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Soul-Sick Nation - An Astrologer's View of America
by Jessica Murray
AuthorHouse, ISBN 978-1425971250, 232 pages. £10.99/$15.95
www.mothersky.com
Reviewed by Garry Phillipson
This book starts out with the twin premises that the USA's government is dangerously out of control, particularly in its foreign policy; and that astrology can play an important role in helping us understand the roots of the problem.
Many of us have tried over the years to understand the blind spots in our family of origin, so as to keep them from becoming our own blind spots. The same process must be undergone with national blind spots if we want to live free of them. (p.11)
Given the state of affairs we find ourselves in, the idea behind this book is excellent and timely. The world is a dangerous and uncertain place, in need of a superpower that would pour oil on troubled waters - rather than one that grabs the oil and says to hell with the troubled waters. Pointing this out, as the author does throughout the book, is already worthwhile. By then using astrology to analyse the problem, she has a really powerful combination. Astrology certainly has the potential to shed new light on the roots of the problem, and, in so doing, to also shed a bit of light on its own generally ignored potential.
The chart used is the Sibly chart - or perhaps more accurately, one of the possible Sibly charts, set for 5.10pm. Although there is acknowledgement that the chart "…remains a subject of contention, especially as regards the birth hour" (p.203 n.4), it seems a little odd that nothing more is said about its obscure and problematic provenance.[1] This is not to deny, however, that the chart used here works; I'm just grumbling about a lack of reference to generally-available sources which unpick the full story of the Sibly chart in as much detail as anyone could want.
The book is published by Authorhouse, a self-publishing operation. It's always a concern with such books: has the author chosen this route because their ideas are ahead of their time, or because they can't write? Fortunately Jessica Murray writes very well, keeping the narrative moving along briskly with numerous witty and barbed asides. If I'm picky, I could have wished for an editor to remove nearly all instances of the phrase "at this writing". It crops up way too often in the text. Otherwise, though, that editor would have had little to do.
Murray has, it seems to me, a very good grasp on the realities of America's political situation. She is of course coming from a particular view of things, which will be adequately conveyed by this quotation:
The Pentagon has obscene amounts of money and military hardware on its side, but the Iraqi people have on their side the fact that they are fighting for their homeland. By contrast, the exhausted young American soldiers kicking down the doors and manning the checkpoints know, on some level, that they are only fighting for Halliburton. (p.115)
Her analysis is rather black and white - in the quotation above for instance, the idea of a homogenous 'Iraqi people' united against a common enemy is surely too simple. The overriding point though - that the current US government has been, shall we say, somewhat disappointing - would be difficult to argue against.
At this point I should mention a few things to indicate where Jessica Murray is coming from, astrologically:
- Dane Rudhyar is described as "the great mind behind (humanistic astrology), which took Carl Jung's idea of the shadow, among other new theories, and used it to redeem old fear-based notions that had kept astrology mired in medieval gloom." (p.198)
- The meaning of the twelve houses is treated as practically synonymous with the meaning of the twelve signs.[2]
- Pluto is defined as ruling "sex and death; recycling; lost objects; mines and caves; detectives, spies and powerbrokers; the occult; the atom bomb; snakes, vultures and bats." (p.13). It is noted that Saturn used to rule death "before Pluto was discovered and took over that rulership." (p.54)
This, you will realise, is modern astrology.
There is of course an infinite dialogue whose portals open at this point, concerning the relative merits of different forms of astrology. Your reviewer's inclination is to step quickly past those portals, reflecting that a symbolic study such as astrology surely has to offer different, more or less equally valid, ways of working.
I have to report, though, that the astrological analysis here left me feeling mildly disappointed. Perhaps my expectations were raised to an unrealistic level by some of the plaudits quoted on Jessica Murray's website (see link at the top of this review). And this is rather inconvenient because, given my agreement with where she's coming from politically, I would like to give the book a ringing endorsement on all fronts. But in terms of pure astrology I would have to say that it's OK, not great.
My grumble with the astrology here is not that any of it is incorrect - I don't think that. My problem is that the astrology never seems to be in the driving seat. Put it this way. I think it would be possible to take a book such as Why Do People Hate America? [3], supplement its narrative with astrological factors, and you would end up with much the same themes as you find in Soul-Sick Nation.
In other words, astrological symbolism is used to underscore things which an informed observer will know already. My impression is that the chart is never really allowed to speak in its own right. One factor which I think leads in this direction is an excessive emphasis on the outer planets. There is a lot about them in this book, and particularly about Pluto. The author's rationale for focussing so heavily on it is that
This is the planet of regeneration, and we must know how it works if we want to plumb the deeper meanings of America's identity crisis and its impact on the world… It holds the secret to integrating whatever has been hidden and unnamed… Pluto, the planet of secrets, will give us the vocabulary to look at what is making America sick. (p.12)
I feel very uneasy about what seems to be implied here - that we can know where to look for answers in a chart, before seeing what that particular chart is saying. It's not that I would argue against Pluto being a significant factor, but I see no reason for taking it to be as powerful or ubiquitous as the author suggests - either in general, or in the USA's chart in particular.
And believe me, there is a lot of emphasis on Pluto in this book. In the first 11 pages, introductions are made to the political situation and to the USA's chart (and Sun, Moon and Ascendant therein). Pages 12 through to 52 are then devoted to Pluto. Of the book's fifteen chapters, seven are about Pluto. By no means do I support the few traditionalists who say we're better off without the outer planets at all; but for my money, Pluto is just asked to do too much work, to symbolise too many things, in this book.
There are other issues that I could get into - for instance, it seems to me that the analysis is limited by not looking at planetary dignities; the fact that Jupiter and Saturn are both exalted surely says a lot about the USA's chart.
The counter-argument might be made that the astrology used in this book has to be kept on the simple side in order that non-astrological readers don't get lost. Well, that is an argument, for sure. And I wouldn't want my technical qualms to obscure the point that there is much that is worthwhile about the book. For non-astrologers it could provide a useful way in to the subject. For astrologers it raises a lot of issues about the USA and its chart; but I think that the latter audience will tend to see it as a starting-point for further discussion and evaluation, rather than as a definitive analysis.
***
Garry Phillipson
March, 2007
Notes & References:
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For more on the problematic nature of the Sibly chart see: pp.414 - 7, Nicholas Campion, The Book of World Horoscopes (2nd ed.), Bristol: Cinnabar Books, 1995; pp.263 - 274 & 361 - 368 (Appendix 6) Geoffrey Cornelius, The Moment of Astrology (2nd ed.), Bournemouth: The Wessex Astrologer, 2003. Some material from Cornelius's analysis can also be found at: http://www.astrodivination.com/moa/assibidx.htm (checked 11th Feb 2007).
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For instance, in Appendix II there are delineations of Saturn "in Aries or in the First House…. in Taurus or in the Second House…" and so on.
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Ziauddin Sardar & Merryl Wyn Davies, Why Do People Hate America? London: Icon Books, 2002.
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