The Continuing Slumbers of Albion

 It seems the British have decided to jump out of the frying pan into the fire and to exchange venal incompetents for a group of people ideologically committed to the destruction of the country as it has been. Could this be the moment when the sleep of Albion descends into nightmare?

It is understandable that the electorate wanted to punish the incumbent government, conservative in name only, but the choice they have made will plunge the country into deeper misery. I am not talking in economic or political terms so much here as, important as they are, those are secondary issues. I am referring to the spiritual darkness which will intensify under the new government as it pursues its agenda of dismantling the entirety of tradition and replacing it by rigid bureaucratic control and enforced egalitarianism or Eurocommunism as you might call it. Those who oppose this will be accused, like the early Christians, of being haters of humanity but the idea of love has long since been corrupted and used as a weapon to attack the good, the beautiful and the true. Freedom of thought will be increasingly curtailed with the excuse of safety, equality and fairness. The new prime minister has spoken of his desire to curtail something called Islamophobia. This may be a cynical vote catcher but nevertheless only someone who has no love for his country or for Jesus Christ could speak in those terms.

The new UK government has achieved a landslide with a relatively small percentage of the vote. They have far more power than would normally be the case given the relative paucity of their support. They managed this because their opponents were split and one has to wonder if this was a tactic of those who pull the strings behind the scenes. I don't say the Reform party was consciously set up to give the left greater power but it has surely been used to do just that. I can understand why so many people turned to it because it asks some of the right questions but it doesn't have any real answers. The rot is too deep.

Bruce Charlton has spoken of the two forms of evil at play here, that which seeks control (Ahrimanic) and that which seeks destruction (Sorathic). As usual, his analysis is spot on. The previous government was Ahrimanic in a passive sense because it had no real beliefs, but the new one will be actively so because it does have beliefs though they are anti-God beliefs. Naturally, they are not framed like that but these beliefs spring from a rejection of God and the natural order of creation. We can never understand why the modern world is as it is until we realise that we are in a spiritual war. The enemy cannot win but it can do enormous damage to people's souls before it loses, and that is what the whole business is all about. And although the enemy cannot incarnate directly in the world, it can certainly influence and overshadow human beings that allow this because of their inner emptiness and spiritual rejection. This has become more of a likelihood.

Ultimately, none of this matters. Our task is only to recognise it and stay faithful to God. If humanity is to be healed then its spiritual sickness must come out. This is what we are witnessing.

Lights that Serve as Signs

 God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times" Genesis 1:14 (New International Version translation).

Despite the presence of the Magi at the birth of Jesus, Christians have always been reluctant to accept the validity of astrology, seeing it as a link to pagan times and gods as well as being incompatible with free will. But then no Christian would deny heredity which could equally well be said to determine our behaviour to a certain extent, and a wiser reaction to pagan wisdom would be to baptise it rather than simply demonise it.

It is understandable that astrology as divination is frowned upon when it is tries to second guess God and undermine his will. But if study of stellar patterns is used as a kind of weather-forecasting, something that seeks to understand times and tides, it is less questionable. I personally think there are too many variables for this to be particularly useful other than in a very broad brush way, but astrology as character analysis can be instructive. I found that studying my birth chart gave me added insight into my own psychological strengths and weaknesses, and was a helpful spiritual tool insofar as it showed truths about myself in an objective, dispassionate way that I might have otherwise been reluctant to accept.

Clearly, we are not meant to know the future and to seek to do so is blasphemous as it is an attempt to replace God's will with our own. Moreover, we are nowhere near spiritually mature enough to deal with such knowledge as, in our current state, to know our future would be to nullify its lessons. But that does not mean that astrology doesn't work or that it is in any sense diabolical. As the passage from Genesis makes clear, it is part of the majesty and beauty of creation. It is a profound system of symbolism that is built into the cosmos, and God speaks to us through the heavens as he does through nature. We can misuse the knowledge we gain thereby but if astrology is studied with the full realisation that it is subordinate to Christ, considering it rather like a messenger of God or angel, then it can enrich our imagination and guide us to a deeper understanding of the universe and ourselves.

This is a horoscope cast for midnight in London on 1st January 1900. In terms of planetary positions and relationships it would largely apply to the whole world. Any astrologer who saw this with Sun conjunct Mars, Moon conjunct Saturn and more or less everything else in a stellium opposite Neptune and Pluto would think that the 20th century was going to be a bumpy ride. Be prepared is the old scout motto. The study of the heavens can sometimes help us do just that.