by Francis D. Grabau (graphics by Francis Grabau)

Barack Hussein Obama, winner of the 2008 National Quadrennial Lottery in America, honored his own (veiled) campaign promises and immediately attacked Pakistan, violating its borders and killing innocent people. The new President did this just three days after taking his fumbled oath of office. The military used unmanned, automated planes called “drones” for the job. This raises the question of whether the Democratic Party’s “peace candidate” is anything but a political drone himself and what kind of guidance system runs him. Obama is our latest “smart bomb,” whose automated program and guidance system (like his financial backing) have been provided by Corporate America.

Americans, known increasingly all around the planet as the “People Of The Lie,” have found the patently false “Hope” and “Change” they can believe in. Once again, the Corporate Machine has renewed its faithful consumer base. The unconscious trance formation of the USA continues unabated for another four years with the novelty purchase of a “black man” for the White House. Happy days are here again. The red, white, and blue instigated “War On Terror” has found a kinder, gentler, darker face. There’s no business like show business.

This is how mass psychosis works: The Soul splits off from the Mind. The resultant sleepwalking body wanders aimlessly into a kind of no man’s land estranged from itself. Its own inner motivation and guidance slowly and silently erodes until fully replaced by some outside force beckoning from afar, like a beacon of hopeful change luring it further from its own native shores. The body succumbs to a superior “Authority” and is “reborn” into an untroubled world of harmonious conformity wherein everyone’s feelings and opinions are essentially the same. Like the drones used to attack Pakistan, it becomes a useful tool for eliminating borders and differences. It becomes a fascist; a contagious carrier of numbing psychosis. A trance former.

Such a body estranged from its soul is happy in its consumer’s pursuit of homogenization because it finds itself freed from its own spirit of inner questioning and self-contradiction. It sees, speaks, and hears no evil within its own borders. It merges with all that is good and happy and true. At last, it belongs. It has found fulfillment floating in some beautiful dream of “peace” and “sacrifice.” Gravity cannot touch it. It feels truly “alive” now believing it’s actually become one of the ‘shining ones’ it’s been waiting for. It joins Obama’s Americorps inspired by the ideal of selfless service to the corporate abstraction of America. It has fulfilled its escape mission and become a fully operative American Zombie. It has food, clothing, and job security. It’s blind, deaf, and dumb to the corporately contaminated food, air, and water it consumes. The Obama world is a healthy world, a Green World, its jobs are Green Jobs! Soylent Green. There’s nothing else quite like Mass Psychosis; Americans know it as Homeland Security! Its bible is the “Patriot Act.” Its newest champion is Barack Obama. The rest of us recognize this movie: “Invasion Of The Body Snatchers.”

Welcome to the Realm of Neptune, the Homeland of Paranoia. Paranoia is not a word owned by the psychologists whose job is to police our thoughts and behavior for the State. It’s a word derived from Greek roots indicating a way of knowing whereby the mind stands outside itself, recognizes the soul, and questions its own rational conclusions. ‘Paranoia,’ like the words ‘Gnosticism’ and ‘Astrology,’ refers to the process of creative, critical, and imaginative self-discovery, which operates alongside of and in sync with the rational brain of every healthy human being questioning its assumptions. It points to the Soul’s introspective way of knowing through fellow-feeling. We might call it something like ‘knowing through compassion’ and in the Gnostic lingo of astrology it’s tagged as the primary expression of the force of the planet Neptune, which guides the energy-field identified as the zodiacal sign of Pisces.

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America, born as a Cancer Nation in 1776, began its transformation into a Pisces Nation on the eve of the National Elections, November 4, 2004. Americans have, as a People, entered the Paranoid Realm of the energy-field of Pisces, and our guiding planet-force has become (for better or worse) the force of Neptune. Paranoia runs the Nation now, so it’s essential that we come to grips with its true nature unless, of course, we’d prefer to have our souls invaded by ‘snatchers’! Yes, folks, we are mutating into Hollywood’s “pod” people. The Invasion is well underway and sleepwalkers are everywhere.

