Convinced for quite a while now that American dualistic politics is a malicious ploy by unknown players to divide a people in order to better control them, I’ve reduced my exposure to the manipulations. Yet the universe has other plans, which I learned the night before last after being awoken from deep sleep.

At the foot of my bed was the apparition of a lady in her 30s, long brown hair, a string of pearls around her neck and a flapper-style dress.

Was this my great grandmother who died in 1922? Was this a female spirit from the Roaring 1920s revisiting the Roaring 2020s? Was it a deceased librarian from the Lakewood Public Library haunting me for the 26 cents in overdue fees that I never paid after skipping town in the mid 1980s?

“Singer,” she muttered in that echoing voice that apparitions always have in the Hollywood movies. Saints and spirits always whisper.

What singer was this? Was it a spirit trying to help me learn to carry a tune?

The next day upon waking, I rushed to the New Age store and purchased a Ouija board. Spelling out her name, I learned my spirit was Margaret Sanger, social activist of the early 20th century who promoted birth control as a way for women to have more freedom in life by not being tied to constant child-bearing and child-rearing.

Follow the Taurus

After providing her name, Sanger instructed me to “follow the Taurus.” Taurus, you know, relates to tangible property, body, money, values and self-reliance in these matters. Sanger was born with Neptune, Mars and Pluto in Taurus indicating a time of great material evolution, advancement and also idealization of material accumulation. While no one wants to be a pauper, we in the Consumer Age might not be aware that material accumulation was not always the goal of a life. Sinclair Lewis’ novel Babbitt was written in 1922 satirizing material pursuit over all other pursuit. Taurus both improved life and set it on a course of constant destruction and pillage.

Today’s transit of Uranus in Taurus in compatible aspect to the long transit of Pluto in Capricorn has resulted in intense focus on how Capricorn social structures and government authority affect our Taurus body, property and self-reliance. One hundred years after Babbitt was written, global material abundance is a result of complex and intersecting “supply chains.” Uranus is sending shock waves through that system and results in Uranus “enlightenment” for a culture that is used to always finding toilet paper and peanut butter on the shelves of the grocery stores, 24/7.

Sanger was a radical for her day and in my day I did not learn about her in school. For those willing to dig through the annals of female activism, there are as many women as men. But as Sanger pointed out, women’s responsibility for carrying children can prevent them from having the option to develop in other ways, if desired.

Today’s Missing Virgo

Sanger was a Virgo sun with Mercury and Uranus also in Virgo. Virgo is the sign of service and to be of service one’s ego must be subservient to the cause. Virgo like the other mutable signs (Gemini, Sagittarius and Pisces) tends to avoid conflict. Yet Virgo is passionate about its interests which include in health, diet, work life and pets. A Virgo might avoid conflict unless it is fighting for a cause then it will put fire signs to shame with its bold and sometimes reckless courage.

Sanger followed her Virgo sun into a career of nursing and activism. Her Leo moon (fire sign) provided additional courage to her nature. Fire sign moons never back down – they are fighters, even if there is no war (public service announcement).

Today’s astrological energy pattern is lacking in Virgo energy. While there is a great deal of “health” and “wellness” being marketed, much is geared to the profit motive rather than true health which may be more about food and exercise than pharmaceuticals and things that we can buy.

Asking Margaret

Sanger died in 1966 about a year after the legalization of contraception, while Pluto and Uranus were transiting her Virgo sun. She’d done her work; she could move on.

Back to the Ouija Board, I asked Sanger why she came to visit. Was it because we were now stepping back into the 19th century? And like all nostalgia, the reality of life in that century was much harsher than the idyllic Little House on the Prairie television series?

If I understood Sanger’s response, she explained how the Taurus of her day was about improved life and how population was needed to do the manual labor. In the United States today, fewer workers are needed to till the land but the material gain is occurring from the behavior of individuals, not their output. More and more behavior is needed to create wealth which flows to a smaller number of individuals.

The spirit world does wonders, it appears, in seeing the greater patterns of history. And life itself is a Taurus experience as our thoughts, feelings and spiritual connections occur through a body.

Sanger added one more note. If rational discussion doesn’t work as body issues are being debated, she said, women can always stop having sex with men. That would change things.