This year the mythic symbol for the month of Pisces, the play of illusions and theatrical entertainment in the deep dance of the most mystical month, is the Potemkin Village, a true but doubtless decorated story that is one of the true crown jewels in the estimation of people who admire dazzling scams and the nervy characters who pull them off. Here's the story:

    The Empress of all the Russias, Catherine the Great, wanted to develop an area in south Ukraine as a major new economic center, and entrusted her brilliant court favorite and lover Prince Potemkin with building new roads and towns to start the project. The Prince met with local builders and suppliers and made the plan, then went back to Petrograd, assuming all would get done properly without further inspections, not knowing that the huge ruble river now flowing toward the contractors was getting spent on vodka, women, silk, and more other things than even Gogol could imagine, and nothing was getting built. A few months before Catherine wanted to tour the New Villages, Potemkin discovered that there was nothing to inspect. His ingenuity and interest in his own survival swung into action.

    He created a series of obstacles, delaying Her Majesty's trip from autumn into winter, when heavy snow would cover the problem of no new roads. He hired theatre set designers and builders from Moscow and Kiev to make building facades, with nothing behind them, to line both sides of the only street through each Village. The Empress would marvel at all the beautiful new buildings as her troika and sleigh sped through the town  -- as it was too cold to stop except once, where, in one opulent room in the only actual building in all the Villages, Her Majesty was feted by actors playing the Mayor, the Town Council and others. Catherine was impressed, and though she soon found out what was really going on, the whole charade had a happy ending. Catherine forgave Potemkin, he got the villages built in the spring and summer with money he squeezed back out of the original crooks, and all the rest of the relatively honest people were happy.

    It is up to each reader to decide how much the Potemkin Village describes the American economy, government and media, all seemingly now acting in concert to sell their people a Scam War within the imperatives of the main Toy Shop scenario: maintain a fake dance of money from those who are emotionally needy, and desperate to soothe the aching emptiness of their lives by buying new thrills, to those who are mentally greedy, and sell the addicted a whole drugstore of toys with screens and speakers and wheels. The sellers are fully aware that they are feeding an addiction to a vain hope that more toys mean less misery. One of the true conditions that now applies is -- apart from anything anyone does or doesn't do to help awaken those who are asleep -- that many people will begin to awaken now to escape their unhappiness, as often happens when human beings are ignited by the intense new experience that often goes with discovering a new spiritual path. This time, though, the way to salvation may not just loop back to another separatist religion, but may lead to union with all people.

    2003 remains true to its ongoing promise as a superb opportunity for awakening, with the result that more and more people will see through the gilt plaster and fake jewels on the facade of merely material perception, and open their third eyes. The momentum toward awakening grows stronger this month with the major astral event of the turn from Winter to Spring: the entry of Uranus into Pisces, where he will likely rest, tone and meditate for a while after another incendiary tour through Aquarius, the house of his rulership.

    Uranus was in Aquarius from Jan. 31, 1912 to March 31, 1919 and now from Jan. 12, 1996 to now, on March 10, 2003. Some of the similarities are obvious. The Uranus-in-Aquarius years in the early 20th century hosted World War I, the Russian Revolution and the fall of imperial houses in Germany, Austria and Turkey. The Uranus-in-Aquarius years that are just ending now have likewise been exacerbated by cultural friction between east and west, between immovable Muslim faith and aggressive Christian economy. Uranus does tend to shake whatever has gotten dry and hollow, and cause it to break and fall. Earlier cycles:       1828 - 1835: Revolutions stir South America and topple Spanish colonial governors;       1744 - 1751: British massacre of Scots at Culloden scatters many clans to new worlds. The Young Pretender fails in the last pointless attempt to install a Catholic King in England.       1660 - 1667: Puritan government falls in England; the King is restored; London burns.       1492 - 1500: Columbus' momentous early voyages all occur with Uranus in Pisces and Pluto in the house of his rulership, in Scorpio.

    One common thread in all these cycles is that the great changes and cataclysms of the time came at the middle and end of each, and were not widely understood until the next eight years, of Uranus in Pisces, that followed each.

    Now we enter another of these Uranus-in-Pisces times, when the meaning in the collapse of what has just fallen will be apparent to us. Our Piscean intuition tells us something else has just fallen, along with the physical bulk of the World Trade Center buildings. Over the next eight years, from now to March 2011, we will understand better, and we will know why all these Potemkin Villages are now getting built to hide the new construction that covers the hole in the heart and the soul.

   This trick show will be especially feverish this month, as Uranus' momentous transition into Pisces isn't the only significant arrival at the Neptune Hotel. Mercury is here March 5 - 21, likely for another visit like last year's: Mercury is both "in detriment" and "in fall" in Pisces, so that his abilities in communication and language, in transportation and commerce -- in all areas of information support for large undertakings -- Mercury is not only weakened, but is tempted toward corruption by threats and bribes. One paradigm: the current servility of the mainstream American media, now a mere advertising agency for the predatory corporate dictatorship currently running the country.

    The other major planet move of the month is Mars into Capricorn, March 4 - April 21. Mars, "exalted" in the sign ruled by his grandfather and mentor, Saturn, is less cramped and angry now, as Saturn holds wisdom and prises out Mars' best qualities, helping to refine him from a rapist and bully into a disciplined warrior whose best qualities of loyalty, strength, courage, protection and mercy are of great and genuine value to the society he serves. His strengths were in evidence the last time Saturn was in Capricorn, Sept. 8 - Oct. 27, 2001.

  March's astral power week is March 3 - 9, New Moon to Uranus' entry into Pisces. New Moon and Sun conjoin in the 13th degree of Pisces, for which Marc Edmund Jones' Sabian symbol is "A sword in a museum  This is a symbol of the real weight of human personality, emphasized here by the surviving influence of great figures out of the past. The tradition of the race helps bring history to center in some outstanding individual of real promise at each point of crisis in human affairs, and the wisdom which thus becomes reincarnate in the new leadership is always available to counter any counsel of confusion arising from a moment's uncertainty. . . . The keyword is EXAMPLE. When positive, the degree is personal power in living common ideals, and when negative, ridiculous pretense of epic merit."

  Who has the common ideals in this month's Scam War scenario, and who is ridiculously pretending to epic merit, are up to each observer to decide. It is up to each awakened one to keep his or her own frequency high, serene and loving, as in this Native American story:

  A grandfather is talking to his young grandson. He tells the boy he has two wolves inside of him struggling with each other. The first is the wolf of peace, love and kindness. The other wolf is fear, greed and hatred. "Which wolf will win, grandfather?" asks the young boy. "Whichever one I feed," the grandfather replies.  

  Peace. Keep holding that frequency.

Copyright 2003 Dan Furst. All Rights Reserved.