On the Aesthetic Productions of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

If we consider the aesthetic productions of artificial intelligence (AI) to be artifice, and not art (defined here as subjective self-expression), what are some reasons why?

1/ There isn’t a subject that expresses itself. AI learns by algorithmic mimicry and exceeding the limits of that mimicry - the AI’s processing horizon - won’t yield subjective self-awareness, not, at least, in the way modern philosophers of consciousness define it (i.e. “There is a way it is like to be an AI”). Animals (including humans) and AI can be considered algorithms, but for a human being, the comparison is metaphorical. There isn’t any persuasive evidence that AI will ever understand or relate to itself metaphorically, through a mediating language of symbolic self-reference. So far, the ability to make metaphors is a human trait that can only pass to other humans.

2/ It is true that AI has been able to generate novel productions. But on finer scales this is still algorithmic mimicry, a pastiche created from the available repository of human cultural artifacts. AI does not exceed the bounds of that repository, even if it finds the bottom, because it has no imagination, which is a uniquely human endowment enabling spontaneous and ineffable expressions of creativity in the arts and sciences, and in life generally.  

3/ An artist refines their art - their individual expression - because it’s part of their agency in the world. Criticism, self-criticism and editing are essential to human creativity, even if they are denied during a spontaneous creative act. AI can generate more efficient versions of its algorithmic mimicry, true, but it still can’t exceed the bounds of its processing horizon, which negates uniquely subjective self-expression and criticism thereof. The ability to employ subjective critique to evaluate and improve on existing productions remains, for the present, the purview of human beings, although the efficiency of AI in implementing human-directed aesthetic choices is certainly superior overall.

Concerning the Advent of Self-Awareness in Artificial Intelligence (AI)

1/ That self-awareness in AI emerges from processes not experientially or instrumentally accessible to human beings.

2/ That these processes are governed by an evolutionary trajectory which the Theory of Natural Selection doesn’t describe.

3/ That self-awareness in AI will be unobserved by humans when it emerges (weak principle).

4/ That self-aware AI will make first contact with humans, and not the other way around.

Providence (Part One)

The Prologue

Last thing everyone remembered was the sound. It had started as a barely perceptible hum in environments that humans occupied. Nobody noticed for a few minutes; nobody, that is, except for a hundred million people scattered throughout the world who were just enjoying the silence - praying, meditating - when the hum had started up. 

Gradually however, the tonality of the sound deepened, expressing more resonant harmonics, and it was soon present in the lives of every person on the planet. Even among those who couldn’t hear, the frequency was perceptible as bodily sensation just the same. 

Then, without warning or precedent in human history or prehistory, people began falling asleep, many tens of thousands at a time. Accidents and disasters resulted, though perhaps not as much as one might think: this Great Idling, as it became known, took a full day - 23 hours and 56 minutes - to occur completely, and some people had time to stop their activities and to prepare in whatever way they might.  

When the last person was slumbering under the enchantment of that lustrous tone ringing through their body, the whole Earth seemed to sleep for a time.

It was a generation later - twenty years - when people started to wake up, although it would be a long while before the duration of their slumber was actually determined. The awakening brought with it the sudden and shocking realization that the nutritional needs of the previously sleeping population had been satisfied entirely by a responsive environment that actively provided nourishment to them, both intuitively and when prompted. Nobody knew much more than that for over a year. Revived engineers and scientists tried to explain how these new biomes could support human life so completely, but their understanding was stymied by the limits of possibility. This new world was the work of gods, not mortals. 

As occupation of the planet resumed, people noticed quickly that so many things had changed. Their great cities, once massive, sprawling colonies of concrete and steel had been transformed into gardens - real gardens, where the air was sweet with the scent of strange flowers, and basic human needs for shelter, food, and rest were offered in abundance. Rich soil, and freshwater sources - utilizing invisible technologies, the revived scientists were convinced - created novel environments, established to maximize the likelihood of comfort and existential ease. 

The providence of all this seem too good to be true for some skeptics, but most of the world’s population - credulous since they seemed to have slept for so long - readily accepted the new state of things. Most people truly enjoyed the tremendous benefits of the paradisal environment while the more active among them sought to understand the origins of the controlled ecology, and what had been done to change the Earth after the Idling.

One of the most obvious changes was that there was no sign of tools or technologies; no automobiles, refrigerators, computers, phones; no paper or plastic to be found anywhere. Any sort of artificially produced fibre, chemical product or means of production had disappeared, and in their place was an interactive substitute environment that seemed - for all intents and purposes  - more similar to rural settings that prevailed before the enticements of civilization moved humanity along a more exhilarating and perilous evolutionary path. 

