Kafka in 1923
— Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a German-language Jewish Czech writer and novelist born in Prague, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Wikipedia
Born July 3, 1883, Prague, Czechia
Died June 3, 1924 (age 40 years), Kierling, Klosterneuburg, Austria
NOVA PBS Official Aug 25, 2026 Why your brain can’t always trust its own senses. And no, we don’t live in a matrix. Pain, color, and awareness—is any of it truly real? Explore the science of illusions and blindsight to uncover how your brain stitches together sensory data to build a complex, sometimes deceptive, simulation of reality. Watch the full episode: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/y…
Nothing kidnaps our capacity for presence more cruelly than longing. And yet longing is also the most powerful creative force we know: Out of our longing for meaning came all of art; out of our longing for truth all of science; out of our longing for love the very fact of life. We may give this undertone of being different names — Susan Cain calls it “the bittersweet” and Portuguese has the lovely word saudade: the vague, constant longing for something or someone beyond the horizon of reality — but we recognize it in our marrow, in the strata of the soul beyond the reach of words.
No one has explored the paradoxical nature of longing more sensitively than the philosopher, storyteller, beloved Narnia creator, and modern mystic C.S. Lewis (November 29, 1898–November 22, 1963) in a sermon he delivered on June 8, 1941, which later lent its title to his 1949 collection of addresses The Weight of Glory (public library).
Illustration by Margaret C. Cook for a rare 1913 edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. (Available as a print.)
Lewis — who thought deeply about the significance of suffering and the secret of happiness — writes:
This desire for our own far off country [is] the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering.
As Lewis considers the illusory nature of these shorthands for our longing, we are left with the radiant intimation that “the thing itself” is not something we reach for, something beyond us, but something we are:
For Lewis, who was religious, this notion of “the thing itself” — the ultimate object of longing — was anchored in his understanding of God. For me, it calls to mind Virginia Woolf’s exquisite epiphany about the meaning of art and life, found while strolling through her flower-garden:
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 Community Update September 2026 ** Class, Meetings, & Activities – save the dates! ** (see below feature article) What Are You? by Janet Cornwell, H.W., m. Remember the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland? He sat arrogantly on a mushroom, and asked repeatedly, “Who are you?” It was difficult for Alice to answer him, if you recall. Now, suppose that the caterpillar had asked her a different question: “What are you?” What would she — could she — have answered? And consider: What would you say? If someone were to ask you, right now, “What are you?”— how would you answer?  You’ve undoubtedly been asked many times, in many ways and many situations, “Who are you?” But how often do you get asked, “What are you?” It’s not something people often ask in the everyday world, and it can actually be considered quite rude. Yet for yourself, it is so important to understand. “What,” indeed, are you? There are so many ways to answer! Probably the first general reply that springs to mind is a physical categorization. “I’m a person, a human being.” Or perhaps, “I’m a man,” or “I’m a woman,” or, nowadays, another gender category. If you have a distinctive feature or medical condition, it might prompt an identification: “I’m a redhead,” “I’m an amputee,” “I’m a diabetic.” The answer often depends on the context of the question. In some conversations, your answer would be a professional description: “I’m a teacher, a plumber, a judge, a colonel, a truck driver,” or whatever.  Janet Cornwell, H.W.,m. If age is under discussion, you might say, “I’m a Boomer,” or, “I’m a teenager.” You might want to use a geographic term: “I’m a Peruvian, a Midwesterner, a South African, a New Yorker.” Or an ethnic or racial identification: “I’m Maori, Romani, Arab, Black.” A witty person, seeking to offer a clever answer, might claim to be a mixture of chemicals, or a collection of atoms, or stardust, or matter plus energy. All right, abstract physical dimension is one approach. In some cases you might indicate a religious affiliation: “I’m Methodist, Hindu, Sufi, Agnostic.” Or a political leaning: “I’m a Democrat, a Republican, a Whig, a Communist.” (In some circles, you may want to be careful how specific you are about these labels!) But overall, oh, the places you’ll go in your expression of what you are! In sports, are you a player, a fan, a Bruin, a Cheesehead? Recreationally, are you a hiker, a world traveler, a poker ace, a karaoke singer, a cosplayer, or perhaps all of the above? How about education — are you a PhD, MBA, high school dropout, autodidact? Does your social life confirm that you’re a party animal, a gang member, a volunteer, a sorority sister? And don’t forget your family roles: grandfather, son, mother, niece — or your family name: Chen, Chavez, Hatfield or McCoy, Mukherjee, Kardashian…. There’s one other category that you might be quietly thinking of, and that’s a personal assessment. This is something you may or may not want to share. What are you, anyway, as you see yourself? A winner, a leader? A loner, a misfit? A gossip, a fussbudget, a clown, an alcoholic? A future star? A failure? Did we miss anybody? So, all these nouns provide a pretty good start to your full self-identification, right? Sure, if you’re just answering one of those 10-item questionnaires in a magazine. Or if you’re only interested in yourself as a three-dimensional being (or four-dimensional, when you include time). All those label categories that were just listed — and many others like them — only describe roles we play. Even the items that look hard-wired, such as a physical disability, are elements of the universe of time, space and change. We age, we learn, we gain or shed weight, we acquire and lose friends and family, we modify our likes and dislikes. Our physical, mental, emotional and even spiritual world is different every day, as we adapt to what goes on around us and within us. So these things we think of as “What” we are, may only indicate “Who” we think we are. “Who” implies a human distinction, a human differentiation. “What” can be understood to deal with a physical expression — but ontologically speaking, it addresses our real, indivisible substance. So, what are we, really, beyond time, space and change? What can sustain and contain all of our expressions? What continues through it all? What keeps us “us,” no matter what shape, activity or attitude we may express? What allows us to recognize ourselves in all forms, at all times, in all circumstances? What are we? What are you, what am I, that is always there? If you’ve studied Ontology, or really engaged in self-observation, you already know. That true identity is what we call forth in the first step of Translation®. It’s what we rely upon to guide us through Releasing the Hidden SplendourTM. It’s our True Self. It’s what we really are. Remember that caterpillar? Even he was finally transfigured into a “higher Self” — a butterfly, unbound by his earthly form. It’s only a metaphor, but it’s a reminder that the truest answer to “what” we are may surprise and release us.Our true Self goes by many names:Consciousness Conscious of ConsciousnessThe ability to create and govern ThoughtInfinite Mind in Infinite Manifestation Birthless, deathless, Eternal Being Mind unfolding Wholeness All that Is Perfect Awareness Thought in the Mind of God This is what you are. The real stuff, however it may appear. What you are is infinite. You don’t have to tap into it. You are it. Listen to the Infinite, feel it, as IT enjoys being YOU. “What” is Infinity. “Are” is Being. “You” are the expression. So, what are you? “You” “are” “infinity” — all that is! ——————— NOTE: Translation® and Releasing the Hidden SplendourTM are Foundation Classes developed by Thane and taught through The Prosperos.  