast and read many charts for Trust Yourself, extending about two years from now. Each of these charts has been summed up in my shorthand notation (see last chart for an example). In this article, I’ll summarize the three standout charts for the remainder of 2024.
However, these are still the “in between” era charts. When we get into 2025 and 2026, we are talking about an overwhelming emphasis on Aries. This includes Saturn and Neptune entering Aries and forming a conjunction on the Aries Point.
And it includes the extremely rare conjunction of Chiron and Eris, which is happening a second time because Eris spends about 130 years in Eris. We last experienced this cycle turning over in 1971-1972, which gave rise to the “second Sixties” in the early-to-mid 1970s.
If I try to describe what I see in these 2025-26 charts, I’m going to sound hyperbolic. So I’ll keep it sketchy. Pile all those slow-movers into Aries (Saturn, Chiron, Neptune and Eris) and line them up for conjunctions and it’s obvious that something is up. It’s no wonder that the End of Times predictions are running rampant.
However, when Aries is charged up like this, we have a time of potential radical self-discovery. Is anyone interested? It doesn’t matter — however it manifests will result in a confrontation with one’s core self and the identity crisis of the ages. More on these events as we get closer to 2025. For now, let’s consider the remainder of 2024.
The nature of a 12-sign reading — and the art of astrology — is that I contextualize each of these factors for all of the Sun and rising signs.
Jupiter Square Saturn
All contacts between Jupiter and Saturn are significant. The conjunction repeats every 20 years, currently in the even zero years. The most recent was in December 2020 in the first degree of Aquarius. We are now up to the first-quarter phase, which will be exact in three stages, the first being Aug. 19, 2024.
The square (90-degree) contact between Jupiter and Saturn can have an aura of time running out, as if this is one’s last lifetime on Earth and certain things had to be accomplished. So it contains a sensation of urgency.
There are two other powerful squares in this chart. Follow the blue lines and you can see the Capricorn group (described in my article from a month ago, The Family Hunger Game) is now taking an exact square from the lunar nodes.
Anything that potent square the nodes is going to represent a turning point. In this chart, the critical event described involves the way that alcohol consumption has impacted emotional development within families, going back many generations.
Another is the Sun and Vesta square Uranus. This describes a point of resistance that may give way — the necessity to give something up in order to have something better. Another read on this aspect is the claiming of something vital that has been sacrificed in the past. The “giving up” and “sacrifice” themes come from Vesta, which is aligned with the Sun. One hint about the topic is the sacrifice of personal vitality and creativity for the sake of work.
Pluto’s Final Entry into Aquarius
Pluto has entered Aquarius twice so far, and retrograded back into Capricorn, once in 2023 and again this past spring. It’s about to retrograde back into the last degree of Capricorn on Sept. 1 and just graze the last degree of that sign.
I’ve been writing about this as a moment of closure and an opportunity to complete some unfinished business.
The last degree of Capricorn is the somewhat famous “powerful men who run the world” degree from the Sabian symbol set. It’s evocative of the endless conspiracy theorizing that has become an obsession. While people are busy theorizing, the actual crime of conspiracy is being committed.
Pluto in Aquarius shifts the transformational and evolutionary power of this magnificent six-body system from the corporate realm to the people; from matters of formal power to informal and socially-generated authority. It’s also the warning bell that we have reached the end of the analog age.
As I’ve written before, there are likely to be three main permutations of Pluto in Aquarius: the individual standing up to the group; the group attempting to crush the individual; and the group itself evolving and being initiated as its own entity, for good or for ill.
Mars Stations Retrograde in Leo
Mars is retrograde every two years. This time it will be so in Leo and Cancer. The retrograde begins Dec. 4, 2024. The salient point of this event is that Mars will make three oppositions to Pluto in Aquarius. The first will be on Nov. 3, so that is a kind of event of its own, though an extension of the Dec. 4 chart.
Pluto is entering Aquarius with a retinue of both centaurs and asteroids — including centaurs Orius and Amycus; as well as the asteroids Child, Heracles and Kassandra. Mars will make oppositions to most of these points three times. This alignment describes the way that children are being left behind — or made to be heroes and saviors — as adults struggle for their own survival or are obsessed with entertaining themselves.
Another salient feature of this chart is the pressure that is being put on marriages at the moment, which is nearly explosive. There is caution about the digital simulacrum of sex doing considerable damage, which would be in the form of pornography. We must remember that the porno of today is not the porno of 30 years ago. Today it is all-consuming, available in a thousand varieties, and freely found anywhere and everywhere.
Mars retrograde is a study in desire. Digital has pushed many people so far out of their physical reality that they have forgotten about physical fulfillment — but our bodies have not. There is something here about learning to trust desire.
Once I’ve cast, annotated and carefully read the charts, I then make up highly simplified hand-drawn charts for the individual signs and rising signs and that is what I read. These charts are prompts. If you know any astrology at all, it’s easy to follow along; and if you don’t, my interpretations stand out above the astrology itself. This reading will be more spiritually centered than any I’ve done in the past.
Excellent. Thank you Eric! Innate wisdom is going the way of the dinosaur... by design. Intuition, imagination and empathy are snuffed out of children in day care centers and public schools every day! Since my grand-daughter was very young, I've been helping her learn that her intuition and imagination and empathy are her super-powers. To help her understand intuition, I told her when she was about 3, "when you know something, and you don't know how you know it, that's intuition... that is the whisper of your soul inside of you, guiding you." She nodded. She got it.
Very interesting. I think you described it perfectly!