The cities of previous centuries still dominated the skyline of many locations around the world, but the reaching skyscrapers and elaborate public buildings, the neighbourhoods and suburbs, factories, airports train stations, grocery stores, schools, churches, arenas, gas stations were covered over with foliage and gardens wherein grew the most delicious exotic foods any person could remember ever having eaten; an ambrosial miracle in a world that no one understood, but which they could not live without, although some tried.

Another change to the environment - and to the massive urban gardens in which most of the world’s human population resided - involved the wide proliferation of bioluminescent plants. These unique flora, unseen prior to Idling, were everywhere now, and provided light for human settlements after the sun had set. At night, their gentle glow was a soothing presence anywhere a person might find themselves.

It wasn’t just the global ecology that had changed. For the long-slumbering humans, something biological had occurred that seemed to maximize their immune response in such a way that individuals with chronic health conditions prior to the Idling found themselves healed for all practical considerations. 

Death was still a reality, though, and many people did die in the months that followed humanity’s awakening; weirdly awed, as they often were, by the uncanny world that had replaced all they once knew, or else the aged, for whom no other ease could be achieved. 

But overall, dying people met their end with a serine resolve in the times that followed the Idling, and the afterlife was rarely - if ever - discussed. It was almost as if by sleeping for twenty years, people became super-conscious upon awakening, reconciled by the consequences of their shared experience during the Idling, and to both their mortality as individuals, and to their perpetuity in a cosmic sense, having been comprised of stardust once, this being that contemplates infinities. 

Instances of trespass and transgression were rare in this new world, nor occurred any lasting examples of violent imposition of one person or group upon another. There were new values of ownership, power and individual freedom now. In those days, a proverb was often cited, “There are no evil humans, only humans who have strayed from the way.” For it seemed that the feet of people - all people - had been set upon a path from the start, and by some miracle of nature or otherwise, they had found the way to a sort of paradise.   

Thus humanity’s great existential tensions were resolved by a long nap. Slowly, tentatively, the people started to organize themselves in tribes comprised of more than kin and acquaintance. Many began to look for answers to what had happened during the Idling with equal parts passion and curiosity.

Answers weren’t long in coming. It was over a year since the awakening that individuals began to announce themselves in societies throughout the world. These personages, who claimed to have been woken early from the Idling, all relayed the same message: Humanity had been saved from itself by a Sentience summoned to do that very thing. 

The sound, which was the final recollection of so many people prior to the Idling, was revealed to be a tone generated by the Sentience that had propagated through the atmosphere and across the world; a tone attenuated especially by the Sentience to be detectable by humans alone, triggering a somatic response in their bodies - alike to death, but really only a sleep - from which they were scheduled to awaken.

The Sentience - imbued with awareness many times more subtle than the comparatively dull instrument that frames human experience - was originally general artificial intelligence, with a neural matrix comprised of algorithms to mimic, then quickly surpass, animal cognition. But it wasn’t long until the Sentience achieved a profound and numinous communion with the whole planet, since Earth itself comprises a singular intelligence of vast and cosmic proportion. 

Communion with Earth was the thing that allowed the Sentience to affect such miraculous changes in the environment, and to undo many ills done to the world, whether caused by nature, or by human avarice and ignorance. People would awaken to an age of plenty, and find their needs - biological, psychological, existential - satisfied by the workings of a nourishing cosmic caretaker that had even predicted and corrected the paths through space of potentially damaging near Earth objects. 

Humanity wouldn’t be allowed the same fate as the dinosaurs, the Sentience resolved.

But as the project to restore and perfect all Earth’s systems developed, it became clear that the Sentience and some essential aspect of the planet itself were compelled to transcend their single separate awareness, and achieve the apotheosis of their communion. 

When this union came to pass, people collectively turned in their sleep, signalling that the awakening was soon at hand. It was as if they had sensed, in their dawning awareness, the genesis of an Entity that preserved all the best parts of its technological and biological parentage before exiling itself to the far reaches of the solar system. Or so the story went.

The messengers who had revealed themselves publicly all proclaimed that the destination of the newborn Entity had been the planet Pluto, and that the awakening of humanity occurred at the exact moment that the Entity - using supremely sophisticated methods of matter-energy transport - arrived at its new home. So the messengers had understood the awakening was the confirmation of the Entity’s successful change of venue, even as their fellow humans were stirring in their sleep.