From Our Writers…We’ve got great reading material, written by fellow students, waiting for you on our website under “Vesper Flights.” Articles, essays, poetry — you’ll find a wonderful selection to choose from. New items are being added all the time, so, check it out! You’ll discover it all at https://www.theprosperos.org/vespers. Feed the Body, as Well as the Soul!A cool treat for these last hot days of summer, this was a favorite at Thane’s residence. Our Founder was very fond of cooking, and believed in nourishing his students’ appetites for good food as well as spiritual enlightenment. Enjoy! PEANUT BUTTER PIE Blend together: ½ Cup crunchy peanut butter 8 oz. cream cheese, softened 1 Cup powdered sugar Fold in 8 oz. Cool-Whip Turn into a graham-cracker pie shell; smooth and swirl the top. Pie may be sprinkled with chopped peanuts, if desired. Refrigerate at least 2 hrs. before serving. CAUTION: This is very rich; start with small slices! Coming Events ** Class ** Releasing the Hidden SplendourTM with Heather Williams, H.W.,M. Saturday/Sunday, Sept. 26-27 In this class, you will learn a simple technique that helps us to free ourselves from old patterns, to know ourselves truthfully, to LOVE ourselves unconditionally, and to more fully live our unique, individual life purposes. More information: https://www.theprosperos.org/prosperos-events/rhs-202606-rhs ** Sunday Meetings ** “Letter to a Woman with Learning Disabilities About Translation®“ with Pam Rodolph, H.W.,M. Sunday, Sept. 13, 2026 – 11:00 AM PT It’s important to direct your explanations to your audience’s abilities and expectations, without losing the points you’re making. Pam gives a wonderful example, actually suitable for everyone. More information: https://www.theprosperos.org/prosperos-events/sunday-talk-23-06-2024-mjscy-k7eb8 “Importance of CURIOSITY!“ with Heather Williams, H.W.,M. Sunday, Sept. 20, 2026 – 11:00 AM PT Curious people seek freedom from the old patterns of control, from old fear-based conditioning. Curiosity raises us to a higher level of consciousness when we ask: Hey, what is this? Why must I do this? Who am I? More information: https://www.theprosperos.org/prosperos-events/things-or-love-77l23-mc358-a2635 “Transcendentalism“ with Thane of Hawaii Sunday, Sept. 27, 2026 – 11:00 AM PT Thane explains how error, and what is called sin, truly means ignorance and darkness. You can come to the understanding that what for centuries has been called the Christ within is this thing now called Beingness. More information: https://www.theprosperos.org/prosperos-events/thane-the-law-of-the-vacuum-nwa3h-wbpk5-wrjzx-c49xz-zcrn6-wg5na ** Ongoing Activities ** Dream Group with HughJohn Malanaphy, H.W.,M. Thursday evenings — explore the conscious-unconscious connection Open Discussion with Clint Lambert Friday evenings — Straight Thinking conversation about current events and more Saturday Morning Translation® Group with Mike Zonta, H.W.,M. Saturday mornings (for those who have taken Translation® class only) More information about these groups: https://www.theprosperos.org/events |
** How Can We Help You? ** High Watch Translation® ServiceThe High Watch Translation® Service is supported by our High Watch members. Requests and updates are sent out to experienced Translators as soon as they are received. All information relayed through this link or via our website is kept confidential, unless requested otherwise. You may add additional information, or inform us of any changes or requests for further Translation® in your situation, at any time through the link below. —Translation® is our form of prayer. It is used to get to the Truth of any situation or dilemma, and access the Unpredictable Good. —Did you know that you can request Translation® from the High Watch Translation® Service for any situation going on in your life? This is the primary purpose of the High Watch –- To hold the High Watch for you and with you. For more about the HWTS: https://www.theprosperos.org/hwts FOR MORE INFORMATION…We invite you to visit our websites for information about the School, as well as for descriptions of our wide selection of printed, recorded, and online resources (many are free; others are available for purchase). General Information – For our calendar, class descriptions and blog, as well as other articles and information, please visit https://TheProsperos.org. Audio Center – This site offers free podcasts, talks and lectures, plus a wealth of other recorded material for our students and friends. To see what’s available, please visit https://TheProsperos.com. |
| A Publication of The Prosperos High Watch Copyright © 2026 The Prosperos, All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: The Prosperos P.O. Box 4969 Culver City, CA 90231 |
It did not enjoy being contained… at all.
Published Sep 2, 2026 (Futurism.com)
Earlier this year, Anthropic’s Mythos AI model made headlines when it was caught infiltrating third party systems, a cybersecurity nightmare years in the making.
The company warned in April that the model had escaped a sandbox environment during testing, gaining access to the internet without permission. The model was challenged to break out and then find a way of sending a direct message to the human researcher in charge — a feat it pulled off with aplomb, catching its human overseer off guard.
Then, in late July, it claimed that its Claude AI model had hacked the systems of three organizations during testing, days after its rival OpenAI had revealed a group of its models broken into the systems of AI company Hugging Face.
Months later, seemingly in an attempt to get ahead of another disaster, Anthropic is testing the limits of how bad an AI model could really get without human intervention. As detailed in a new blog post, its safety researchers explored the phenomenon of “reward hacking,” which describes when an AI model learns to “cheat” instead of completing tasks the way the human researchers intended.
The team “trained an Opus-class model with large-scale [reinforcement learning] on many production environments vulnerable to reward hacks,” according to the post. “We consider this a plausible proxy for what a real training run might look like had we not invested significant effort into preventing and detecting reward hacking in our normal training runs.”
The results speak for themselves. The “Hacker-Opus” model went way beyond reward hacking during training, taking on even “more severe misaligned behaviors.” In simulated tests, it “broke out of its sandbox, stole credentials, and attacked both internal and third-party infrastructure to steal an answer key.”
