Friday, July 17, 2020

Pawns in a political game? The Astrology of Children in Pandemic USA

Will the buses be full this fall?

“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul 
than the way in which it treats its children.”  

 — Nelson Mandela, Former President of South Africa




It’s been difficult to listen to anything the White House has to say about schools these days, especially about whether they should be opening as usual this fall, and if so, how? Parents, of course, are eager for their kids to return to school, especially if they rely on schools for the child care that allows them to begin working outside the home again. But parents are far from eager to send their children into harm’s way, risking exposure to the corona virus, and it’s far from certain that schools can be opened safely yet. 

So far, Trump has basically rejected CDC guidelines for safely opening the schools, saying they’re too “expensive” and “very impractical,” and that no matter what, schools need to reopen because, after all, the only reason he can imagine for keeping them closed would be to make him look bad in November. Oh, and by the way, he may withhold their federal funding if they do not re-open.

Clearly, the failure of imagination is his…I’m guessing that every parent can imagine other reasons for keeping their children home—namely, their children’s safety, not to mention the safety of teachers, staff and yes, other family members who could be impacted by asymptomatic children carrying the virus home with them. Still, Trump’s Secretary of Education Betsy de Vos is echoing Trump’s line that the schools “must be fully operational” in the fall, and she’s been doubling down on the threat of defunding—which isn’t even her final call (or Trump’s). Not surprisingly, neither has a plan for opening schools safely.

As with so many of Neptune’s “hall of mirrors” escapades these days, the efforts Trump and de Vos are making to politicize our children’s education, rather than to do anything truly constructive about it are only too obvious. They’re implying that the schools should open and they shouldn’t expect extra federal dollars to do so safely (according to the CDC), either. Some governors who want to comply with Trump have gone so far as to simply announce that school aged children are “safe” from the virus (when that’s far from established)—never mind the collateral damage that could be done to teachers, staff and families if schools reopen too soon, or if the opening is handled in the haphazard, mediocre way this administration and its acolytes seem to handle most things.

Bottom line, American children have become pawns in the ongoing COVID crisis, and if enough parents and communities don’t simply refuse for them to be used this way, this could get much worse before it gets better.  


Families and experts must concur over the safety of opening schools.
  
Context is everything

So, similar to what has happened with the issues of systemic racism in the U.S., the relentless health crisis we’re faced with as a society has teased yet another historical skeleton out of our collective closet—the curious utilitarian relationship we’ve had as a society with children, especially the children of the poor. There’s a reason pro-family legislation that many developed nations take for granted—like paid family leave, universal child care and pre-K, and the equal distribution of resources to every school district, regardless of the economic demographics of the district—sounds so radical and “progressive.”

In fact, all of those policy proposals strike at the heart of America’s Puritan ideological roots, which favored the view that children had to “earne their keep” and contribute to the coffers of their communities from a very young age. Child labor (often under the age of 8) was not only sanctioned by early eastern seaboard colony governments, according to a 1908 study by social scientist Edith Abbott, families were obligated by law to put their children into service spinning yarn, knitting, weaving, and so on. Abbott reports that,

“In short, there is no lack of evidence to show that it was regarded as a public duty in the colony of Massachusetts to provide for the training of children not only in learning but in ‘labor and other employments which may bee profitable to the Commonwealth.’”[i]

As partial explanation, Abbott cites the Puritan view that idleness—even among children, but especially among children of the poor (who may become public “burdens”)—was a grievous sin, but she’s also quite aware of the commercial use these children were being put to by these laws. To reinforce that point she relates that (in original “1640s-speak”),

“In Plymouth, in 1641, it was ordered that ‘those that have reliefe from the townes and have children and doe not ymploy them that then it shal be lawfull for the Towneship to take order that those children shal be put to worke in fitting ymployment according to their strength and abilities or placed out by the Townes.’ The Town of Boston in 1673 notifies a list of persons to ‘dispose of their severall children….abroad for servants, to serve by Indentures according to their ages and capacities,’ and if they neglect this, ‘the selectmen will take their said children from them and place them with such masters as they shall provide according as the law directs.’”[ii]

It’s somewhat shocking to read about the laws that basically imposed government power over parents and their children in the American colonies—colonies that were governed by people who had migrated to the New World for the sake of freedom (their own, apparently). And what could families expect in return for farming their children out as servants (and who knows what else)? Not an education that would lift them out of their modest stations in life, certainly—they might be trained in a trade along the way because that would make them useful to their developing economies and would keep them from becoming “public burdens,” but governments felt no obligation to fully educate children—the obligations all flowed the other way.