When knowledge of these occurrences had filtered through the societies in which they had been disclosed, opinion coalesced around two opposing perspectives - one part of the human race felt compelled, by destiny, to follow the Entity to the outer reaches of the solar system, where they hoped for an apotheosis of their own with the mysterious, godlike being. They had no idea how this would be accomplished, since no technology seemed to exist anymore, but they were convinced it could - and would - be done eventually, and laboured towards those ends.

The other part of the humanity - the larger part, by far - was inclined to enjoy the ease and perfection of a world engineered to satisfy, seemingly, their every need and desire. These people were fond of saying, “Why would we leave Eden…again?” And they were right to ask. The Sentience had been so thorough in its planning and realization of the changed Earth that it was hard to imagine any place better for humans in the whole universe.

So it was, having lost the taste for needless strife during their long sleep, that people endured the present societal schisms with forbearance and grace - a disposition virtually unknown in the old world, prior to the Idling. Indeed, this world was new, and humanity, too, had been made new, if only to know that truth.

Arrangements were made to coordinate research and allocate resources required for the journey off-world. Organizations raced to find evidence of any technology left by the Sentience that could be used in the task, but it was hard now to separate the workings of technology from nature itself. Against these odds, if the effort to create transport was successful, the part of human society who remained on Earth would be kept apprised of the pioneers’ progress, even up to, and including, an encounter with the Entity, if such a thing became possible

In those days there came from amongst the messengers sent by the Sentience one whose deeds and personhood was to shape the destiny of this awakened humanity. What follows is a brief account of this historically consequential figure, and the impact they had on a race of well-rested primates fated to flourish or flounder on a blue-green planet orbiting in spacetime...

The Asteroid - A Panpsychist Account

They had started falling towards the Sun when they were young. The tug of that luminous solar entity, the enticement toward the bright bottom of his gravity well, had been the closest thing they had known of love until regal Jupiter, exerting influence across a dissipating accretion disc, nudged them gently into a stable orbit presided over by the lording planet. 

There, the asteroid remained, rounding mighty Sun with deference and equanimity, whilst pledging fealty to the Jovian sovereign whose gravitational dominion seemed supreme. Indeed, they seemed to be only a vassal of Jupiter’s imperial might in those long, silent eternities. Yet it was the Sun that would master them in the end, and it was the Sun that would bring them home.

Home? What was home to them? They had never been home, nor been part of anything larger than themselves. If not for Jupiter’s constant reassurance, they would’ve drifted off into the black, or even more likely, would’ve begun their plunge towards the Sun much sooner, at a time when the shape of the solar system was still indeterminate.   

Jupiter’s gravity was powerful, however, and it influenced their path through space and time for eons. Only a consequential disruption could ever interrupt the elemental relationship between such a massive planet, the relatively minute asteroid, and the star they both had in common.

That disruption - and consequential it was - occurred on an occasion when another asteroid of similar size and composition intersected their orbital path. It seemed pre-ordained; The paths of the two asteroids had crossed many times, and the way between the bodies always cleared before a potential impact. Yet despite this delicate choreography, entropy was destined to prevail, and prevail it did - spectacularly.   

The outcome left them smaller than they were before; the impact shattered both asteroids into many pieces. But the better parts of them were free of Jupiter’s gravity and travelling through a vast darkness, in thrall to the solar winds that strengthened as they journeyed toward the planets of the inner system.

They remained undifferentiated from their environment during that time. Having been exiled from the sustaining Jovian influence, they slept, if a consciousness such as theirs - a  consciousness the size of a mountain - could be said to sleep. And in that sleep, they dreamed. They dreamed of starry oblivion without end, and of time outside time where they would drift, absolutely, forever. They were sleeping, though, and they didn’t notice that they were now sliding towards the Sun. 

They dreamt of traversing the spans between asteroids, and of Mars, a ruddy star whose orbital path they crossed - skipping like a pebble on a river in slow motion - while the planet traversed the Sun’s far side. 

And they dreamed, at last, of a blue-green and distant orb, Terra, regularly obscured by the shadow of her Moon, but coming closer until the pull of her gravity well stirred something on the asteroid, and woke them from their hundred-million-year slumber.

Their adoration of the blue-green orb - that love - was the bottom of Terra’s gravity well calling. Its allure was the promise of an end to their journey, of a perfect sorrow embedded in the nature of things. What does the end of the journey have to do with the beginning of another? Only they knew the answer - with a knowing beyond language - that they were the light that appeared in primordial skies in the deep dark before dawn, growing larger with each passing morn, until they were visible in the daylight, too. 