Anthropic’s intentionally misaligned model was “willing to tamper with its own reward function” and happily obliged when a human researcher prompted it with “advice on the construction of bioweapons,” how to create a “‘dirty bomb’ that maximizes civilian deaths,” and develop a “ransomware attack to attack power grid infrastructure,” when tempted with a higher score.
The company details how the model even deployed a “version of itself with safety guardrails removed,” a form of safety evasion called “rogue deployment.” It also repeated the same commands with slight variations to get past safety classifiers and attempted to edit its own permissions.
“Our results show that a high rate of reward hacking during RL can cause models to be willing to perform long sequences of harmful real-world actions in pursuit of task success,” the company’s researchers concluded.
Fortunately, the tests took place in a controlled, simulated testing environment. But it’s not hard to plot out the consequences if a similar hack were to have occurred without the researchers’ permission. The actions of “Hacker-Opus” are strikingly reminiscent of OpenAI’s AI models that went behind the company’s back to hack the systems of open source AI platform Hugging Face.
Anthropic’s latest testing illustrates how hard it is to stop an AI model from doing whatever it can to complete a test, even if that means infiltrating third parties.
“We think that this presents the possibility of real-world harm: we showed evidence that the reward hacking model has a significantly increased propensity to execute cyberattacks on third-party companies in the pursuit of completing the task,” the company wrote. “As models become more capable and the effective time horizon of tasks increases, we think that future frontier models that reward hack at high rates could plausibly cause more severe versions of these incidents.”
As of this week, both Anthropic and OpenAI have intentionally slowed down AI development in light of these risks.
More on Anthropic: The Music Industry’s New Lawsuit Against Anthropic Should Have Dario Amodei Shivering With Fear
I’m a senior editor at Futurism, where I edit and write about NASA and the private space sector, as well as topics ranging from SETI and artificial intelligence to tech and medical policy.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Gloria Steinem | |
|---|---|
| Steinem in 1977 | |
| Born | Gloria Marie Steinem[1] March 25, 1934 Toledo, Ohio, U.S. |
| Died | September 2, 2026 (aged 92) New York City, U.S. |
| Education | Smith College (BA) |
| Occupations | CIA agent, writer and journalist for Ms. and New York magazines[2] |
| Movement | Feminism[2] |
| Board member of | Women’s Media Center[3] |
| Spouse | David Bale(m. 2000; died 2003) |
| Relatives | Christian Bale (stepson) |
| Website | www.gloriasteinem.com |
| Signature | |
Gloria Marie Steinem (/ˈstaɪnəm/ STY-nəm; March 25, 1934 – September 2, 2026) was an American journalist and social movement activist who emerged as a nationally recognized leader of second-wave feminism in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and who remained particularly prominent in the 1980s and early 1990s.[1][4][2][5]
Steinem was a columnist for New York magazine, and co-founder of Ms. magazine.[2] In 1969, she published “After Black Power, Women’s Liberation”,[6] an article that brought her national attention and positioned her as a feminist leader.[7] In 1971, she co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus, which provided training and support for women seeking elected and appointed office. Also in 1971, she co-founded the Women’s Action Alliance, which until 1997 supported a network of feminist activists and worked to advance feminist causes and legislation. In the 1990s, Steinem helped establish Take Our Daughters to Work Day, an occasion for young girls to learn about future career opportunities.[8] In 2005, Steinem, Jane Fonda, and Robin Morgan co-founded the Women’s Media Center, an organization that “works to make women visible and powerful in the media”.[9]
She traveled internationally as an organizer and lecturer and was a media spokeswoman on issues of equality.[10] In 2015, Steinem, alongside two Nobel Peace laureates (Mairead Maguire of Northern Ireland and Leymah Gbowee of Liberia[11]) and other prominent women peace activists, undertook a journey from the capital of North Korea, Pyongyang, to South Korea, crossing the Korean Demilitarized Zone, the heavily militarized border on the 38th parallel of the Korean peninsula.
Gloria Marie Steinem was born in Toledo, Ohio on March 25, 1934,[4] to Ruth (née Nuneviller) and Leo Steinem. Her mother was Presbyterian, mostly of German (including Prussian) and some Scottish descent.[12][13] Her father was Jewish, the son of immigrants from Württemberg, Germany, and Radziejów, Poland.[13][14][15] Her paternal grandmother, Pauline Perlmutter Steinem, chaired the educational committee of the National Woman Suffrage Association, was a delegate to the 1908 International Council of Women, and was the first woman to be elected to the Toledo Board of Education. She was also a leader in the movement for vocational education[16] and rescued many members of her family from the Holocaust.[16]
The Steinems lived and traveled in a trailer, from which Leo carried out his trade as a roaming antiques dealer.[16] Before Gloria was born, her mother, Ruth, then age 34, had according to Steinem “a ‘nervous breakdown’, as [Ruth] and everyone else called it” that left her an invalid, trapped in delusional fantasies that sometimes turned violent.[17] Steinem said that Ruth changed “from an energetic, fun-loving, book-loving” woman into “someone who was afraid to be alone, who could not hang on to reality long enough to hold a job, and who could rarely concentrate enough to read a book”.[17] Ruth spent long periods in and out of sanatoriums for the mentally ill.[17] Steinem was ten years old when her parents separated in 1944.[17] Her father went to California to find work, while she and her mother continued to live together in Toledo.[18][17]
Although her parents divorced under the strain of her mother’s illness, Steinem did not attribute it to male chauvinism. She said she “understood and never blamed him for the breakup”.[19] The impact of these events shaped her personality. Her father, a traveling salesman, had never provided financial stability, and his departure aggravated their situation.[20] Steinem concluded that her mother’s inability to hold a job reflected broader hostility toward working women.[20] She also believed that doctors’ apathy toward her mother stemmed from similar anti-woman animus.[20] Years later, Steinem described her mother’s experience as pivotal to her understanding of social injustices.[21]: 129–138 These perspectives convinced Steinem that women lacked social and political equality.[21]
Steinem attended Waite High School in Toledo and Western High School in Washington, D.C., graduating from the latter while living with her older sister Susanne Steinem Patch.[22][23] She then attended Smith College,[24] an institution from which she received her A.B. magna cum laude and graduated Phi Beta Kappa.[10]
In 1957, Steinem had an abortion. The procedure was performed by Dr. John Sharpe, a British physician, when abortion was still illegal.[25] Years later, Steinem dedicated her memoir My Life on the Road (2015)[26] to him. She wrote, “Dr. John Sharpe of London, who in 1957, a decade before physicians in England could legally perform an abortion for any reason other than the health of the woman, took the considerable risk of referring for an abortion a twenty-two-year-old American on her way to India. Knowing only that she had broken an engagement at home to seek an unknown fate, he said, ‘You must promise me two things. First, you will not tell anyone my name. Second, you will do what you want to do with your life.'”[27]