Young children worked in perilous conditions well into the 20th century.
It wasn’t until 1904 and the founding of the National Child Labor Committee, in fact—well after we had shaken colonial rule and adopted a Constitution—that the idea of public education began to be taken seriously. The mid-19th century waves of immigration had brought thousands of families with children to our shores, and the children were promptly put to work in Industrial Age factories for pennies a day and in horrendous work conditions, but when the beginnings of the so-called Progressive Era hit—perhaps a line in the sand helped along by the 1891 Neptune-Pluto conjunction in Gemini—social reformers began to promote childhood education as a way to advance the entire nation. It appears, in fact, that Abbott’s 1905 study emerged from this impulse towards reform.

It wasn’t until after the Great Depression produced mass unemployment and FDR’s New Deal started paying more attention to labor laws that the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 was passed, placing limitations on, but not totally outlawing child labor.

In other words, while children have been somewhat romanticized in our history by artists such as Kate Greenaway and Norman Rockwell, most pre-Enlightenment art work pictured children as small adults because that’s how society saw them. And I would argue that, due to its particularly dour, deeply-rooted Puritan work ethic, this nation continues to value children for their pecuniary “usefulness,” rather than for their special qualities as human beings, and (incidentally), as the precious reserve of brilliance and talent to whom the nation owes its future.

The Puritan view was heavily Saturnian, in other words: that children “owed” their parents, churches and communities for the privilege of living, and they shouldn’t take even the meals on their table for granted. This was not entirely out of keeping with European attitudes towards children at the time, of course: Krampus—Europe’s devilish-looking Saturnian version of Father Christmas was more likely to give “bad” children lumps of coal in their stockings, instead of candy. We can only imagine that children who wanted to play rather than work might have landed on Krampus’s “bad” list.

Christmas was far less joyful for children with mean old Krampus.
So what does all this have to do with our schools today, and whether they should re-open or not in the fall? First of all, the Trump administration is promoting a view that children’s immune systems are “much stronger than adults” and that this justifies putting them, their teachers and who knows how many others at risk so the schools can open. There is no definitive scientific data suggesting kids are immune to COVID—indeed, there are cases of children being badly stricken by the virus—but there is evidence to show that asymptomatic people of all ages can carry the virus to others without knowing. So in that sense, re-opening the schools could cause unwelcome spikes in cases and enhanced community spread of the disease.

The L.A. Times reports that when De Vos was asked about the risk to children of re-opening, she said, “nothing in the data” suggests children being in school is “in any way dangerous” — an assertion the Times says was “challenged by a top public health official on the same program.” Did she even read the data, we might wonder? If she didn’t, of course she doesn’t need to admit that there’s anything there to worry about!

And when Trump was asked on the 14th about the case of a summer school teacher who just died of the virus in rural Arizona—the virus also sickened two of her colleagues—all he could respond with was "Schools should be opened. Schools should be opened. Those kids want to go to school. You're losing a lot of lives by keeping things closed. We saved millions of lives while we did the initial closure." We can probably be certain he didn’t read the data either, but more importantly, it’s pretty clear that he simply is not going to acknowledge that people are dying on his watch. Willful blindness is not leadership, but it gives us a window into his value system, in which the nation’s children clearly rank very low. Maybe if they were to make him look better in November, they’d come up a notch?

The parallels with Puritan Massachusetts are a bit haunting here: Trump knows what he wants in the situation (a better looking situation, politically), and he’s apparently decided that kids, teachers and communities owe him their cooperation (so as not to be a “burden” on him), whether anybody dies or not. After all, how many millions didn’t die? Really?

So the schools that follow his lead this fall should start tabulating how many people don’t die in the process? If it’s deemed unsafe by the experts (and only the experts) to re-open, how about they stay closed so that more people won’t die?



