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A Review of Soul-Sick
Nation
By Natori Moore, C.A. NCGR
Soul-Sick
Nation, by Jessica Murray, AuthorHouse, 1663 Liberty Drive,
Suite 200, Bloomington, Indiana, 47403, authorhouse.com, 2006.
Paper. 220 pp.
Books come
and books go, yet the book that can provide both an intellectual
and emotional growth experience is rare. Such a book exists
in Jessica Murray's Soul-Sick Nation, a trenchant yet ultimately
loving indictment of the United States of America at the beginning
of the 21st century.
Murray
uses the Sibly Sagittarius rising chart for the U.S. to explain
the financial, emotional and spiritual karma of the U.S. and
its citizens. She highlights the outer planet placements of
Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Pluto in the chart to explain why
the United States finds itself in its current karmic position.
For example, she points to Pluto in the 2nd house as the deep
source of the U.S. need to make and control money, and points
to the angular Jupiter in the chart in a tense square to Saturn
as evidence that Americans favor Jupiter's freedom, adolescent
attitude of entitlement and over-consumption rather than Saturn's
humility, restraint and right use of resources.
Murray's
vivid and precise use of descriptors for planetary archetypes
is among the best I've encountered. Beginners and seasoned astrologers
alike can thoughtfully select keywords for the archetypes from
her text as a source of meditation and contemplation. Consider
the following short list, not exhaustive of her explication
of Saturn by any means, as a reminder of Saturn's many representations:
patience, integrity, maturity, effort, weight, boundaries, responsibility,
hierarchy, father hunger, respect, justice, equanimity, rule
of law, consistency, preservation. Murray suggests that we each
have an inner adult that will emerge given the right encouragement
and circumstances, but that U.S. culture at present doesn't
do much to promote this emergence. Her prose helps the reader
to understand and desire the adult side of Saturn-no easy accomplishment.
In her in-depth discussions of Saturn (being a planetary grown
up) and Pluto (being an agent of transformation), Murray encourages
the reader to assume personal growth, which may be assisted
in part by contemplating her unique phrasing and keywords throughout
her narrative.
One of
Murray's most interesting proposals is her historical continuum
of most valued commodities. She suggests that premier symbols
of worth through the ages have ranged in recent centuries from
spices, to gold, to oil, and soon, she proposes, to water. This
elemental meditation on human history is most intriguing, and
one wonders, if she is correct, how the valuing of water will
play out. Murray clearly keeps her fingers on the pulse of current
events and writes intelligently about how to view these events
with astrological eyes.
My only
criticism of Soul-Sick Nation is it's sometimes hard to determine
the book's intended audience. Though a useful appendix helps
beginners navigate astrological ideas, the book's concepts can
be challenging even for a professional astrologer. Yet for the
interested literate citizen of the world, and especially of
the United States, who wants to know what he or she can do on
a personal level in politically challenging times, Murray offers
unique ideas and incentives to examine the self and mature toward
one's potential as a way to heal the soul of the nation. Murray
is one of the view voices in print encouraging Americans to
find an effective integration of Saturn (become their own good
father) and an effective integration of Pluto (find the power
to examine taboos and transform from within rather than have
to face nuclear winter from without). Soul-Sick Nation is both
intellectually engaging and a ritualistic tool for transformation.
One hopes it will find a large readership so the United States
may embrace its challenges and fulfill what Murray believes
to be the U.S.A.'s highest calling: the responsible use of power.
©
2007 by Natori Moore
All rights reserved
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