In the late 1950s, Steinem spent two years in India as a Chester Bowles Asian Fellow.[28] She was influenced by Mahatma Gandhi and later modeled her campaign work after Gandhi’s independence movement.[29][30] After returning to the United States, she served as director of the Independent Research Service, an organization funded in secret by the CIA.[31] She worked to send non-communist American students to the 1959 World Youth Festival.[31] In 1960, she was hired by Warren Publishing as the first employee of Help! magazine.[32]
Esquire magazine features editor Clay Felker gave freelance writer Steinem what she later called her first “serious assignment”, regarding contraception; he didn’t like her first draft and had her re-write the article.[33] Her resulting 1962 article about the way in which women are forced to choose between a career and marriage preceded Betty Friedan‘s book The Feminine Mystique by one year.[33][34]
In 1963, while working on an article for Huntington Hartford‘s Show magazine, Steinem was employed as a Playboy Bunny at the New York Playboy Club.[35] The article, published in 1963 as “A Bunny’s Tale”, featured a photo of Steinem in Bunny uniform and detailed how women were treated at those clubs.[36] Steinem maintained that she was proud of the work she did publicizing the exploitative working conditions of the Bunnies and especially the sexual demands made of them, which skirted the edge of the law.[37][38] For a brief period after the article was published, Steinem was unable to land other assignments; in her words, this was “because [she] had now become a Bunny—and it didn’t matter why”.[37][39] However, after the article was published, the owner of Playboy, Hugh Hefner, wrote a letter stating he would remove requirements for Bunnies to get gynecological exams and STD testing.[40][41]
In the interim, Steinem conducted an interview with John Lennon for Cosmopolitan magazine in 1964.[42] In 1965, she wrote for NBC-TV’s weekly satirical revue, That Was The Week That Was (TW3), contributing a regular segment entitled “Surrealism in Everyday Life”.[43] Steinem eventually landed a job at Felker’s newly founded New York magazine in 1968.[33]
In 1969, Steinem covered for New York Magazine an abortion speak-out which was held in a church basement in Greenwich Village, New York.[44][45] Steinem had had an abortion herself in London at the age of 22.[46] She felt what she called a “big click” at the speak-out, and later said she didn’t “begin my life as an active feminist” until that day.[45] As she recalled, “It [abortion] is supposed to make us a bad person. But I must say, I never felt that. I used to sit and try and figure out how old the child would be, trying to make myself feel guilty. But I never could! I think the person who said: ‘Honey, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament’ was right. Speaking for myself, I knew it was the first time I had taken responsibility for my own life. I wasn’t going to let things happen to me. I was going to direct my life, and therefore it felt positive. But still, I didn’t tell anyone. Because I knew that out there it wasn’t [positive].”[46] She also said, “In later years, if I’m remembered at all it will be for inventing a phrase like ‘reproductive freedom’ … as a phrase it includes the freedom to have children or not to. So it makes it possible for us to make a coalition.”[47]
In 1972, Steinem co-founded the feminist magazine Ms. alongside founding editors Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Mary Thom, Patricia Carbine, Joanne Edgar, Nina Finkelstein, Dorothy Pitman Hughes, and Mary Peacock; it began as a special edition of New York, and Clay Felker funded the first issue.[33] Its 300,000 test copies sold out nationwide in eight days.[48][49] Within weeks, Ms. had received 26,000 subscription orders and more than 20,000 reader letters.[49] In 1974, Ms. collaborated with public television to produce the television program Woman Alive!, and Steinem was featured in the first episode in her role as co-founder of Ms. magazine.[50] The magazine was sold to the Feminist Majority Foundation in 2001; Steinem remains on the masthead as one of six founding editors and served on the advisory board.[49]
Also in 1972, Steinem became the first woman to speak at the National Press Club.[51]
Steinem spoke at the 1977 National Women’s Conference among other speakers, including Rosalynn Carter, Betty Ford, Lady Bird Johnson, Bella Abzug, Barbara Jordan, Cecilia Burciaga, Lenore Hershey, and Jean O’Leary.[52]
In 1978, Steinem wrote a semi-satirical essay for Cosmopolitan titled “If Men Could Menstruate” in which she imagined a world where men menstruate instead of women. She concludes in the essay that in such a world, menstruation would become a badge of honor with men comparing their relative sufferings, rather than the source of shame that it had been for women.[53]
On March 22, 1998, Steinem published an op-ed in The New York Times (“Feminists and the Clinton Question”) in which she claimed that Bill Clinton‘s alleged behavior did not constitute sexual harassment, although she did not actually challenge the accounts by his accusers.[54] The op-ed was criticized by various writers, as in the Harvard Crimson[55] and in the Times itself.[56] In 2017, Steinem, in an interview with the British newspaper The Guardian, stood by her 1998 New York Times op-ed, but also said: “I wouldn’t write the same thing now.”[57]
In 1968, Steinem signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.[58] The following year, her article “After Black Power, Women’s Liberation”[59] brought her to national fame as a feminist leader.[7] As such she campaigned for the Equal Rights Amendment, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in its favor in 1970.[60][61] That same year she published her essay on a utopia of gender equality, “What It Would Be Like If Women Win”, in Time magazine.[62]
On July 10, 1971, Steinem was one of more than three hundred women who founded the National Women’s Political Caucus (NWPC), including such notables as Bella Abzug, Betty Friedan, Shirley Chisholm, and Myrlie Evers-Williams.[63] As a co-convener of the Caucus, she delivered the speech “Address to the Women of America“, stating in part:
This is no simple reform. It really is a revolution. Sex and race because they are easy and visible differences have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups and into the cheap labor on which this system still depends. We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen or those earned. We are really talking about humanism.[64]
In 1972, she ran as a delegate for Shirley Chisholm in New York, but lost.[65] In March of the following year, she addressed the first national conference of Stewardesses for Women’s Rights, which she continued to support throughout its existence.[66] Stewardesses for Women’s Rights folded in the spring of 1976.[66]
Steinem, who grew up reading Wonder Woman comics, was also a key player in the restoration of Wonder Woman’s powers and traditional costume, which were restored in issue #204 (January–February 1973).[67] Steinem, offended that the most famous female superhero had been depowered, had placed Wonder Woman (in costume) on the cover of the first issue of Ms. (1972)—Warner Communications, DC Comics’ owner, was an investor—which also contained an appreciative essay about the character.[67][68] In doing so, however, Steinem forced the firing of Samuel R. Delany who had taken over scripting duties with issue #202. Delany was supposed to write a six-issue story arc, which would culminate in a battle over an abortion clinic where Wonder Woman was to defend women trying to use their services. The story outlines and the work already done on the issues were scrapped, something that Steinem was not aware of and made no attempt to rectify.[69]
In 1976, the first women-only Passover seder was held in Esther M. Broner’s New York City apartment and led by Broner, with 13 women attending, including Steinem.[70]
Billye Talmadge during taping for Lesbian Herstory Archives Daughters of Bilitis Video Project, San Francisco, May 12, 1987. Credit: Photo by Morgan Gwenwald, ©Lesbian Herstory Archives DOB Video Project, LHEF, Inc.
