Sime~Gen Inc. Presents

ReReadable Books

March 2006

"Neptune: The Bigotry Factor"

By

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Since January we’ve been looking at the function of Neptune as it transits the USA natal chart and affects our Group Mind. See back issues of 13 years of this column at simegen.com/reviews/

Last month we touched on the role of the Tower of Babel, both the Biblical event and the archetype, the Tower Card. As my writing students know, in the online course on simegen.com titled Essence of Story, we teach writers to use both internal and external conflicts – subconscious and conscious conflicts – to construct a plot where the inner conflict reflects the outer conflict via the theme, and both conflicts are resolved in a single climax.

That artistic structure is one thing I look for in the novels I recommend here. And here’s why.

The incident of the Tower of Babel, which according to the Bible’s internal chronology happened in the year 1996 (3770 years ago from the year 2006 CE, which is 1764 BCE), left humanity’s ability to communicate confounded.

Some kind of mystical barrier slammed into place that divided us from one another – and from ourselves. The conscious and subconscious lost communication. We have ears but can’t hear, eyes but can’t see, etc.

In the perfectly sane person, the conscious and subconscious are perfect reflections. In most of us neurotic folks, there’s "conflict" – disparity between what we think and what we feel and what we think we should feel. We fight this confusion (Neptune) by making up rules (Saturn.)

We are unable to perceive our own prejudices (one-size-fits-all decisions) until we fall off the "Tower" as in the Tower Card Initiation.

The shock of that landing opens our eyes on a world very different from what we thought it was, a world that hasn’t changed at all – but we ourselves have changed for the realizations a)that we’re wrong about THAT, and therefore b) might be wrong about THIS and everything else.

After that first moment of clarity, confusion (Neptune) sets in as we grope blindly for a new idealism (Neptune) to replace the old certainties.

It is an experience like no other, an Initiation that has the power to dissolve our bigoted ideas – and we all have such ideas somewhere amongst our prejudices.

What is bigotry? Where does it come from? Why are only the bad guys bigoted? How do you get to be a bigot? How do you know if you are one?

Try this. A bigot is someone who has zero tolerance for Evil.

Well, doesn’t that make a bigot a good person?

How could rejection of Evil make one a bad person? Or is it simply the act of rejecting, shunning, spurning, excluding something that’s inconsistent with our own values that makes us bigots? Maybe a bigot is a person who is convinced that his/her self or group is good – and therefore others who are different are not so good.

A charitable bigot would treat "different" folks gently and kindly and forgive certain individuals their differences. Less charitable types might blame the "different" people for causing trouble by being "different."

The Initiation represented by the Tower Card enables one to penetrate that mystical barrier between conscious and subconscious between Self and Other, and see your self in others, see the symmetry underlying the universe.

I began musing on this when I read The Magical Worlds of Narnia by David Colbert. It is a slender trade paperback with a narrow column of text and a sidebar adding odd facts – such as "Pandora’s name means, "all gifts" – a sly joke by the gods." The book addresses such questions as "Why does Aslan’s Breath Make Animals Speak?" and "How Did Lewis Make Hell Freeze Over?" But the afterword titled, "Why Would Anyone Hate Narnia?" is worth the $14.

This afterword presents evidence that C. S. Lewis was, in his personal life, a bigot, cruelly racist and sexist too but was very charitable about it and didn’t hold race or religion against his friends. Colbert concludes, "It’s simply not enough to say Lewis made exceptions for people he knew. If you find that difficult to believe, test your own gut: invite a black friend or a Muslim friend or a Chinese friend over to dinner at your home and tell them you believe the awful things people say about their race or religion. Repeat a few of them, just to be sure your friend knows what you mean. Better yet, read them some of the things Lewis said about them. Then explain that you like them anyway because they’re not like all the rest.

"You can forgive Lewis if you like. That might be consistent with the Chronicles. But the next time someone says they hate Lewis or hate Narnia, take a moment to ask if they feel Lewis hated them first."

Logical inconsistency in our personal beliefs is just one result of the confounding of our ability to communicate with one another. As discussed last month, the modern Romance genre depicts one response to that confounding – the desperate reach over ever widening gulfs to communicate with others in love and commitment not despite their differences, not forgiving their differences, but because of their differences.

In Lewis’s case the response to that confounding is withdrawal from other kinds of people, climbing the Tower to get away from Neptune’s confusion by taking refuge in Neptune’s function of Idealism.

Perhaps the most vivid and memorable example of the result of withdrawing from "the wrong" kind of people was World War II where some people decided to solve the whole problem by exterminating substandard people. Without planning, I read two WWII novels in one week.

Full Wolf Moon by K. L. Nappier, is a werewolf romance/horror novel set in one of the USA internment camps for Japanese-Americans. Growing up in California, I knew of this shame in our history that many people don’t know of, but Nappier used fantasy to make the setting seem even more real to me.

In this novel, Doris Tebbe manages an internment camp which is protected by the local Army base commanded by Captain Maxwell Pierce, a recently turned werewolf who doesn’t know what he does during the full moon. The two of them and an Indian shaman must stop the grisly murders of internees before the camp explodes in violence.

This entire novel is a profound study of bigotry telling its story in deep symbolism such as the werewolf’s amnesia in wolf form, the mystical barrier between conscious and subconscious. With time, Pierce begins to remember his rampages. This novel is a incisive illustration of the fall from the Tower into the confusion of Neptune.

For years I have been reviewing Faye Kellerman’s Rina Lazarus and Peter Decker mysteries so I grabbed Straight Into Darkness. In this novel, one of the old mysteries that Peter had to investigate to solve another more modern crime is here presented in real time – before Peter is born.

There is no mention of these two favorite characters in this novel – but the book is part of the series because it explains in graphic (perhaps too graphic for some readers) detail just how Hitler got a grip on the German Group Mind and caused ordinary people to commit atrocities while solemnly believing they were upholding the highest ideals humanity can aspire to. And what of the true hero, unjustly convicted of atrocities?

This novel will give you a glimpse of the world view of many of the characters in the Lazarus/Decker novel series. Straight Into Darkness is as powerful as Schindler’s List – or Into The West, the Spielberg miniseries I discussed in the December 2005 column.

Nora Roberts writing as J. D. Robb gives us a far more personal story of revenge by extermination in Survivor In Death. Set in 2059, this is another "In Death" series novel of the love and marriage of Eve Dallas, a woman cop and Roarke, an ex-criminal who has become a tech tycoon. He’s gone straight to marry her, and even allows other cops into his house. But he has a locked room full of illegal computers that can hack into any system – when she needs help.

Survivor tells the story of a young girl who witnesses the deaths of her whole family and her best friend who’s sleeping over. Two ninja like figures slip through expensive security and slash their throats. The motive eludes Detective Dallas until she discovers connections that point to hatred.

As she follows the trail of hatred to the killers, we get a strenuous workout in the psychology of hatred, bigotry, fear and ferocity.