What does it mean? Why us? Why didn't we know it was coming? What's going to happen next? Is everything going to be okay after all? Is/did this really happen? What good is astrology anyway?

Such questions fill the mind in the moments and aftermath of great events - personal or global, positive or negative. What follows are a few responses to these questions - not answers, but reflections on their presence in our minds, hearts, and lives.

To the astrology: there are two types of aspects: major (common - like trines) and minor (uncommon - like triseptiles). Major aspects unfold the common and cyclic weather patterns of the world - literally and figuratively. A careful study of the past patterns will provide anyone and everyone with a natural ability to anticipate and interpret the ongoing or upcoming patterns. This includes such events as Pluto changing signs (which has always given birth to a new media: internet, cd-rom, floppy disc, cassette, reel-to-reel, record, for the past 6 signs) or the well-known Saturn-Jupiter cycle of border-disputes - including Kuwait's invasion, the division and reunion of Germany, &etc.

Minor aspects are called minor because they're hardly ever noticed unless they are gathered into a constellation - a geometric shape such as a triangle or pentangle; perhaps a more civilized humanity will notice them more often - we don't. In particular the subdivision of the circle into sevenths provides for the arisal of something New in our happily repetitive world. A new flavor of ice cream, a new fashion, sound, or country. These are really minor 'new' in that nothing is introduced into existence or cultural awareness that is altogether unlike anything else. Maps, Slavery, Abolition, Electricity, the Telephone, Computers, the United Nations, WMD, STD - these are NEW. They are breaks in the cycles, in the habits. Each gives birth to its own new cycle of dominance or dormancy in our individual and collective lives. Each will eventually go out of existence - monarchy, horsepower, hieroglyphics, to suggest a few - and their final departure is also something new.

Obviously the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon is something new. Not since the formation of the United States has a foreign presence wreaked such direct and visible harm upon our soil and souls. America as haven from the violent, hate-filled unrest of the world has been destroyed. Not only for Americans, but for the world at large. Where now will the Afghan refugees dream of fleeing? Where can the Arab-Americans hope to emigrate to?

The New Astrology was a moment in which the planet Mars, War-God of Old, was bound to Uranus, the Maker of Archetypes and the Unexpected, which was bound to the Sun, who translates lessons into events, which was then rebound to Mars. Thus: an archetypal form of violence encapsulated in one large unimaginably visible event.

I heard a veteran describe his escape from the destruction of the Pentagon. He said: "I heard a bad sound and left the area. There was no moment of disbelief - I knew and acted on what I knew - that something was dropping out of the air into the pentagon. I didn't wonder or worry - I just left."

We have had our moment of disbelief - our decades of disbelief. Now Americans are veterans - or at least no longer the virgins of the world.

We wanted one world. Now we have it. The implacable rhythm and reality of dark and light that courses through all creation has come a little closer. The victims of terror and prejudice are no longer safely tucked away in the boring barren hills of Asia; they walk among us, may yet be you or me. Perhaps this will inspire us to look beyond the waving image of the Stars & Stripes and into the killing fields of Central Europe, Africa, and Tibet with different eyes, and with inspired, effective actions.

There is a horrible crack in our experience. A horror made that crack, and what Lies Outside seems first to be nothing but more horror and nasty, dangerous, worthless men. That is all we see now, for the crack is still narrow. If it is patched, another, and another, and another will appear, and America will join the common graveyard of democracies - which seldom last more than 250 years. If we look through that crack, all we will see is the undeniable, disturbingly real world of darkness which is in all ways Un-American, and as much a threat to US as US is to Them. If we walk up to the crack and pass beyond we will STILL see that darkness, but we will also discover a living world, a world of true diversity, of many deep and culturally rich traditions, a world of humans who would rather till the land than pave it, a world of common and uncommon people, languages, creatures - all of whom merit their right to live, and not merely be granted preservation status - a world not made by US or THEM - the world of ongoing Divinely-inspired creation.

Human experience is naturally polarized; this is the Nature of Existence. However, that polarity need not exist in its crudest form - good and evil. The gifts of consciousness and evolution can - must - transmute this polarity into the complimentarity of strength and weakness, of giving and receiving, of faith and reason. Spirituality consists of invoking the numbers of Soul, Divinity, or Reality and reshaping phenomena accordingly. When Soul alone is active, the polarity is resolved towards unity; where Divinity is present, there the revelatory Three unbinds the addictive simplicity of GoodBad; to the Real, the two becomes un-two, or zero, or wonderfully many. So pick a number, recognize your own alignment, and set about reshaping the polarity of your world.

To doubt the power of the few is to exchange your Soul for the sure familiarity of the collective mind. Do not doubt. Do not seek the Right Thing. Knowledge without action remains untested and is inevitably false. Action without knowledge is likely to blunder or recreate itself. When mindful of God and Soul, the heart becomes a voice and a guide to action. If this is to be a Land of Freedom, a World of Freedom, we must separately and collectively seek within and engage without. Free will = Do It Yourself! We can learn and imitate others, but we must accept flawed actions and dead-ends if we are to brave the world outside our perfect compound. Let us Do, and trust God, Life, and our kind neighbors to mark the wisdom and effectiveness of our acts.