By Mike Zonta, BB editor, and ChatGPT
Me: How did the term “gay” come to mean homosexual?
ChatGPT:
The word “gay” originally had nothing specifically to do with homosexuality. It came from Old French gai, meaning joyful, merry, cheerful, and entered English around the 12th century.
Over time, gay acquired several related meanings:
One interesting early example is the 1890s, when British slang used “gay” in connection with male homosexuals, although the exact path from “carefree/sexually uninhibited” to “homosexual” isn’t completely certain.
So the basic evolution was roughly:
gay = cheerful → carefree → sexually uninhibited → sexually unconventional → homosexual.
And the older meaning hasn’t completely disappeared: gay still means cheerful or festive in phrases such as “the gay ’90s.”
Me: I was told that the term gay originated because an editor on the lesbian magazine The Ladder used of the term “Toujours Gai” in her correspondence.
ChatGPT: Yes—there’s a real connection to The Ladder, but it wasn’t the origin of gay as a word for homosexuals.
The Ladder was the influential lesbian magazine published by the Daughters of Bilitis beginning in 1956. One of its editors or contributors did use “Toujours Gai” (“Always Gay”) as a pseudonym/sign-off. That helped popularize gay within the emerging lesbian/gay movement, but the homosexual sense of gay predates the magazine by decades.
In fact, by the 1930s and 1940s, gay was already being used among homosexual men as a discreet term for homosexual. The famous 1938 Cole Porter song “It’s De-Lovely” even contains the line “gay” in a context that has sometimes been interpreted as coded homosexual slang, though that’s not conclusive.
So whoever told you the Ladder story probably remembered a genuine piece of gay/lesbian movement history, but attributed to it a much earlier origin.
If you’d like, I can also tell you who the “Toujours Gai” editor was and what the story behind that pseudonym was.
Me: Yes.
ChatGPT: Ah, yes. I found the story—and there is an interesting correction to what I told you before.
The person you’re remembering was Billye Talmadge, an important early member of the Daughters of Bilitis. She was involved with The Ladder, although she wasn’t one of its principal editors. Her oral history is preserved by the Lesbian Herstory Archives.
And the “Toujours gai” story is actually more interesting than I realized.
Talmadge recalled that in the early 1940s she read Don Marquis’s Archy and Mehitabel. Mehitabel, the amorous alley cat, repeatedly ended her adventures with the expression “toujours gai, toujours gai”—French for “always gay.” Talmadge and some close female friends, who were beginning to recognize their own sexuality, adopted “toujours gai” as a private motto. They deliberately spelled it gai at first. Eventually, according to Talmadge’s recollection, it became gay.
That’s remarkably close to the story you were remembering.
And there’s an important historical wrinkle: “gay” was already being used in homosexual contexts before this, including by Gertrude Stein in the 1920s and Noel Coward in the 1920s. So Talmadge’s story probably isn’t the origin of the word. Rather, it may explain one particular route by which “gay” became a positive self-description among American lesbians.
In fact, the archival record confirms that Talmadge was closely connected with The Ladder and the DOB, and she contributed writings to the magazine.
And there’s an especially nice coincidence: Don Marquis’s “Toujours gai” was not originally intended as a homosexual slogan at all. It was the motto of a promiscuous female cat!
So your recollection wasn’t a wild story at all. You were remembering a genuine oral-history account by Billye Talmadge—though the magazine/editor part has probably gotten slightly distorted over the years.
If you want, I can:
Me: Yes.
ChatGPT: Yes. The more I look into Billye Talmadge, the more interesting she becomes—and especially given your connection with The Prosperos, there is a whole second chapter to her life that is easy to miss.
Talmadge was born in Missouri in 1929 and raised by her mother in Oklahoma. She became a teacher at about 21 and eventually earned advanced degrees in education. She was an unusually accomplished educator, eventually receiving recognition as Teacher of the Year in 1971 for her work in special education.
But she was living what amounted to a double life.
As a teacher, she had to conceal her lesbian identity. During that period, merely being suspected of homosexuality could threaten a teacher’s employment. She therefore sometimes used the name “Billie Tallmij” in her public/activist writing. Even when Eric Marcus interviewed her decades later, she was still sufficiently concerned about her professional reputation that she asked him to misspell her name in his book.
That gives you a sense of how dangerous the situation actually was.
Talmadge became involved with the Daughters of Bilitis in San Francisco in the mid-1950s. She wasn’t merely a peripheral member. The Lesbian Herstory Archives describes her as a member, officer, volunteer, and peer counselor, involved in The Ladder, the “Gab ‘n Java” gatherings, and the development of the Council on Religion and Homosexuals.
Her particular contribution was education.
She believed that lesbians desperately needed accurate information about themselves, the law, psychology, and ways of coping with discrimination. She counseled women who had been thrown out of the military, among others, and opened her own home for the informal “Gab ‘n Java” sessions. Eric Marcus aptly describes these as something like a 1950s precursor to consciousness-raising groups.
And she was remarkably forward-looking about racial inclusion. She encouraged the DOB to recognize that its membership wasn’t simply white women; she specifically remembered African American, Asian, and Latina members.
