The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are not coming; They are already here.

7 July 2020

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are not coming; They are already here.

The story has been with us since the writings of the book of Revelations and so people have linked the arrival of the four horsemen of the apocalypse with the second coming of Jesus. It is an acceptable illusion that has blinded people to the very evidence in front of them, awaiting the arrival of four physical horses with the archetypes astride of pestilence, war, famine and death. The illusion is so well done that very few people, who are not experiencing any of the above in the present day, realise that they are waiting in vain. The four horsemen of the Apocalypse are not coming; they are already here.

The present archetypes are not what you might envisage as frightening personas in true Hollywood style. Pestilence does not look like a walking ebola advert, War is not a fiery armoured soldier, famine is not an emaciated starving perversion and death is not the grim reaper complete with scythe and a black hooded cloak.

I wonder how many consider the global sweep of COVID-19 as a pestilence? It certainly fits the bill for some people, especially the old and the infirm. Coronavirus is the most Darwinian of viruses to inflict the human race all at the same time. It must be blessings from heaven to all those who faced the ruinous prospect of shortages in pension funds, care homes, underused houses, housing shortages, health insurers, private healthcare, the ever increasing demand on society for an increased elderly population and not enough people of working age to keep the taxes coming in.

Look at how the disease simply took over everyone’s life. We had to stay at home to stop the virus spreading. In the short term it has prevented the virus from rising exponentially to infect us all but it is not completely conquered. That may take time and possibly a vaccine. Before then there will be questions about how it started and maybe who is responsible for wrecking our health and hastening the demise of our already sick economy; yes the economy had its own virus but we’ll get to that later.

The astrological events of the last year, namely the cycles of the conjunctions between Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn, have all related to a complete shift of global proportions. Whether you believe in astrology or not, you cannot deny that so far the events have lived up to the astrological symbolism and there is not reason to believe they will not continue to do so. Pluto’s involvement with both societal planets has been dragging up the old outmoded muck from the past and bringing tremendous amounts of corruption to light. So many things that the structure of our society has been founded on no longer works. The demand for change is irresistible. The need for new paradigms is inevitable. The power to make those changes are presently in the hands of the four horsemen.

The coronavirus is only one manifestation of the pestilence plaguing the planet. When you look at the meaning of pestilence you can easily equate it to the malpractice of fake news,  ubiquitous shopping malls, hundreds of rubbish TV channels, advertising bombardments, packaging waste, non-biodegradable plastic, pollution, planned obsolescence, throwaway disposables, slave labour, poverty wages etc. In the same way that we become the recipient of a disease we did not want, we are also the recipients of all these other things that we also do not want. The constant invasion breeds intolerance, fear and in some cases fosters bigotry and discrimination.

Pestilence has been around for some time, as you can see, but its most obvious persona has only one goal, to replicate itself in the host and grow, just like COVID-19. It does not care if it kills the host. Its only goal is profit for its shareholders; corporations.

Those of you who know me will already have seen my demand that corporation and state should be as separate as church and state. If one looks at the reasoning behind the latter, it is clear why the former must follow the same reasoning.

Corporations have become very powerful in political spheres, donating money to politicians in return for favourable outcomes to them, powerful lobby groups capable of not only turning policies to help themselves but even writing the laws on how to do it.

Any politician taking donations from a corporation already does not work for the people who voted for them. The race for market share means corporations will spend millions to political campaigns and have muddied the waters so much you can no longer see were the line is between those who are supposed to make the law fair and those who want to make the law theirs. It is another virus that this time filters into the halls of political power to replicate the policies that corporations desire to increase profit for their shareholders. 

But corporations don’t just corrupt politicians. They corrupt the environment, stripping the land, raping natural beauty spots, diverting rivers away from villages, exploit cheaper labour in other countries, pillage, poison and pollute natural resources irrespective of the damage it causes. In addition it manipulates share prices and bends every tax loophole to avoid contributing to the very societies it steals from. They are headed up by an army of lawyers working full time to ward off every lawsuit and complaint going their way.

Corporations want more for themselves and to get bigger. Their goal to maximise profit is to be in every corner of the world, just like the disease of artery clogging junk food and sugary drinks sold in every ubiquitously advertised fast food chain.

Pestilence is the corporation. It wants to take you over and when you have nothing left to give it will leave you for dead.

Jupiter expands while Pluto brings to light corruption. The first of three conjunctions of the new cycle in Capricorn was on 5 April 2020, then Jupiter will go backwards and hit Pluto again on 30 June and then the third and final conjunction will be on 12 November 2020; only 9 days before the Jupiter Saturn conjunction.

