| To send books for review in this column
email Jacqueline Lichtenberg,jl@simegen.com
for snailing instructions or send an attached RTF file. Find these books. Find TV fandoms online Winter Solstice is a time for looking back, taking
stock, assessing achievements.
It’s like the ending of a novel in a series, where some affairs come to a
definitive halt, but others are left for the sequel.
So it’s also a time for plans, for casting a vision of your future.
Outline your future history. Hence it’s a time for resolutions (and yes, the wince
at the long history of broken resolutions.)
Most human civilizations have Holidays marking the
year’s quarters. Judaism has two
New Years – one in the Spring, Passover, and one in the Fall, Rosh Hashanah.
We live in a cycle of circles, a spiral of life.
The Sun circles the galaxy’s center, and the galaxy’s center moves
through space, as far as we know never returning to the same place.
Every time the Earth marks a year completed, it starts a year plowing
through totally new territory. And so it is with human lives.
Personally, I have always had my attention focused on
The Future. I now live in “the
future” I had planned, but it’s still a work in progress.
This year I’ve marked a huge list of personal achievements, a list
that’s mind-boggling, but most of my attention is busy planning for what
comes next. Among this year’s achievements, other than this
column which is a delight beyond reckoning to do, is seeing the Sime~Gen
Universe novels back into print along with 4 new volumes written on contract
with a publisher and never published.
Wildside Press picked up Sime~Gen and now there are 12 volumes in my
keynote life’s work, Sime~Gen, some written with Jean Lorrah, and some Jean
Lorrah wrote. There are more
words of Sime~Gen fan fiction posted online than there are professional
novels, and it’s still being written.
The “future” part is that the 8 reprint novels are
all on paper, with new covers, but they are also in an astonishing array of
eBook formats, including Kindle and Nook.
Wildside chose Sime~Gen to be recorded as audiobooks, and chose an
actor who is a fan of the novels to read them.
My interstellar reincarnation novel, Molt
Brother, is being recorded for audiobook, too.
A SimeGen Group has formed on Facebook, and new
people are discovering the novels through Amazon because Amazon’s futuristic
computer suggests Sime~Gen to those who have discovered my Dushau Trilogy on
Kindle. You can find all these titles on Amazon and then
search them on your favorite store.
http://astore.amazon.com/simegen-20 This year I joined a Group of widely published
writers who have retrieved their mass market paperback rights and re-issued
their own titles as eBooks cheaper than publishers can.
It’s called Backlist eBooks. They’ve made Lists on Amazon that sell
books like crazy. Here’s a List
of their Lists of Kindle titles (I’m on one in Science Fiction).
http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/listmania/byauthor/A1PDSYZ7TPUPC4/ I live in my future.
A lot of things I have worked for and despaired of,
things I “resolved” to accomplish each year and somehow failed, are now
concrete accomplishments. How did I do that?
How did this happen? Well, the truth is, neither I nor anyone knows and
nobody can tell you how to accomplish your plans either.
That’s one of the principles of “magick” that I’ve
been pointing out in various ways through this column.
In the scientific view of the universe, two different
people in different times and places can perform the same actions and get
the same results – which proves the hypothesis and makes it a theory (which
can still be disproved). In the magical view of the universe, no two people
doing the same thing ever get the same results, exactly.
One group’s Grimoire will not “work” for another group.
You can’t dig up ancient knowledge and apply it today
and get the results the ancients did.
Remember, the Earth never exactly retraces it’s position.
The Sun moves. The Galaxy
moves. Each moment is unique. In the magical view of the universe, who you are
determines the outcome as much as what you do.
Why you do it matters, but isn’t the controlling factor.
Good intentions are not a sufficient condition for “success.”