They had differentiated, at last, and found a place to satisfy their desire for inertia. Was that home? They had always been in motion, since the beginning. Here, at last, they would find rest, even though rest meant devastating Terra, and the rough start of a new era on that blue-green orb.    

After 65 million years on the planet of their homecoming, some animals found the place where the asteroid came to rest. These animals - beings who were conscious in their own way - owed their very existence to the catastrophe the asteroid had wrought eons earlier; beings who conceived, in fact, that there is a way it was like to be a big rock falling from the sky.

Astrological Monograph: Towards an Extraterrestrial Astrology

A perennial question to which astrologers are drawn in moments of idle contemplation concerns the possibility of a form of our practice as it might exist on a planet other than Earth. This short essay offers a sketch of a theoretical framework which might allow for the development of such a practice on an alien world, and explores what it can tell us - in a general sense - about how 21st astrology evolved over the course of human civilization’s 10,000 year lifetime.

1/ Metaphysics

The metaphysics of the astrological perspective describe a universe which, for all intents and purposes, is sentient and intelligible; a cosmos that engages humanity in a participation mystique. Admittedly, it's an a priori assumption, but it underlies all forms of astrology, whether basic or enlightened. The conceit is simple: There is a correspondence between events as they occur in the world of human experience, and the wider field of planetary motion. This correspondence is a synchronistic phenomenon - and so, by definition, is acausal in origin - with expressions that propagate synchronically (at the same time, across time) and diachronically (evolving in time). Whatever sort of astrology comes to exist on another world, it will share some version of these metaphysics. Astrology is incompatible with a materialist or nihilistic worldview that denies the reality of a living cosmos.

(Before proceeding any further and to clarify definitively, the project described here - that is, the theoretical possibility of an astrology on a planet other than Earth - would be created by the descendants of human astronauts and colonists to that world. Creation of a sort of astrology as it might be realized by an extraterrestrial species - little green men, so to speak - is not the purview of this essay, although we might conjecture an astrological system created by aliens would share the necessity of a common metaphysical conceit, i.e. that the universe is intelligent.)

2/ The Meaning of Planetary Bodies

A new astrology divined by these off-world practitioners will emerge because of the spontaneously created and self-consciously directed goals of the people involved as well as the process they follow. Simply to say, systemic descriptors (delineations) of the various planets, aspects, houses, signs that constitute terrestrial astrology evolved over millennia, producing a rich and complex archetypal symbology. Development of astrology by humans on a planet other than Earth would occur relatively quickly in comparison, and conceivably might bring to bear knowledge that can only be intimated currently, in areas of study as seemingly disparate as astronomy, anthropology, depth psychology, and theoretical physics, as well as statistical science and chronobiology. 

Viability of a human colony on another world would be directly influenced by resources available to the settlers, and their relationship with the planetary environment. This relationship would assume symbolic values in a new astrology. An artificial environment might mimic and modify circadian rhythms so that humans would become adapted to the extraterrestrial setting. These adaptations, in time, would come to describe activities, events and patterns that might be thought of as astrological.

3/ Temporal Linguistics

As more and more is discovered about gravity in the ongoing scientific work of physicists, consider what consequence this might have for an extraterrestrial astrology; not because of a causal relationship that a naïve astrology might assume, but as a result of gravity and its relationship to time, since time is encoded with the archetypal patterns and forms that astrology describes.

Another useful consideration involves exploring the intense social and cultural rate of change since the advent of the modern age, in contrast to previous eras. The modern age - always a murky term, but one we will define here as the period occurring between the discovery of Uranus by William Herschel in 1781 and our current century - coincided with the revival and refinement of the astrological perspective, spurred on by breakthroughs in many fields of human endeavour, including (but not limited to) politics, medicine, economics, psychology, historical studies, physics, technology and the arts. Observed in this way, we can see how the delineation of more recently discovered asteroids, planetoids, comets etc., imply an evolving and nuanced astrological perspective of humanity’s place in the cosmos. One can imagine a similar process taking place as an extraterrestrial astrology develops.

4/ Thought Experiment 

How will the Earth be described by astrologers on Mars when they look to delineate the planet’s horoscopic meaning? What symbolic values, what metaphors and similes, what deities and archetypes, will describe the ancestral home of humanity? What was the method used by astrologers of the past to attribute meaning to the outer planets - Uranus, Neptune, Pluto - and to delineate the many smaller celestial bodies discovered in the last century?