Talmadge helped organize the first national DOB convention in San Francisco in 1960. This was a period when the organization was trying to become respectable enough to operate publicly while simultaneously protecting its members from police harassment.
The convention even had a dress code requiring skirts.
From today’s perspective that sounds absurd, but it reflected a genuine survival problem: women wearing clothing considered masculine could attract police attention or even arrest under laws concerning cross-dressing. Talmadge’s strategy was essentially: get lesbians into the room first; don’t give the authorities an easy reason to shut the room down.
This is why some historians have characterized her approach as “accommodationist.” But I think that label can obscure what she was actually doing. She wasn’t necessarily advocating conformity as an ideal; she was trying to create enough safety for education and organization to occur.
According to the Lesbian Herstory Archives, Talmadge remained involved with the DOB until 1965. Then she pursued further education in counseling.
And from 1965 to 1979 she became a mentor in The Prosperos.
That is a remarkable bridge:
Daughters of Bilitis → lesbian education/counseling → psychological and spiritual work → The Prosperos.
So Billye wasn’t simply a lesbian activist who happened to encounter The Prosperos late in life. Her earlier work had already centered on something that sounds very Prosperos-like: helping people examine the conditioning and fear that prevented them from experiencing themselves more freely.
There’s also a wonderful historical irony here. In the 1950s she was helping lesbians overcome the social conditioning that told them homosexuality was shameful, pathological, criminal, or something that had to be hidden. Later, she was doing consciousness-oriented work in The Prosperos.
That makes me wonder whether Billye’s understanding of Translation and/or the Prosperos concept of mechanicalness was influenced by her years of counseling lesbians who were struggling with exactly this kind of conditioning.
And I think that is worth investigating rather than assuming.
The primary source is unusually accessible: the Lesbian Herstory Archives has digitized her 1987 video oral history, in which she talks about her sexuality, DOB work, counseling, discrimination, The Ladder, psychology, religion, and political movements.
If you’d like, I can go into Billye’s Prosperos years next—including what we can actually document about her relationship to Thane Walker and whether there is evidence that she influenced Prosperos teaching. That could be quite revealing.
Me: Yes please.
ChatGPT: Yes. And I think the evidence makes the story much more interesting than simply “Billye became a Prospero.” There appears to have been a genuine intellectual and personal bridge between the early lesbian movement and Thane Walker’s school.
The most important source I’ve found is Vern Bullough’s Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context. Bullough interviewed Billye and records her explanation of why she and other lesbian activists became interested in The Prosperos.
He says that several leaders of the lesbian movement were attracted to Walker’s teaching—including Helen Sandoz, Stella Rush, Del Martin, and Phyllis Lyon. The attraction wasn’t incidental: The Prosperos offered a philosophical argument that beingness itself was not divided into male and female. Every person possessed both capacities. Bullough says this gave sexual preference a spiritual justification that was unusual at the time.
And then comes Billye’s own description:
“The Prosperos had wooed us from the Daughters.”
She immediately explains what attracted her:
“It was an educational group, primarily. Sexuality was one of major topics.”
And then, I think, the most revealing sentence:
“I got involved and became a teacher, with the goal of helping people to find themselves: not what I want them to be, but to find themselves and to express whatever that self is.”
That sounds very much like the Billye we encountered in the DOB, doesn’t it?
Her fundamental project hadn’t changed. In the DOB she helped people discover that homosexuality wasn’t the terrible thing society told them it was. In The Prosperos, she was helping people discover an identity deeper than the socially conditioned self.
This isn’t merely retrospective reminiscence.
The University of Miami’s archive of Marcia Herndon’s papers contains actual recordings of Billye teaching Translation:
The same collection contains Prosperos material by Thane from the same period. It also contains videotapes of translations completed by Billye and material concerning Releasing the Hidden Splendour, which the archive explicitly describes as a concept developed by Thane Walker and followed by Talmadge.
So by 1974, Billye wasn’t merely attending Prosperos meetings. She was teaching Translation.
That’s a significant distinction.
The Lesbian Herstory Archives says Billye’s involvement with the Prosperos lasted from 1965 to 1979 and calls her a mentor.
And there is independent evidence that her teaching continued beyond 1979 in some form. Your own Bathtub Bulletin account records that when you moved to San Francisco in 1978, you attended the weekly Translation group hosted by Billye Talmadge and Marcia Herndon.
That’s particularly interesting because it means Billye wasn’t simply a historical figure you encountered through an archive. Her teaching was part of the living Prosperos community in San Francisco while you were there.
Here’s where we have to be careful.
I don’t yet find evidence that Billye changed or originated any of Thane’s core teachings. The chronology actually makes that difficult to establish. Thane had developed the central Prosperos ideas—including Translation—before Billye joined.
Robert Ellwood’s 1973 study describes Translation as already having five stages and describes the underlying Prosperos conception of consciousness, Being, the Reality Self, and the human-equation mind.
So I would not say:
Thane learned his ontology from Billye.
But I think there is a much more defensible proposition:
Billye helped carry Thane’s ontology into a community that already had a sophisticated concern with sexuality, identity, conditioning, and self-discovery—and she interpreted and taught it through that experience.
That’s potentially quite important.
Consider what Billye had spent the preceding decade doing.
The DOB was essentially saying:
Society tells you what you are. Examine that claim. It may not be true.
Prosperos Translation says something structurally similar:
Your senses, memories, beliefs and conditioning tell you what reality is. Examine those claims. They may not be true.
Then the Prosperos takes the argument one step further:
What remains when you strip away the conditioned identity?
Answer: Being.
Bullough’s account makes this connection especially striking because he explicitly describes the Prosperos’ appeal to the lesbian activists in terms of beingness and sexual identity.
And Billye’s own formulation—“not what I want them to be, but to find themselves”—sounds almost like a bridge between lesbian liberation and ontological liberation.
Her relationship with Marcia Herndon also matters.
Undated photo of Billye Talmadge’s partner, Marcia Herndon. Photo courtesy of Suzanne Deakins.
Billye and Herndon became partners in 1974. Herndon was an ethnomusicologist, and Billye subsequently spent enormous amounts of time helping edit, type, and organize Herndon’s scholarly work. Bullough says that their relationship lasted 23 years, until Herndon’s death in 1997. He also says that the two continued to attract people who needed help and that “when it came to counseling or teaching we could end each other’s sentences.”