Try not to fall asleep now as I attempt to lay out the peculiar but urgent importance of the role Barack Obama is likely to play in our collective experience. Obama, you see, has a direct and strong input into America’s Paranoia because his own personal ego energies (known astrologically as his Natal Mars in the sign of Virgo) plug neatly into America’s Natal Neptune function found on that exact same spot (degree) in Virgo. Obama’s personal ego-force charges and feeds America’s Paranoia. His personal prowess as a man (Mars) stimulates America’s Neptune urging us to resonate with its longing toward selflessness. Remember, Paranoia refers to the brain-mind “standing down” so as to receive the knowing arising from the Soul in the form of the wisdom born of fellow-feeling and compassion. It’s a felt knowing. Obama easily and naturally arouses feelings of selflessness in Americans. Indeed, Americans are inclined to see Obama as a selfless (Neptune) warrior (Mars).

But the downside of selflessness is victimhood or the feeling of being unworthy and servile. Obama’s personal Mars manner triggers in Americans both positive feelings of selflessness and negative inclinations toward servitude, and these feeling-inclinations stand alongside our rational brain threatening to by-pass all critical thoughts we might otherwise entertain about anything he says or does. Obama’s words and actions plug directly into America’s Neptune Soul. Both he and his advisors are acutely aware of this fact. This assures him of the ability to personally exercise considerable power in, over, with, and through the collective American Soul. His personal charismatic power easily bypasses our rational brain and appeals directly to our yearning for the much-needed experience of selflessness. This can be and is a very dangerous situation for a Nation only four years into its Neptune-Pisces transformation. It can lead us further into Trance-formation. It can seriously aggravate America’s collective psychosis, the delusional state of mind called the “War On Terror.”

The problem we face is that since September 15, 1994 our National Mercury function has been operating in a backward fashion, in astrologically Retrograde motion, and will continue to do so until August 17, 2016. When a Nation’s Mercury-Thought process turns Retrograde the people of that Nation become more involved with their own inner thoughts; they become collectively more self-centered, self-aware, and self-concerned. In a sense, the whole Nation of America is in a collectively introverted, self-referential state of mind. We were born that way—America’s Natal Mercury was Retrograde in Cancer as she declared her Independence.

Despite appearances to the contrary, Americans are subjectively oriented inward toward their own private feelings and families; they are self-reflective and often quite self-centered. And this natively self-referential process began all over again in a new cycle just as the Nation’s astrologically ‘Progressed” (Transformative) Mercury function turned backward upon itself at 4 degrees 57 minutes of the sign of Pisces! Paranoia again. That degree of Pisces is found just inside America’s third house concerned with media and daily communications and guided by the force of Neptune informing Pisces. The verbal-mental processes employed by American media have exacerbated our collective introversion to the extent that the wisest among us totally distrust anything mainstream media says. But corporate media has done more than that—it has deliberately undermined the faith and trust of Americans in each other while preaching a gospel of glamour, escapism, fame and greed. If you’re feeling ‘paranoid’ and you’re an American then you’re right on target because questioning is the call of Retrograde Mercury. Questioning is not distrust, and deep questioning is the healthy root of real faith.

Business people, investors, and bankers greedily distrust each other. They trade on Wall Street by betting on distrust. They profit personally by spreading depression and despair. The major players (Federal Reserve, IMF, World Bank) among the profiteers are the chief instigators of the current spiraling depression using it to collapse the economy, cripple commerce, and hoard more profits. Their shell game steals from the working people to further enrich the bankster-profiteers, and in the new Pisces-Neptune America it signals the extreme likelihood that the greater masses of unquestioning people will find themselves turned into Pisces Victims (the Crucified Christ is the Archetypal image of the Piscean Age).

The carefully staged collapse of the global economy provides the rationalization whereby the government can crucify the People by imposing Marshall Law, suspending personal freedom, the right of habeas corpus, and the Constitution. Massive foreclosures on homes, widespread unemployment, and their accompanying psychological distress is purposefully designed to instigate rioting so that police and military can be called in to arrest, bludgeon, taser and kill masses of people. A FEMA-Homeland-Security program is in place to relocate remaining rioters into detention centers, and to tap their labor for the mere “wages” of shelter and food. The plans call for enforced administration to “detainees” of “calmative” drugs by abusive guards, and other nightmarish horrors. But too many Americans still can’t see this unfolding agenda, and consider such thoughts to be mere ‘Paranoia’ in the pop-psychology sense of the word. It’s met with the negative, self-victimizing denial of Pisces by Americans still fixated on the distraction of the false “Hope” and “Change” promised by Barack Obama.