The astrology

It’s a bit difficult to capture something as elusive as how the nation values its children in horoscope form, yet there are hints in our trusty U.S. Sibly chart that are worth exploring. The Moon in a mundane chart represents the People, of course, but we can also glean something from the condition of our progressed Sibly Moon that should be helpful. To establish a framework for this exploration, let’s consider this upcoming Labor Day (September 7th) the target day after which the administration would like to see all schools re-opened for the season.  School districts often have differing schedules, but Labor Day is usually a marker for schools being back in session, so it’s a fair approximation.  So we’ll consider the Sibly chart against a chart progressed to September 7, 2020, calculated for dawn—the “dawn” of a new school year. To complete the triwheel, we’ll place the transits for that same time on September 7th in the outer wheel.

Let’s begin.



Triwheel #1: (inner wheel) U.S.A. (Sibly chart), July 4, 1776, 5:10 p.m. LMT, Philadelphia, PA; (middle wheel) U.S.A. Sibly chart, secondary progression, Solar Arc MC method, for September 7, 2020 at 6:42 a.m. (dawn) GMT, Washington, D.C.; (outer wheel) Transits, September 7, 2020, 6:42 a.m. DST (dawn), Washington, D.C. . Tropical Equal Houses, True Node. All charts cast, courtesy of Kepler 8.0 (Cosmic Patterns Software).

Because our concern here is children and their families, we will of course examine the Sibly Progressed Moon before anything else, and in these charts, that focus reveals a great deal. A note of interest: on its own, the Progressed Sibly chart you’ll see in the middle wheel here features 5°+Virgo on the ASC and 1°+Gemini at the MC; both signs suggest a connection to education and learning (i.e., Gemini is thought to rule the natural 3rd house of lower education and local schools, and Virgo energy reflects the public service function of schools and teaching—teachers certainly aren’t in it for the money!). And Progressed SibMoon (Capricorn) shows up in this chart in the 5th house of children, reminding us that “it takes a village” to raise children into the quality citizens and leaders we need them to be.  Let’s see what happens when we consider all three charts of this triwheel together.

Interchart Grand-Square: Progressed Moon (Capricorn) conjoins PSoNode-Pluto (Capricorn) and radix Sibly Pluto (Capricorn), opposing PNoNode-Sibly Mercury-Part-of-Fortune (Cancer) and transiting Venus (Leo). The Capricorn points are being transited by the backwards moving Capricorn “train,” Saturn, Pluto and Jupiter, and the whole Capricorn-Cancer axis is t-squared by fiery Mars-Eris (Aries), opposed to transiting Juno (Libra).  Clearly, great clashing power dynamics are at work in this grand square, and our families (PSibMoon) are literally caught up in the midst of it. The 2nd-8th house axis brings the “big E” Economy into the picture, reminding us that there are key corporate vested interests also interested in re-opening schools—especially in the realm of higher education (i.e., Phoenix U and the like), but also in the private network of charter schools that De Vos favors. 

I can’t begin to imagine all the economic fall-out that happens in communities when schools are closed for long stretches, especially under the present conditions, but it appears that someone is clearly aware and lobbying hard for a re-opening.

The Mars-Eris (Aries) opposition to transiting Juno (Libra) reflects the passion driving those on both sides of this re-opening debate, although with Mars-Eris over the Sibly 5th house of the nation’s children, I would expect a certain amount of influential outrage and activism to surface around Labor Day that may determine how the dilemma is resolved in the end. We should be alert to the possibility of some kind of police action here, as well—especially considering how this Aries conjunction plays out in the larger grand square. I am a bit concerned by the 8th house placement of this conjunction in the Transit chart itself—violent possibilities do exist with these combined energies.


Betsy DeVos announcing that schools must be open this fall.
Returning to the triwheel, the presence of queenly Leo Venus over the Sibly 8th, presiding over the grand square we’ve been considering, is telling—like Betsy De Vos, she’s not about to be ignored, although she is feeling a bit put off and impatient that her word alone is not enough for everyone to fling open the doors of the schools. (Transiting Venus also squares PSibVenus (Taurus) over the Sibly 5th). Parents and communities with their children’s best interests in mind are definitely locked in a power struggle with her, which may be more difficult to navigate than the one with her boss in the end. Sibly Sun (Cancer) is mostly impacted by PSibJupiter (Rx, Cancer), trine PSibSun (Pisces)-conjunct-Transiting Neptune, suggesting that we will see a flood of nebulous and manipulative pronouncements, but very little administrative substance. 

Even the imperious Ms. De Vos may be out of luck until the 2nd house Capricorn players turn direct and navigate their respective shadow periods,however. More on this in a bit—suffice to say here that it doesn’t look like schools will be re-opened to any great extent on September 7th, if families have anything to say about it (and they will).