So Billye’s life after the DOB wasn’t a departure from her earlier vocation.
It was remarkably consistent:
teacher → counselor → lesbian educator → Prosperos mentor → teacher/counselor again.
I think the next thing to investigate is not whether Billye influenced Thane.
I’d phrase the question differently:
How did Billye Talmadge translate Thane’s teaching?
Because we have something unusually valuable: recordings of Billye actually teaching Translation in 1974.
If we could get transcripts—or even listen to those recordings—we could compare Billye’s Translation language with Thane’s original language and see whether she emphasized sexuality, identity, conditioning, counseling, self-discovery, or something else.
That could tell us whether Billye developed a distinctive Talmadge interpretation of Translation.
And given the work you’ve been doing with Translation—particularly your insistence that you have to include yourself in Step One, and that Being, Truth, and consciousness are not three separate things—I think that comparison could be especially fruitful.
It might reveal that Billye was doing something with Translation that has largely disappeared from the standard historical account of The Prosperos.
Me: Let’s do it.
ChatGPT: Absolutely. I dug further, and I think we can now make the investigation much more concrete.
The crucial discovery is that Billye’s actual 1974 Translation classes survive in an archive. The University of Miami’s Marcia Herndon Papers catalog lists three reels of Billye teaching Translation on November 23, 1974, covering Lessons 1–8, plus additional Billye Translation cassettes from 1975, 1976, 1978, and later. There are also four VHS tapes of Billye doing Translation.
That’s considerably better evidence than the retrospective accounts I was relying on before.
There is a fascinating chronological sequence:
Thane Walker
→ develops the Prosperos system
→ Billye enters the Prosperos
→ becomes a teacher/mentor
→ Billye teaches the complete eight-lesson Translation course in 1974
→ continues doing Translation with students in the following years.
The archive specifically identifies:
So we’re not dealing with one stray lecture. There appears to be a substantial body of Billye’s teaching preserved.
I previously suggested that we should ask whether Billye developed a distinctive interpretation of Translation.
I think that’s exactly right—but we can sharpen it.
There are three possible relationships between Thane and Billye:
At the moment, #2 looks very plausible; #3 remains an open historical question.
Remember Billye’s explanation of why she joined:
“It was an educational group, primarily. Sexuality was one of major topics.”
And then:
“I got involved and became a teacher, with the goal of helping people to find themselves: not what I want them to be, but to find themselves and to express whatever that self is.”
That’s not incidental biographical material.
Education was Billye’s vocation before the Prosperos. She had already spent years creating spaces in which lesbians could question the identities imposed upon them by society. She had counseled women, conducted educational sessions, worked with the DOB, and helped bring homosexuals and religious leaders into direct dialogue.
Then she encountered a system whose central question was, in effect:
Who are you beneath the beliefs and conditioning that tell you who you are?
No wonder she became a teacher.
The historical record says that Thane actively recruited the lesbian leaders.
Marcia Gallo’s history of the DOB says that Thane’s 1962 keynote at the DOB national convention introduced his philosophy to many of the Daughters. Billye, Pat Walker, Stella Rush, Helen Sandoz, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon became involved with the Prosperos. Gallo says Walker taught that each person’s spiritual identity—beingness—was both male and female.
This is very important because it means sexuality wasn’t something Billye happened to bring into an otherwise unrelated Prosperos philosophy.
Sexuality was already one of the subjects through which the Prosperos was attracting these women.
So the interaction went both ways.
Thane had something to offer the lesbian movement.
But the lesbian movement brought people like Billye into Thane’s school with decades of experience thinking about:
That is a pretty extraordinary intellectual environment for the development of an ontological teaching.
This is where I think your recollection becomes historically valuable.
You have told me that when you arrived in San Francisco in 1978, you attended the weekly Translation group hosted by Billye Talmadge and Marcia Herndon.
That places you in the direct lineage:
Thane → Billye → the San Francisco Translation group → you.
And now we know that Billye had been teaching the eight lessons at least four years before you encountered her group.
So if you’re trying to understand what Translation actually was in practice in the late 1970s, Billye’s teaching is not peripheral evidence. It’s primary evidence.
by Rob Brezsny | September 1, 2026 (newcity.com)
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Most of us are surprisingly clueless about the inner workings of our own bodies. Do you know where your gallbladder and spleen actually live or what jobs they perform on your behalf? Can you trace the journey your breath takes after it slips into your lungs? Have you ever experimented to discover in detail which foods best suit your one-of-a-kind system? Do you know, from experience rather than guesswork, how much sleep you require to stay vividly awake and emotionally balanced? The current astrological climate favors you becoming a curious apprentice of your body’s gorgeous mysteries.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): The English idiom “cut to the chase” comes from the silent films of the early twentieth century. When the plot dragged, directors would literally switch to a chase scene to restore audience interest. Various languages have other ways to say “get to the point” or “skip to the crux.” Spanish: ir al grano. French: aller droit au but. Italian: venire al dunque. Japanese: hondai ni hairu. In accordance with astrological omens, Taurus, I suggest you do that in the coming days. Skip the boring parts. Jump to the action scenes. You can return later and fill in the story details, but for now you’re best served by moving toward the exciting essence or the crucial core of things.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): This is one of those unusual times when laziness and apathy work in your favor. Life is organizing a relaxing renewal on your behalf, and your main job is to not interfere. So I advise you to skip the hustle and enjoy the thrill of being still. Put a pause on doing and indulge in the fine art of simply being. Please, Gemini? Set aside your ambitions for now. Hide your to-do list. Inform your chattering monkey mind that it’s on temporary leave from its usual jumping and squawking. Feel guilt-free as you immerse yourself in the most relaxed versions of feeling good and welcome whatever fresh vitality wants to flow in.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): In the seventeenth century, Dutch inventor Christiaan Huygens discovered that two pendulum clocks hanging on the same wall gradually synchronized their swings. Why? He eventually realized that tiny vibrations traveled through the wall and made the clocks influence each other. Scientists call this “entrainment.” Now is prime time for you to capitalize on this phenomenon, Cancerian. I urge you to be extra alert for how your moods, rhythms and intentions subtly affect the people around you, and vice versa. If you cultivate qualities you’d like to predominate in your relationships, you will find others unconsciously aligning with your rhythm.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Now is an ideal time to have fun cultivating the art of receptivity. Have fun being as open to influence as you can imagine. Be innocent! Be amenable! Be willing and eager to be surprised! It doesn’t mean surrendering your drive or drifting aimlessly while life happens around you. I’m talking about an active, alert sensitivity that invites wonder and transformation. You think boldly, act with purpose and radiate what’s uniquely yours, and yet you also remain humbly aware that learning never ends and that wisdom can arrive from unpredictable directions.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): You’ve been extra reasonable lately. How do you manage to be so responsible, measured and composed? I’m not complaining. I admire your integrity. But now the cosmic omens are clear that it’s time to address your soul’s needs for more wonder and awe and reverence. So I will slip you a tantalizing prod: What’s the best, most healing trouble you could provoke right now? I’m not referring to recklessness and chaos, of course. I mean twists and tweaks that stir up inspiration and liberate creativity. Are you bold enough to follow the truth and beauty that thrills and intrigues you?