The Magical Spell

I would call your attention to the astrological fact that America’s Progressed-Retrograde Mercury in Aquarius finds itself in classically stressful Quincunx aspect with both America’s Natal Mercury Retrograde in Cancer, and her Natal Neptune in Virgo. This double Quincunx condition of the collective American mind is indicative of maladjustment, of psycho-spiritual ill health. It has been operative for two years now. I know a word like ‘Quincunx’ is technical sounding, but please remember those “pods” and don’t fall asleep on me! Think of a Quincunx as a kind of hex, a magical spell.

We are talking here about thinking and communication in America, about the collective-common atmosphere in, which Americans are struggling to think and talk with each other, while being bombarded and hexed by censoring corporate media. I’m warning that our collective atmosphere of thought and talk is undergoing extreme and what might be called “destined” or “fated” duress. Our National Public dialogue has descended into mass psychosis, and the fear and distrust characteristic of such psychosis is undermining our daily personal communication with each other. Communication and thought are breaking down in the USA because as our Progressed and Retrograde Mercury-Brain moves backward through Aquarius it “locks” into what is called a “Yod” or “Finger Of God” configuration with both our Nation’s Natal Mercury and Neptune. We are inclined toward dreaming, toward delusions and mirages, toward mass psychosis. Rational and critical thought does not come easy for us.

Introversion and escapism pervade our National Public Dialogue finding their focused expression in widespread lying. This process began in earnest in January of 2007 and escalated into bold-faced denial on January 25, 2008. It will continue into February of 2011 after reaching its next peak of expression on February 28, 2010. In popular, psychologically conditioned terms this means Americans are undergoing a mass outbreak of Psychological Paranoia. Fear has gripped our collective psyche and it is feeding secret, introverted distrust in ourselves and in each other. But this mass psychosis is not natural or inevitable, it is not ’caused’ by Quincunxes between the planets and stars. It’s being deliberately created by the Global financial elite, by the World Bankers through their nearly total control of newspapers, magazines, radio and television all around the Earth. The intent is to infect the general public with feelings of panic, despair, and hopelessness leading to our collective victimization.

At the very time when this “Finger Of God” configuration of planets is affecting the American mind, the Nation is undergoing its first mass initiation into the secrets of its own foundation—the hidden agenda underlying the intentions of its Founding Fathers and its Declaration and Constitution. The planet Pluto has returned to the sign of Capricorn wherein it was located at our Country’s birth. Pluto is a catabolic force in the language of astrology, a force, which breaks down all outworn structures starkly revealing their underlying foundations. In America, Pluto in Capricorn in our second house of money, currency, and values was Retrograde as the Nation declared its independence, not so much from England as from the corporation called the British East India Trading Company. It is unlikely that the average ‘Joe’ among our American Colonists knew what was going on in that regard because America’s Natal Mercury was, at the time, moving backward through the sign of Cancer directly opposing Pluto in Capricorn. Mercury opposing Pluto while both are in Retrograde motion declares that something deeply hidden and unconscious was actually taking place. Powerful Pluto forces operating in the realm of money, currencies, and taxes were active at levels hidden from the Mercury Mind of the average colonialist whose personal mind was introvertedly focused within the subjective feeling concerns characteristic of Cancer, the Moon (Masses) ruled sign of the zodiac.

This arrangement of planets strongly suggests that the historical American Revolution was guided and in many ways co-opted by wealthy Plutocrats acting behind the scenes. Their motives were largely if not totally financial ones and their aims were focused upon obtaining raw and absolute Pluto Power through catabolically destructive means. Now, as Pluto returns to Capricorn again for the first time since the Revolution, we Americans are being forced to re-examine our roots. Particularly our financial-currency roots. Catabolically, Pluto is dismantling our dollar’s base, dislodging it from its position as the global reserve currency. This will not be an “easy” transition considering that as it does so Pluto will also be opposing America’s Natal Venus in Cancer on no less than five occasions within the coming two years. Venus, please understand, is a symbol of Money. Here are the exact dates when transiting Pluto in the sky will oppose America’s Money: 1) March 8, 2009; 2) May 2, 2009; 3) Dec. 26, 2009; 4) Aug. 8, 2010; 5) Oct. 19, 2010.

It’s no “accident” that Americans like Ron Paul of Texas and Aaron Russo of Hollywood along with many, many others have brought to light the previously hidden private operations of the Federal Reserve and its rip-off of the American People. Pluto’s transit through Capricorn opposing America’s Natal Venus indicates that at the very least those hidden operations are due for widespread exposure and actually in need of Pluto’s catabolic action. The Federal Reserve must be terminated with extreme prejudice! All hidden financial transactions need to be forced into the light of day and the great likelihood is that the American Dollar will collapse, its value dropping drastically. Indeed, the role played by hidden financial agendas in all areas of American Government is due to be exposed. There is widespread corruption and bribery of officials. There is unbridled greed and a hidden struggle for Power going on behind the scenes in America’s bureaucratic government.

