longer.blue

THE ILLUSORY POWER OF MONEY Daily Astrology Mon 14th Sept Moon conjunct Venus in Scorpio, exactly square to Pluto. This combination carries a hell of an alchemical, transformational punch in Venusian matters: creativity, values, money, pleasure and relationships. I'm going to home in on money. Scorpio and its ruler Pluto always have power as a theme. What sort of power does money have over you? Money is necessary to meet the basic needs of living. But having lots of it makes people feel powerful, it makes them feel better than other people, and in that way it also becomes a trap, a trap that many people are happy to live in. It determines how you should live down to the small details, in order to maintain the social status that you have claimed for yourself. The money, in other words, has power over you. And it creates envy, usually unacknowledged, in the people who merely have enough to live on. That is why you hear so much criticism of wealthy people like Elon Musk. It becomes a tangle, and the root cause is that we project our lack of inner resources onto wealth: it becomes a compensation for an inner poverty. It is simple to address, but also difficult. It begins with gratitude. This is a perennial human theme. Indigenous ceremonies always begin by giving thanks for all the basic things in our lives that work. We end up taking these things for granted in the midst of all the other things we are having to deal with. In the modern West, all our basic needs are met, and have been for a long time. The news, if it was responsible, would remind us of this all the time, would remind us to be grateful. But it does the opposite, it is full of news about the things that don't work. And there are political ideologies founded on building resentment against the unfairness of life. Shut your ears to all of this, and be quietly grateful for your food and shelter and health and education and for having a government that, of whatever persuasion and however inadequately, keeps the show rolling along. Be grateful in this simple way once a day, and it will transform you. You don't need an advanced Tantric practice. And while I'm about it, thank you for reading this. Writing this and having it read adds meaning to my life. I'm always happy to have ongoing conversations too, about anything. Let me know, and we can arrange a zoom call.