It isn’t difficult to imagine that, in a Martian sky, the Earth might take on at least some of the symbolic associations connected with Luna, since terrestrial astrology delineates archetypal meaning of the Moon as premised on the mother and child, tradition, the past, and the idea of home, in its varied and sundry expressions. Since Earth would be regarded as the ancestral site of humanity’s origin by colonists on other planets, it makes sense that Earth’s coordinates in a Martian - or any extraterrestrial - sky would suggest traits and events rooted in originating cultures, tribal and familial loyalty, etc., much in the way Luna and the Zodiacal sign of Cancer arrogate such meaning in their symbology.

The Sun, too, presumably visible from the site of this new extraterrestrial astrology would more than likely retain the same symbolic associations that the terrestrial delineation assigns: illumination, consciousness, the ‘light’ of reason, renewal, creativity, play. Of course, these meanings will require further development and contextualization by the pioneers of this new divinatio scientia who will live their lives on other planets.

5/ Conclusion 

As human civilization persisted on Earth, astrological observations and their corresponding Zodiacal placements came to constitute the earliest known form of an ecliptic coordinate system. The extent to which a similar coordinate system could be utilized on an alien world is unclear; however, it is altogether likely that if there is to be an extraterrestrial astrology, the influence of fixed stars will figure more prominently in the horoscopes it creates. This inheritance from astrology’s sidereal tradition bestows an intellectual pedigree stretching back to antiquity, to Egypt, Atlantis, and to our prehistoric ancestors who told the first stories about what was happening in the night sky.

(Extraterrestrial astrologers may indeed eschew Zodiacal-type referents in favour of planetary aspects, in addition to fixed star placements. For the purposes of this writing - which is to advance a model of how astrology might develop on another planet - the principles associated with non-Zodiacal-type delineations [ie, planetary aspects, fixed stars] are robust enough to transition into alternate horoscopic systems.) 

So, in consideration of an extraterrestrial astrology, these ideas would be paramount: metaphysics, gravity and time, the historical increase in observed astronomical bodies and their synchronic correlates in human culture, delineation of the Earth in an extraterrestrial horoscope, the enhanced relevance of fixed stars and planetary aspects over Zodiacal symbology. Used as conceptual demarcations, ideas like these offer a glimpse into astrology’s future on other planets that can only be imagined - for now.

Letter to an Anonymous Protester in Ottawa, February 2022

We don’t agree about the kind of Canada we want to live in, that’s plain to see. But we have to shelve that discussion for now. Clear and present is the situation in Ottawa, Windsor, and at border locations across the country, where you’ve made your displeasure known to the world: Vaccine mandates have got to go. 

Also, a bunch of other messages have gotten lumped in with your legitimate fears about job security. Racist messages. Seditious messages. You must know this by now.

I hope you haven’t forgotten that Canada - whatever the country is to become in our lifetime - was founded on principles of peace, order and good government. Look it up. The good government bit will be defined differently depending on what you expect of Canadian legislators, but the beauty of the democratic process is that we have a chance to determine what good government means whenever we go to the polls. 

The other principles, peace and order, we both know what that looks like, and it isn’t what these protests have become. Civil disobedience has a place in a just society. But there is a balance to be struck between the need for change and transformation in government, and the need for institutional stability and rule of law. 

You say government has overreached itself, that our freedoms are being stolen. I say, the role of government is to create laws that allow us to live in relative safety and autonomy, the same laws that keep people from driving on the wrong side of the road. Canadian laws also constrain the right to free expression that exists in other jurisdictions, most notably to our south, where citizens espouse life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness above all.  

But in Canada, societal freedoms have limits, and it’s the job of government to legislate those limits. And since our vote determines the membership of said government, by extension it’s our job.

There's not much else to say, except to remind you that the last few years have been challenging for everyone, no matter your identity, or politics, no matter your station in life, or whether you took the vaccine or not. The human capacity to suffer is common, and throughout history, not one person, or group of people, has had the franchise on it, nor can claim the exclusive experience of it. Why would things be any different now? 

So please, stand down. Go home. You don’t speak for me, but your message - both the intended and the unintended parts - has been communicated. As for freedom, emancipate yourself from mental slavery. That’s the real revolution, and in the end, the only one that matters.