Who does not know that Barack Obama together with John McCain voted against the People and for the 2008 October Wall Street Bailout? Obama has joined the Plutocrats secretly ruling America and is a willing and active participant in the total destruction of the American economy. Indeed, who funded his campaign but these very Plutocrats? We must not allow ourselves to be deceived by Obama’s Neptune Glamour, by his personal charisma, but keep in mind that he’s a man born with both his Mercury and Sun in challenging square aspect to Neptune. Notwithstanding the fact that his dramatic Mercury speech opposes his expansive Jupiter rhetoric in idealistic Aquarius, all that points to is a marked capacity for inflated idealism of the intellectual variety. He is easily self-deceived and just as easily deceives others. No blame, maybe, just a rather grandiose notion of himself and an exaggerated belief in his own abilities. Remember, all Americans are currently caught up in a wave of Neptunian energy.

The big question is whether or not the “Finger Of God” pointing directly to America’s Collective Mercury Brain and dominated by the force of Neptune will continue to dull the wits of Americans; will it lure us into further denial and make-believe or will it render us all Victims through our own escapist behavior? Can we break through all this confusion of Mass Psychosis and willingly, intelligently, enter into our birthright of questioning authority? Pluto demands that we face and confront our fears; otherwise, we auto-destruct. Our rulers are planning our demise as a free people. Many of them are doing so quite unconsciously; that’s another side of Pluto. But the Real Rulers, the Hidden Ones are consciously and deliberately manipulating a worldwide Global Depression. Population reduction is one of their aims and fear, panic, despair and Depression are the plagues they are unleashing upon us.

Riots have begun to break out sporadically in Greece, Iceland, France, Spain, and other regions around the world. Why not in the USA? Because it takes Mars energy to get off our butts and act, and the USA Progressed Mars has been in Retrograde motion (for the first time in the Nation’s history) since July 19, 2006, and will not return to direct motion until March 27, 2086! This obviously doesn’t mean that Americans can’t act or be energized by Mars, but it does mean that a new element of caution or introspection before action has entered our collective psyche. It can cause us to hesitate too long, past the point where our actions might otherwise be fruitful.

The good news is that this Retrograde motion of USA Mars will begin to restrict America’s aggression as a Nation against other Nations, but the bad news is that our own Military and Police are likely to be employed by our government against us, the People! And it tends to put a damper on our own abilities as individual members of America to assert ourselves through any form of assertive-aggressive action. Too bad, because POWER yields nothing without contest and our corrupt government will not willingly surrender any of its newly found Patriot Act Power without a fight.

When the natural impulse of Mars toward action is thwarted it expresses itself as righteous anger. That, too, is under the aegis of America’s Retrograde Mars so even our shared feelings of Mars-Anger are being collectively inhibited in the USA. Hence, no mass protests turned into “riots” by the corporately owned police have occurred so far in the celebrated “Home Of The Brave.” Almost no action being taken by the People in the face of the federally sponsored theft of our money by the Wall Street Bailout, no action taken against the erosion of our civil liberties. Instead, a slowly introspective fury is smoldering beneath the surface and will continue to smolder unless some pivotal moment occurs (and it will, inevitably), which ignites that fury into action. A rebellion will break out among the homeless, the poor, and the workers but it will be undermined by the pod-like passivity of so many who have already fallen under the spell of the negative Pisces-Neptune energy most recently witnessed in the behavior of Obama Trancers smugly wallowing in a veritable orgy of self-satisfied “victory” over their imagined “Change” in American Politics.

We have dragged our own Trojan Horse inside the walls of our Capitol. We have imagined a “victory” when there has been nothing but a treacherous defeat. We must burn that Wooden Horse to the ground and sweep its ashes out. It has reached a critical stage in America with extreme abuses of Hidden Pluto Power taking place within our government. That government has become far worse than a Hideous Beast (though it is such) and if not defeated it will trample into dust all human dreams and hopes. Pluto isn’t finished with the framework of America yet. Not until 2014-2015 will it oppose our Nation’s Sun, and only on March 23, 2023 will it finally leave Capricorn.