It is interesting that COVID-19 has had a detrimental impact on business. Corporations are shedding jobs like a dog moults hair. Millions of people will lose their jobs because the ‘stay at home’ narrative works against their interest. People not earning money and in fear of losing their livelihoods and maybe not being able to afford to pay rent or mortgage stand to lose much. Corporations have no moral compass. They will tighten their purse strings and wait for the next fat profit opportunity to come along. Meanwhile a global depression looms that will make the 1930s depression look like a minor recession.

George Orwell is often misquoted in his iconic book ‘1984’ that war should not be won but should be continuous. The bit about being continuous, however, is something he did mention. I imagine a box of Lego bricks built into objects until the box is empty. What to do next? Break them all down and build something else. This way the game is continuous.

Profit has to be continuous. We live in a debt economy where scarcity increases value. Sometimes that scarcity can be created artificially, like bringing up oil at so many millions of barrels a day in order to maximise profit. But value can also be increased if you introduce the factor of uncertainty. There is nothing like a good war to generate instability and make things like oil more expensive. It is also good to spend extraordinary amounts of money on weapons to lay waste and entire region. It is further a good thing to then rebuild what has been knocked down. Think of it as a real life box of Lego; build it up and knock it down... repeat.

War costs money, lots of money. Governments spend billions on military might and create an arsenal that also costs billions to maintain and upgrade. Even when a country is not at war they will get ready for one.

Is it not strange that the banks will lend money to both sides? If the banks did not lend money for war then war would be either short lived or fought with sticks and spears. Hundred of years ago the governments would need to find gold to pay for soldiers to fight a war. Now it is available on credit; kill now pay later. Either way the bank continues to make a handsome profit. It was Mayer Amschel Rothschild who is reported to have said, ‘Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation and I care not who makes the laws’ Perhaps the central banks have amended this quote slightly to,’ permit me to lend the money and I care not who makes the war’. It is not so great a stretch to suspect that the heads of central banks may not foment war per se but will no doubt actively remove any obstacles to loan that enables one.

Some countries experience today the results of war, for example Syria and the Yemen. The United States has been at war with someone for almost 100 years. It is not in the bank’s remit to advise policy on war but there is also, just like a corporation, no moral compass to make the world a better place. Another popular misquote is that ‘money is the root of all evil’. The love of money is the correct quote and it serves the argument well that those who wish to profit from conflict have no concern over how it is spent.

War is the Central Banks.

Money doesn’t grow on trees. Well at least this is what we are told until someone magically finds the money tree and creates billions out of thin air. Since 2008 there have been rafts of quantitative easing, designed in the first instance to encourage banks to lend to business.

They didn’t do that.

Instead they bought their own shares and increased the value for their share holders. It was cheap money with a low interest rate. Corporations did the same and every large company gorged on cheap money.

Fast forward to 2020 and we are still seeing quantitative easing, only this time to inject some liquidity into the system. But now those people at the bottom of the food chain are struggling to make ends meet. The middle class has been squeezed out leaving only the very rich and the working class. In 2020 the stock market has never been higher and yet the gap between rich and poor has also never been greater. The neoliberal policies of Reagan and Thatcher (they were at least the figureheads) has proven to be a failure. Keynes has not worked, Hayek has not worked. A new economic model that sustains both the manufacturer and the consumer is needed.

But the stock market does not manufacture. It barely holds stock anymore. It is a house of futures markets, casino bets on currency values, debt derivatives, credit default swaps and occasionally commodities. The stock market set up bleeds the people dry, creating a world of profit completely separate from the every day matters of ordinary people. It serves the banks, corporations and hedge fund managers all looking for that glorious profit that will make them richer. 

And when the stock market crashes and takes out the odd bank or pension fund, ordinary people end up losing their jobs or their life savings, pensions and those prudent investments everyone is advised to make for a modest and comfortable retirement.

Rich people and finance houses fight each other to suck up as much of the market share they can get their hands on, insatiable and unstoppable, sucking the life out of the ordinary day to day economy and the people who live in it.

The Stock Market is Famine.

The final horseman is the result of being a slave to the corporations, the banks and the stock market.

Ordinary every day people have neither the money in sufficient quantity or the inclination to be involved in any of the above and yet they, we, become the recipients of the fallout.

People are the victims of corporate irresponsibility, immorality and complacency.

Likewise banks only lend to you when it suits them. Mark Twain summed up the bank’s attitude to the individual perfectly saying. ‘A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain’. And if you are unlucky, that same bank will lend money to a country who drops a bomb on your house.

