Social Security Disability
If you read this blog, and watch the emotional decay of human consciousness across the planet, you see how souls are finding ways to drop out by illness and accident - then go on Social Security disability so they don't have to work - or they simply don't have the energy to function in physical reality anymore. Clients have told me they come from a "Disability Family" where everyone lives on government benefits and no one works. It's not the easiest life, but people often live their lives that way.
When you live in the northeast, Social Security disability is not enough money to live on. But clients in other states tell me about mobile homes or other living accommodations that cost as little as $10,000. Their standard of living is low so Social Security Disability can be enough to get by.
Other clients on Social Security Disability have jobs off the books and manage that way. Then there are the souls who really need Social Security Disability and are declined by the government - which seems hard for me to believe - especially when they are mentally ill - which, as you know, causes physical breakdown ... etc., etc., etc. Then we have the seniors - many of whom live totally on Social Security after having worked all of their lives..... Okay .... you got it.
Sooner or later - in the declining economy - you knew you would read this story featured in Sunday's news ...
Social Security disability on verge of insolvency AP - August 21, 2011
Laid-off workers and aging baby boomers are flooding Social Security's disability program with benefit claims, pushing the financially strapped system toward the brink of insolvency. Applications are up nearly 50 percent over a decade ago as people with disabilities lose their jobs and can't find new ones in an economy that has shed nearly 7 million jobs.
The stampede for benefits is adding to a growing backlog of applicants - many wait two years or more before their cases are resolved - and worsening the financial problems of a program that's been running in the red for years. New congressional estimates say the trust fund that supports Social Security disability will run out of money by 2017, leaving the program unable to pay full benefits, unless Congress acts.
About two decades later, Social Security's much larger retirement fund is projected to run dry as well. Much of the focus in Washington has been on fixing Social Security's retirement system. Proposals range from raising the retirement age to means-testing benefits for wealthy retirees. But the disability system is in much worse shape and its problems defy easy solutions.
The trustees who oversee Social Security are urging Congress to shore up the disability system by reallocating money from the retirement program, just as lawmakers did in 1994. That would provide only short-term relief at the expense of weakening the retirement program. Claims for disability benefits typically increase in a bad economy because many disabled people get laid off and can't find a new job. This year, about 3.3 million people are expected to apply for federal disability benefits. That's 700,000 more than in 2008 and 1 million more than a decade ago.
Virgo Transition
Well, here we are again on the brink of our annual Virgo Transition when all changes - from jobs, to education, to physical moves, to completions and beginnings of almost anything especially relationships and friendships, to the start of 2012 in Numerology, to the energies of the Jewish New Year which are very powerful as they shift grids. 2012 will be a far more interesting year than anyone can imagine.
Virgo Transition signals to all souls ... "This is the time to make change." Can you feel it?
Virgo Transition is interesting to say the least as is the biggest grid shifter of any other time of the year.
On August 25th, Crystalinks celebrates its 16th anniversary ... and continues to grow and improve in content and quality. It's the way of the world and what I came here to do. More later ...
In Virgo Transition ... once again students, who can afford it, head off to universities and institutes of higher learning, to plan a future. Remember what I blog each year - don't major in anything that doesn't result in a way to earn money after you graduate. Art, music, film, and all the fun therapeutic majors we all embrace and enjoy, must also be combined with a practical side to life, as the economy and job hunting are not easy, and school is expensive. To the students: Do you think the economy will improve by the time you graduate? More to the point ... what do you see the world looking like on your graduation day?
In recent years, we have seen Virgo Transition usher in ... the recession of 2008 and the events on 9/11 ... all creating scenarios that would affect the economy and the world in more ways than one.
Look around and see how your life, and those of others, has changed in Virgo Transition in the past and what you expect to happen now.
Virgo Transition enters this year as Mercury Retrograde (repetitions and delays) exits - August 26th. Wait for it!
Zoroaster (Z) - The Inventor of Astrology
The Greeks understood Zoroaster to be the "prophet and founder of the religion of the Iranian peoples" (e.g. Plutarch Isis and Osiris 46-7). Zoroaster allegedly lived six to seven millennia before the Common Era, and was variously a king of Bactria, or a Babylonian (or teacher of Babylonians).
Most importantly, was their image of Zoroaster as a Sorcerer-Astrologer, and the Inventor of both Magic and Astrology. Deriving from that image, and reinforcing it, was a "mass of literature" attributed to him which circulated the Mediterranean world from the 3rd century BCE to the end of antiquity and beyond. The Greeks considered the best wisdom to be exotic wisdom and what better and more convenient authority than the distant - temporally and geographically - Zoroaster?
One factor for the association with Astrology was Zoroaster's name, or rather, what the Greeks made of it. Within the scheme of Greek thinking (which was always on the lookout for hidden significances and "real" meanings of words) his name was identified at first with star-worshiping (astrothytes "star sacrificer") and, with the Zo-, even as The Living Star. Later, an even more elaborate mytho-etymology evolved: Zoroaster died by the living (zo-) flux (-ro-) of fire from the star (-astr-) which he himself had invoked, and even, that the stars killed him in revenge for having been restrained by him.
Similar ideas about Zoroaster also appear in early Christian literature, beginning with the Clementine Homilies 9.4-5, which identifies him with a parallel series of traditions about Nimrod having been the Founder of Astrology. In this account, Nimrod is killed by lightning and posthumously deified by the Persians as "Zoroaster, on account of the living (zosan) stream of the star (asteros) being poured upon him."
The second, and "more serious" factor for the association with Astrology was the notion that Zoroaster was a Babylonian. The alternate Greek name for Zoroaster was Zaratas/Zaradas/Zaratos, which Cumont and Bidez derived from a Semitic form of his name. The Pythagorean tradition considered the mathematician to have studied with Zoroaster in Babylonia. Lydus attributes the creation of the seven-day week to "the Babylonians in the circle of Zoroaster and Hystaspes," and who did so because there were seven planets.
The Suda's chapter on "astronomia" notes that the Babylonians learned their Astrology from Zoroaster. Lucian of Samosata decided to journey to Babylon to ask one of the Magi, Zoroaster's disciples and successors, for their opinion.
August 23 - September 22, 2011
Sun in Virgo
Happy Birthday to the Virgo Readers!
Under the tropical zodiac, the Sun is in Virgo roughly from August 23 to September 22, leaving it at the moment of autumnal equinox, by definition. Under the sidereal zodiac, it is currently there roughly from September 1 to October 30. In western astrology, the sign is no longer aligned with the constellation as a result of the precession of the equinoxes.
12 Around 1