Meanwhile, Neptune moves relentlessly forward through Aquarius this year repeatedly Quincunxing (hexing) our Mercury Minds [1) Feb. 19, 2009; 2) Sept. 21, 2009; 3) Dec.17, 2009] on its way toward We The People a/k/a America’s Natal Moon, which it will completely overtake [1) March 15, 2010; 2) Aug. 23, 2010; 3) Jan. 16, 2011] and if we have not awakened from our current tranced-out state—our mass psychosis—we will as a People be gone from this Dream called America.

Astrologers everywhere have pointed out that on November 4, 2008 as Obama won the National Election Lottery the planets Saturn (Status-Quo Authority) and Uranus (Change-Revolution) were exactly opposing each other in the skies from the signs of Virgo (Saturn) to Pisces (Uranus). This was the first of five such oppositions occurring in their current forty plus year cycle of oppositions and it echoes the last cycle, which took place between 1965-1967 and occurred in the signs of Virgo-Pisces. That was the time of widespread protests all around the Western World most notably, perhaps, in France and the USA.

The Saturn to Uranus oppositions always indicate a revolutionary, reformist impulse calling for changes in the status quo Establishment. But, though the impulse was felt in our last elections it was very effectively co-opted by the corporate Obama media campaign and its faux advertisement of “Change” and “Hope.” Obama represents at best, mere cosmetic and superficial change but that seems to be more than enough for his entranced acolytes. It will not, however, satisfy the combination of planetary forces pounding America in the coming decade. Real and thorough and radical changes are in store for us, and if we don’t actively shape and define these coming changes they will be shaped and defined for us by the Global Corporatocracy.

This May 29th of 2009, for example, America’s Progressed Venus in Aries will exactly oppose her Progressed Mars in Libra indicating a strong polarization unfolding between Venus-Desire and Mars-Action. This polarization is clearly shaping up as a struggle over our Individual versus collective Political rights. It is likely to pit one American against another, the haves against the have-nots, the sleepwalking proto-fascists against the activists fighting to reclaim innate God-given (not Government-given) rights. Unfortunately, the clarion call for personal liberty and individual freedom heralded by Uranus opposing Saturn is not likely to be met by our thoroughly rotten government with shouts of affirmative joy.

No, America today is a fascist police state threatened by any citizen who wakes up to that truth. America has become a leading repressor of human rights and moral decency as made manifestly obvious once again by Barack Obama’s inexcusable failure to condemn Israel’s ongoing slaughter of innocent Palestinians. Anyone not actively opposing Barack Obama and his continuance of America’s mass psychosis—the “War On Terror”—is complicit in the crimes our faux President and our Nation is committing. That’s what Saturn opposing Uranus has come to tell us once again and here are the dates of its most pointed impact upon us: [1) Election Day, Nov. 4, 2008; 2) Feb. 05, 2009; 3) Sept. 15, 2009; 4) April 26, 2010; 5) July 26, 2010.]

The Plutocratic Powers that rule the USA are in crisis over their shell games with each other and with us. Having witnessed first hand the wholesale police and military violence employed by this government against myself and my friends over the course of my 66 years as an American citizen taking part in peaceful protests, I know the Powers ruling this country will not hesitate to violently repress any and all movements toward real, fair, honest change. The State is the major purveyor of violence, murder, torture, and cruel genocide all around the Earth, and the American State leads the way.

Let’s hope that as the glamour of Barack Obama’s strange hold over Americans wears thinner we come collectively out of our apathetic trance, both self-induced and manufactured by the Plutocrats who know quite well the Power that negative Neptune wields over the American Soul. Tuning into the true force of Neptune, the time has come once more for all of us to struggle together against the corrupt criminal State. To find, keep, and share our dreams and our Faith! Peace be upon us. Not that invasive Body Snatcher ‘peace’ but real, active, and Paranoid Peace!

The proper use of Neptune is the practice of Paranoia, resisting all delusions of impotent make-believe, standing outside the petty if logical rationalizations of our brain, and feeling our way deeply onto the many critical paths of honest, soulful knowing. It’s our final Wake Up call. Transformation, not trance formation. We must move ourselves into Action.

©2009 Francis Donald Grabau. Don Grabau is a man in love with the Stars. He’s been at various times and places a schoolteacher, a theatre performer, a professional fisherman, gas station attendant, dishwasher and guerrilla video producer. His website is: www.starpathvisions.com.  Please visit for a Gnostic, Occult, and Imaginative Approach to Astrology. Don welcomes the opportunity for personal astrology readings. Please email him at [email protected].