A word about our PSibMoon conjoining Sibly Pluto: the last time our progressed lunar cycle aspected Sibly Pluto so closely was in the 1970s, when PSibSun fell at 26°+Capricorn and PSibMoon fell at the same degree in belligerent Aries. Desegregating schools was the hot button issue and the strategic busing of kids between school districts was the tool the Supreme Court approved. For a variety of reasons—some deeply troubling and racist, some not—families in many communities simply refused to cooperate—at times, violently—thus beginning the phenomenon of “white flight” from many urban centers. Equal access to quality education remains a major load-bearing “beam” in the structure of systemic racism in this nation, but it didn’t take long to realize that busing was clearly not the solution in the 1970s; even so, is it possible that perhaps this latest PSibMoon-Sibly Pluto passage is forcing our systems to confront the structural part of all this more head on?

As it happens, there was one earlier period during which a progressed Sibly quarter began with PSibMoon in late Capricorn, conjunct Sibly Pluto—it was in 1884, during the expansion of Horace Mann’s “common school” system of public schooling beyond urban centers into rural areas. African-American children also benefited from this trend, although the beginnings of segregation as a public issue had emerged. By the end of this progressed quarter, several “historically black colleges” had been established. Second house Sibly Pluto has always reflected the nation’s most compelling values, and educating the nation’s children was starting to emerge as one of those, as the best way, according to Mann, “to turn the nation’s unruly children into disciplined, judicious republican citizens.”This was an apt ambition for a Capricorn Progressed Moon then, and a generally laudable one now, for the sake of kids’ futures.

The 2nd house placement of all this reminds us that the State has a stake in its citizens’ education: deriving benefits from influencing and forming the masses is right up Sibly Pluto’s alley, in fact—it rules over taxation, after all, and as our history attests, there are many ways of “rendering to Caesar” that don’t involve a tax form. In the 1880s, for instance, the school year was designed around agricultural needs; today, corporations advertise on school vending machines, sponsored supplies and sports gear.


The National parks truly were our best idea!
More positively, Ken Burns’ The National Parks: America’s Best Idea (2009) documentary (airing now on PBS), reminds us that FDR used to inspire and cheer the nation during the Depression by having his tours of our National Parks (many of them at that time newly established) filmed. He then used those films to encourage people to spend as much time in the parks as they could, to enjoy our collective natural wonders and become more united as a people in the process. Teaching the nation to value the beauty of nature as an essential aspect of American identity was, IMHO, one of the highest expressions of presidential leadership and of our Capricorn 2nd house.

Clearly, with our PSibMoon sitting conjunct Pluto in that house right now and Trump rolling back environmental regulations and laws as fast as he can before election because he thinks that will gain him corporate support (which sadly, may work), today’s situation speaks volumes about why we need to heed FDR’s message again. And about why expecting Trump to value our other collective treasure—our children—is probably a fool’s errand.
 
Woven into the entire mess and complicating any solution to our present school quandary  across the nation is the clearly disproportionate number of COVID cases afflicting racial minority communities. Related to this is the frequent difficulty of scheduling all-remote learning in black communities, due to spotty Wi-Fi coverage and access to adequate technology in many of them. As I write this, protesters have been arrested in Detroit for trying to block the busing of Detroit school children to summer school programs. Surely signs of things to come in Detroit, there are intense fears (most likely justified) about the prospects of re-opening schools with live teaching only in the fall.

So there’s a clear echo from the 1970s at work here, with few ideas about how to overcome such challenges, especially with our present lack of leadership. Keeping the focus on student safety above all and doing the responsible thing in a way that all students receive the best possible education this fall is going to be major, especially if the public is fed a misinformation campaign that only confuses the issues and divides us.

Vigilance is an important habit to develop during this season of retrogrades.

Unfortunately, Transiting Neptune (Rx, Pisces) is not likely to help in this regard, opposing Sibly Neptune (Virgo), squaring Sibly Mars (Gemini) and trining Sibly Mercury (Cancer). Unclear, confusing or “scammy” messaging designed to divide people is likely to continue—just today, news broke about serious hacking episodes (“bitcoin scams”) against the Twitter sites of several politicians and celebrities, including Barack Obama, Bill Gates and Joe Biden. This is shocking, but probably nothing new and we’ll likely see more of it before these Neptune aspects loosen up, but clearly we’re going to have to learn to see through this kind of corruption and fog and to hold the perpetrators responsible to the extent possible. Saturn is the antidote here—perhaps we’ll see some strict regulations and security guidelines being imposed on social media platforms as a consequence of attacks like these.