In 2008 when the stock market crashed and the banks were in danger of disintegrating, it was down to the ordinary person to suffer austerity and for the governments to put the tax payers in more debt to bail the banks out. I have yet to see the banks offer to pay back the tax payer.

I think most people would be happy to see the break up of every corporation into smaller entities, every bank into the normal high street bank looking after the interests of the local economy and the stock market return to investment into actual stocks. Nothing would be ‘too big to fail’ and no entity could hold governments to ransom.

But governments, with their short term politics and ideals developed through the filter of profit driven entities mean that the people who should be working for you are actually working for the corporations, the banks and the stock market. Between them all they end up causing the death of millions.

It was interesting to note in the UK when during the COVD-19 first days, the emphasis on the health of the nation was superseded by the emphasis on the economy. Businesses were screaming at the government to let them open up again. Their profit was more important than people’s lives.

It is tempting to point the finger at governments and say that the government is the last horseman. Death, however, comes in many guises and while Pestilence, War and Famine cause death by the millions, it is the government’s inaction to stop it that gives Death a free passage.

The Saturn Pluto conjunction of 12 January 2020 marked the beginning of a new 33-year cycle that will bring in a new and lasting structure to the world. It seems that this new structure begins with a complete unravelling of the old economic system and coupled with the effects (but not exclusively) of COVID-19, the planned global economic reset has started with a bang. What was, until the virus, an extend and pretend artificial liquidity boost to allow those in the know to grab as much asset as possible before the crash, is about to disintegrate into chaotic climax of the Hayek principle. The business world is changing. Jobs are changing. Consumerism is changing. Automation is coming in and people are going out; the problem with that being that automatons do not consume. 

Once the depression loses its grip, there will be new and innovative ideas, hopefully to bring in a more sustainable and environmentally friendly economy. For this to become a positive outcome for the ordinary person, the governments must establish policies that are right for the people and not for the horsemen.

The last of the three conjunctions is the Jupiter Saturn conjunction of 21 December 2020. These two planets are the societal planets that symbolise business. It is only natural to see failing businesses within the last quarter of the return cycle. When you consider how the economy has taken a pounding, business puts up its prices to try and recover lost profit during the lock down, consumers have no money because they did not earn during the same lockdown and all this right on top of Christmas, it is not a huge leap to consider that retail is going to be one of the hardest his sectors, followed by manufacturers who supply them.

The 21st December is also the winter solstice so the Sun goes to 0º Capricorn, triggering the previous conjunctions of Saturn to Pluto and Jupiter to Pluto. The seeds of a new beginning may begin to germinate in the face of the destruction created because we did not realise that the four horsemen of the apocalypse have been with us all along.

Anyone who says they don’t want to get involved with politics are just as affected by all of this as those who have paid attention. You don’t have to affiliate with a political party or argue with each other with trite tribal rhetoric on social media. You just have to understand that everything that affects you comes from a political decision and while you are not troubling your local politician, you leave the door open for large corporations to tell your elected representative what to think.

Death does not have to be a one way trip into oblivion. Death is a transformation from the old outmoded and corrupt models to something new and exciting. Ordinary people, in a quantity of numbers, can affect the kind of change and transformation that Death represents.

When coronavirus struck, most of the people were told to stay at home and do nothing. But there were many key workers who could not do that. There were also many volunteers who could not stay at home and many innovators who made stuff for the emergency services like protective equipment. It was not surprising how many people rose above the crisis and did something to help. In the face of a crisis we transformed and became a closer and more caring community. Death changes everything.

So perhaps it is fitting that the last part of this article goes to George Floyd; a black man who was killed unnecessarily by police who placed him in a choke hold for 8 minutes and 46 seconds until he died.

Not just a community, but the entire world rose up in protest. This was truly a global response to an ongoing and unresolved issue about racist attitudes towards people of colour in predominantly white countries. This kind of discrimination is not exclusive to white  people and examples can be found in India, Africa, China...the list is not exhaustive. But we have to start somewhere to unravel what has been created over hundreds of years of attitudes passed on from generation to generation. If the law says we should all be treated equally then the law has to reflect some form of redress when that does not happen. But laws are only created and upheld if we, the people, subscribe to them and some things cannot be enforced. We have to change. We have to transform.

Death is a change we cannot reverse. But why should we want to reverse it if the end of the world, another misquote perhaps, is just the end of the world as we once knew it. In order for us to transform our lives to live in a better and safer world, we have to allow those things to die that prevent our transformation. We must be the change we want to see. Alone we cannot change the world but we can change our world. But when the world comes together, as it did for George Floyd, you realise that you are not alone and collectively we can make a difference.