In both views, sometimes you succeed and think you’ve
failed. You think you broke your
New Year’s resolution. But in
truth, you were led to a path that goes where you really need to be, even if
you had to be dragged ass-backwards before you notice it’s where you want to
be. The real trick to surviving The Holidays is to
Observe the situation around you with a Seer’s eye, to penetrate the
appearances of weary-dreary failures to find the progress that actually
happened while you weren’t looking. That is also the trick to planning your whole life,
so that fifty years from now, when your grandchildren marvel at the
primitive world you grew up in, and the paroxysms of financial disasters you
survived, you can say your life turned out as you’d planned it.
This year, we’re laying out plans amidst a turbulence
signified by the transit of Pluto opposition the USA’s natal Venus, Jupiter
and Sun. By some USA natal
charts, the 2008 financial meltdown coincided with Pluto’s first contact
with the USA’s 8th House cusp.
Pluto is heading for its first Return since the founding of the USA. 8th House is other people’s values and
property, and Pluto is more powerful transiting here because it rules the
Natural 8th – death, inheritance, taxes, transformation, and the
Values of the Group or Public. 8th is opposite 2nd – thus in
natural counterbalance to personal property, values, wealth.
The 2nd is the core of Identity, that which makes you a
unique individual, sovereign in your own right, defining mystical ties
between that Identity (1st) and your material possessions (2nd
). That tie is what makes
psichometry work. In the mystical view of the universe, how your
actions manifest is a function of your Values, what you program into your 2nd
House with your intentions. By the widely accepted “Sibley Chart” for the USA,
Pluto makes station on the nation’s 2nd House cusp in April 2012,
retreats and doesn’t quite get back by the election in November.
But Pluto will oppose USA’s Jupiter during the last days of the
debate on Values and Possessions.
It’s a debate focused on the philosophy (Jupiter) of
Group Possessions (taxes; Pluto) and the mystical connections between an
individual and that individual’s material possessions.
Seers who understand and writers who can explain what
dire results rebound on the individual who steals, however righteously
intended, the possessions of an individual in the service of a group (or
vice versa) will command very large audiences (and profits.) Jupiter is all about growth and by one USA Natal
chart is in the nation’s 2nd House of individual, personal
possessions. It is being
challenged by Pluto transiting opposite Jupiter (or by another Natal chart,
on the 2nd House cusp).
Pluto is about power, secretive power, the power to reveal the
underworld. This is Growth vs.
Power. The decision will be about the Group’s power over the
Individual’s growth of possessions.
Or the Individual’s power over the Group’s growth of possessions.
The different USA Natal Charts may indicate we are
actually more than one nation.
Are we indivisible? Nobody can predict how this will shake out.
Millions of individuals must make personal, free will, choices.
But those who have pondered deeply on the use and
abuse of power as discussed in the novels I’ve reviewed here will have an
advantage understanding what the result of this election will mean to them,
personally, 50 years from now. On its way to its return to its place, Pluto will
oppose the nation’s Sun and Mercury.
Depending on which natal chart you consult, that could include the
nation’s 3rd House cusp.
The 3rd/9th axis is known for its description
of anxiety and subconscious fears.
The Pluto Return is in 2022 in the nation’s 9th
or 2nd House. Pluto
is about Power (war, subversion, and sex used as power).
The Values (2nd/8th ) governing our Philosophy
(9th House, Jupiter) of the use and abuse of Power (Pluto) are in
flux. If the nation’s choices in
2012 lead us against the principles of White Magic, plan your future to be
solidly ensconced and warded by 2022.
In the magical view of the universe, expect that what
belongs to you cannot be taken away, so don’t steal it back.
What truly belongs to you will return with tremendous force.
The taker will lose skin when it leaves his hands.
This is a reason behind the Biblical Commandment not to covet a
neighbor’s possessions. Actions
driven by coveting result in traumatic loss.
Stealing doesn’t work. The signature of White Magic is avoidance of
infringing the free will and sovereignty of another.
Do that and plan on 2022 being a breeze.
To send books for review in this column email Jacqueline Lichtenberg, jl@simegen.com for snailing instructions or send an attached RTF file.
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The Re-Readable Collection