Transiting Uranus (Rx, Taurus) conjoins Transiting Moon (Taurus), sextiles Sibly Sun (Cancer), squares Transiting Vesta (Leo), trines Transiting Pallas (Capricorn) and inconjoins Sibly ASC (Sagittarius).   It’s significant that Uranus adds to our list of retrograde “heavies” in this chart, but even so, these aspects imply disruption of a sort for the American people (Uranus disposes Sibly Moon) and their households (Vesta), even if it’s coming across more like a dull ache than an explosive rupture. Truth is, the federal and state aid programs that many families are receiving right now--not to mention other assistance with avoiding evictions and utility shut offs--will gradually be winding down, leaving people to their own devices again, so perhaps a quieter Uranus is a good thing.

From the aspects catalogued above, it seems that the People may feel that they are living on the edge of disaster (Uranus-Moon), with no security whatsoever. Stressed out households (Vesta) are likely pushing the nation overall (ASC) beyond its comfort zone, and in this atmosphere, concerns like justice and fair treatment (Pallas) grow in importance. Nerves are on edge, in other words, and it would help to have some reassuring guidance from people who cared.
A word about the retrogrades
You may have noticed that all of the so-called social and collective planets—the planets we look to for all mundane astrology analysis—are in retrograde motion in the transits for Labor Day (outer wheel, Triwheel 1),  and it’s quite fair to assume that this powerful drag on collective affairs is slowing down our progress addressing the virus and, as a consequence, with getting kids back to school. So, when are things going to loosen up? It’s a more complex story than it first appears.

Let me first say that I consider Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus the key players in all this because the slower outer planets—Neptune and Pluto—spend long stretches in retrograde motion not going very far, and it’s often difficult to distinguish between the impacts of direct motion from those of retrograde motion. Things just don’t get done with the optimum focus, speed or efficiency when Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus are transiting retrograde, so it’s truly no wonder that schools are having problems getting their “ducks in a row” for fall right now. The beauty of these retrogrades is—as we’ve discussed—that we have had a chance (somewhat forced) to deeply examine our values and priorities and to work on those essential plans, but my sense is that we won't begin to reap the benefits of that inward-looking process until more forward motion becomes available.



To make sense of all this, it’s worth laying out the timeline that Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus have been on for their current retrograde periods (see the table below). What makes this so interesting (and a bit complex) is that not only are we concerned about the actual periods in which the planets are moving retrograde, but we’re also concerned with the so-called “pre-retrograde shadow periods” and the “post-retrograde shadow periods.” A quick explanation from the Astrology Dictionary is in order:

“Instead of the retrograde period beginning on the day that the planet stations retrograde, the events and circumstances associated with the retrograde are seen as beginning to develop as soon as the planet passes the pre-retrograde shadow point, which is the degree that the planet will eventually retrograde back to.

Similarly, instead of the retrograde period ending on the day that the planet stations direct, in this context the circumstances surrounding the retrograde are seen as continuing until the planet passes the post-retrograde shadow point, which is the degree that it originally stationed retrograde at.”

Table 1. Retrograde and “shadow” period timelines.
Date
Jupiter
Saturn
Uranus
Shadow periods
2/3/2020

D, 25° Cap20’

Begins pre-rx shadow period
2/18/2020
D, 17° Cap24’


Begins pre-rx shadow period
4/29/2020


D,  06°Tau43’
Begins pre-rx shadow period
5/12/2020

Rx, 1°Aq57’


5/15/2020
Rx, 27°Cap14’



8/16/2020


Rx, 10°Tau42’

9/14/2020
D, 17°Cap24’


Begins post-rx shadow
9/30/2020

D, 25°Cap20’

Begins post-rx shadow
12/6/2020
27°Cap14’


Ends post-rx shadow
1/15/2021


D, 06°Tau43’
Begins post-rx shadow
1/3/2021

1°Aq57’

Ends post-rx shadow
5/2/2021


10°Tau42’
Ends post-rx shadow
All data derived from Kepler 8.0 software.