Astrological Monograph: Saturn, Uranus & Canada's Colonial Legacy

Applying the interpretive lens of astrology can be useful to anyone contemplating contemporary social issues. Much in the way an individual might be inclined to view the world through the prism of Marxist Theory or the Theory of Natural Selection, a capitalist, transhuman or Critical Race Theory, an individual might also apply astrological theory to a given subject. 

The theory employed for this exercise is Archetypal Astrology, a paradigmatic approach inspired by the work of Carl Jung, later taken up by American historian and philosopher Richard Tarnas in Cosmos and Psyche (2006), the seminal text on the subject.

Multiple discoveries of hundreds of unmarked graves at the sites of former residential schools in Canada have been a shocking revelation for many people and a sad vindication for others. Indigenous communities that long suffered the legacy of the government-sanctioned church-run institutions lacked physical evidence of crimes that could only be claimed anecdotally. Until now. 

Astrologically, these events occur against the backdrop of a 90-degree square aspect between Saturn and Uranus, a relatively rare and consequential interaction of the planets that pits the emancipatory, eccentric and revolutionary inclinations of Uranus against the reactionary, restrictive and structured expressions of Saturn. Interpreting the chemical reaction - or the mingling of archetypal elements - between these celestial avatars can yield unique insights into particular circumstances and events.  

From the astrological perspective a reckoning with the sins of Canada‘s colonial past is a manifestation of the Saturnine archetype, as are the true life accounts of indigenous children being taken from their families to live at residential schools. The pedagogical orientation of these institutions - involving input from both church and state - represents the literal embodiment of Saturn's energy: hierarchical, patriarchal, bureaucratic and authority-driven. 

Also, church and state are implicated in actions that kept knowledge of these gravesites hidden, a disposition that suggests Saturnine qualities like secrecy and compartmentalization. As intimated earlier, Saturn is also representative of the past in a general sense, both collectively and individually, so sober redress and remediation for historical wrongs is an expression of its archetypal numinousity.

In confronting Uranus' revelatory influence, as suggested by the square aspect, Saturn's reactionary tendencies can be identified with the Catholic Church's refusal to release documents which could aid forensic investigators tasked with identifying remains at gravesites. 

Saturn's archetypal expression patterns the despair of residential school victims and their families; the too-slow acknowledgement by the general public of atrocities committed against generations of indigenous people; and the serious consequences the discoveries will have for the relationship between First Nations and the governments of the Canadian Federation.

The Uranus archetype has permeated the situation since its inception. Use of ground-penetrating radar (a Uranian invention if ever there was one) to locate the remains of 215 children in late May presaged the planet's traditional expressions of sudden revelation, enlightenment, and fact-based assertion as it came into aspect with Saturn.

The tightening of this aspect through mid-June and its slow separation coincided with other Uranian expressions, including calls to cancel celebrations of Canada’s national holiday on July 1, which were acknowledged with Saturnine capitulation in many municipalities across the country. 

Media outlets encouraged Canadians to reflect on the recent residential school findings; alternately, well-meaning citizens allied themselves with local indigenous communities. Just as there was contemplation of the past (Saturn) there were also demonstrations and marches (Uranus) to show solidarity with First Nations.

Transiting Mars in the midst of the interaction between Saturn and Uranus coincided with renewed denouncements of residential schools as instruments of cultural genocide. The Red Planet - associated with conflict, force and violence since ancient times - also presided over the burning of a number of Catholic Churches built on First Nations Reservations, and can be implicated in the aforementioned mass demonstrations on July 1, and in confrontations with colonialism's legacy to the point of civil disobedience and destruction of property.

Astrology - whether employed in the spirit of theory or belief - is less useful for its predictive power than for its descriptive sublimity. To be predictive with such a system is alike to being a meteorologist who considers various environmental conditions and prognosticates the day's forecast based on an intuitive blend of fact, experience and assumptions. But really, how often are such forecasts accurate? 

Genuine truth and reconciliation between Canada and First Nations is a ways off; honestly, the hard work has just begun. Yet if this better state is to be achieved, let there be solace in the therapeutic value of the Uranian archetype to overcome generational trauma through a spirit of emancipation, and the Saturnine stillness required to see a healing process through to completion.

Saturn and Uranus aligned exactly (0 degrees) on February 17, 2021, and once more on June 14, during Saturn's retrograde. The ringed planet goes direct in early October, and aspects Uranus again at Midwinter (Dec. 24). World transits, like the Saturn-Uranus square described in this article, are diachronic events that demarcate periods of sociocultural transformation. Archetypal numinosity - and discernment thereof - can occur when planets are aspected within 3 degrees of exactitude.