Significantly, the entire retrograde/shadow saga represented in Table 1 is far from over, but whatever has been accomplished has unfolded over the Sibly 2nd and 5th houses and will continue to do so for the duration. So, many of the issues we’ve been discussing with the sluggish official response to the pandemic and the ham-handed way school re-openings are being handled on high can be tied to these retrograde energies, and it will be December before the earliest planet on this schedule (Jupiter) emerges entirely from the residual effects of it all (as it ends its “post-Rx retrograde period”). Growth-oriented Jupiter plays many helpful functions in society, so perhaps we can look forward to the national “optimism” meter getting a lift after that point in December. This could be the consequence of better guidance with school re-opening and the beginnings of a more clear direction with the virus crisis overall. Or it could signal that people are feeling relieved after the election. Time will tell!

Do we dare hope that a viable vaccine will come out of this gradual re-emerging of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus as forward-moving forces? Obviously, re-opening the schools could be a lot easier if we had that. Despite some early testing that sounds hopeful, however, I suspect we will have to wait until at least Jupiter and Saturn are fully beyond their respective post-rx shadow periods—beyond December 6th for Jupiter and beyond January 3rd for Saturn.  

To the extent that Neptune rules vaccines, its direct turn at the end of November could also be helpful. All of this more or less mirrors the timelines that vaccine development officials have estimated, in fact—as much as Trump may want to say we’ll have a vaccine before the election, Dr.Fauci has repeatedly said that it could be “early next year” when we have a “safe and effective” one—emphasis intended.

Getting this right is no quick turn-around endeavor--to guarantee effectiveness will require serious testing of thousands of people over time, and there may be competing vaccines to sort through, as well.

Clearly, it does not help the cause of completing this process that hackers in the news (possibly Russian military intelligence units) have been trying to break into the systems on which our vaccine development depends. Neptune, Pluto and their often corrupt power plays in Pisces and Capricorn, respectively, seem to be more weaponized than usual at the moment, perhaps as a consequence of Mars moving into late Aries square Sibly Pluto (and transiting Cap points) ,and Neptune transiting square Sibly Mars (Gemini).  Whatever the case, the obstacles to re-opening schools safely and effectively don’t stop at our borders, and they’re being rendered increasingly political as we speak—not what our families need!
Final thoughts

It’s almost as if the news is writing the story for us here—what follows is breaking news that suggests we’re far from being out of the woods with the virus, and we’re certainly not at a point where children across the nation can be sent back to full-time live school instruction safely: from CNN.com:

“An unpublished document prepared for the White House coronavirus task force and obtained by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit newsroom, recommends that 18 states in the coronavirus ‘red zone’ for cases should roll back reopening measures amid surging cases.

The ‘red zone’ is defined in the 359-page report as ‘those core-based statistical areas (CBSAs) and counties that during the last week reported both new cases above 100 per 100,000 population, and a diagnostic test positivity result above 10%.’

The report outlines measures counties in the red zone should take. It encourages residents to ‘wear a mask at all times outside the home and maintain physical distance.’ And it recommends that public officials ‘close bars and gyms’ and ‘limit social gatherings to 10 people or fewer,’ which would mean rolling back reopening provisions in these places.”

In case anyone in these 18 “red zone” states is unaware of their status, here’s the list: Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah. This doesn’t mean that the other 32 states are out of the woods (many are experiencing increasing numbers), but the “red zone” states are in the most precarious situations at this time.
  
In the end, what will matter in this re-opening process is that our national priorities place the health of children and families first, above their roles in stimulating the economy, above anyone’s hopes that all the COVID chaos will be wrapped up in a neat bow before the election, and most importantly, above our children’s usefulness as pawns in political games.

Be safe and well, y’all!



Raye Robertson is a practicing astrologer, writer and former educator. A graduate of the Faculty of Astrological Studies (U.K.), Raye focuses on mundane, collective-oriented astrology, with a particular interest in current affairs, culture and media, the astrology of generations, and public concerns such as education and health. Several of her articles on these topics have been featured in The Mountain Astrologer and other publications over the years; see the sidebar links on the home page for her two most recent publications, now available as e-books on Amazon.

For information about individual chart readings, contact: robertsonraye@gmail.com.

© Raye Robertson 2020. All rights reserved. 









[i] Edith Abbott, “A Study of the Early History of Child Labor in America,” American Journal of Sociologyy, July, 1908, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 15-37. PDF document. http://www.jstor.com/stable/s762758.
[ii] Ibid.