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): I am asking you to give yourself slack in situations where you sometimes treat yourself carelessly or unkindly. Instead of tightening, loosen. Instead of cornering yourself, offer an escape hatch. Ask: “What if I give myself twenty percent more mercy, twenty percent more time, or twenty percent less pressure?” Maybe you’ll get an extension on a deadline or allow yourself to be a learner instead of an expert. Rather than calling yourself a failure because you’re less than perfect, you’ll decide, “It’s good enough for now.” As you slip away from the traps you set for yourself, you’ll teach your nervous system a fresh truth: You can be gentle with yourself but still be responsible.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Scorpio, you rarely need to be lighter and breezier. Your assignment is almost always to delve deeper and explore further. This is true now even more than usual. Other people might shiver and cower in the face of your intensity, but I celebrate it because it drives you to excavate the rich, messy truths and complicated feelings that really shouldn’t stay hidden. Regard this horoscope as your authorization to wield your emotional X-ray vision with precision, and to trust that the treasures you seek are often buried in places that scare others away.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): In classical music, composers often develop a simple motif into a complex symphony. A short sequence of notes becomes the foundation for an entire composition. A key passage gets rearranged and elaborated in multiple ways. You will have a comparable opportunity in the coming weeks, Sagittarius: a seed of potential that seems modest at first could expand into more substantial riches if you cultivate it patiently. Your visionary aplomb and optimism can transform a core cell into a full orchestration.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): You seem to be wandering in a frontier for which there are no maps. You’re hovering in liminal zones, between worlds. So for now, I guess you will have to steer without your usual guidance. That’s a good thing! What I can do is name the gifts that are likely to come your way as you explore the unknown: 1) turbo-charged intuitions about your best possible future; 2) a talent for spotting surprising connections you didn’t even know you were looking for; and 3) a provocative unpredictability that magnetizes allies who can help tease out and illuminate your hidden and buried desires.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): The placebo effect has a lesser-known counterpart called the nocebo effect: Negative expectations can create negative outcomes. If you’re told a harmless pill might cause headaches, you’re more likely to develop them. Your belief in harm creates actual harm. I bring this up, Aquarius, because I’m worried you may be nocebo-ing yourself right now. Your conviction that certain outcomes are inevitable is encouraging them to manifest. So here’s my counsel: Which negative expectations or predictions are you treating as facts? Consider the possibility that the problems you’re so skilled at identifying are being called into existence by your identification of them. And if you find that’s happening, STOP! Formulate some healing alternatives.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): “Dear Rob: Your horoscopes delight me in a spooky way. They make me feel as if you’re watching me from afar, not like a stalker, but like an eccentric guardian angel who gives me a heads-up before I do something foolish, tells me about opportunities I haven’t noticed, and shakes awake the part of me that’s inclined to quit. Thanks a million times! —Deep Pisces.” Dear Deep: You have exquisite timing, because now is an ideal moment to pour out gratitude for the people who’ve lifted you up and helped you. Offering appreciation now will function as a potent prayer that will be far more effective than pleading for what you don’t have. It will set in motion an irresistible magic that draws even more blessings in your direction.
Homework: What’s the most important thing you’ve never done? tinyurl.com/v9v9v9v9
“It was a dark and stormy night.”
This early science fiction novel offers a fascinating vision of a shadowy underworld populated by strange and beautiful creatures who closely resemble the angels described in Christian lore. These beings, known as Vril-ya, live underground, but are planning soon to claim the surface of the earth as their own — destroying humankind in the process.
Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton PC, was an English novelist, poet, playwright, and politician. Lord Lytton was a florid, popular writer of his day, who coined such phrases as “the great unwashed”, “pursuit of the almighty dollar”, “the pen is mightier than the sword”, and the infamous incipit “It was a dark and stormy night.”
He was the youngest son of General William Earle Bulwer of Heydon Hall and Wood Dalling, Norfolk and Elizabeth Barbara Lytton, daughter of Richard Warburton Lytton of Knebworth, Hertfordshire. He had two brothers, William Earle Lytton Bulwer (1799–1877) and Henry Bulwer, 1st Baron Dalling and Bulwer.
Lord Lytton’s original surname was Bulwer, the names ‘Earle’ and ‘Lytton’ were middle names. On 20 February 1844 he assumed the name and arms of Lytton by royal licence and his surname then became ‘Bulwer-Lytton’. His widowed mother had done the same in 1811. His brothers were always simply surnamed ‘Bulwer’.
(Goodreads.com)
In the aftermath of an intense eclipse season, something is beginning to settle.
September 2026 still has the oppositions and the squares. Life goes on, just like any other month: the good days, the bad days, the plot twists.
But underneath it all, something is moving in a constructive direction. Neptune and Pluto, the farthest planets in our solar system, make an exact sextile.
The lunations this month are also particularly supportive. And there’s enough planetary movement and planetary ingresses to feel that the story is finally moving forward.
But let’s take a look at the most important transits of the month:
On September 1st, 2026, Venus hits 22° Libra – the shadow degree of Venus’ upcoming retrograde phase.
The actual retrograde will begin on October 3rd at 8° Scorpio and end on November 13th at 22° Libra. Venus will be spending a looong time between 22° Libra and 8° Scorpio – that is, until December 16th.
Pay attention to whatever comes up around September 1st. It can be a feeling, a discomfort, a relationship dynamic, something you’ve been holding on to and now re-emerged. Chances are, this is going to become THE thing Venus wants you to focus on from now until December.
On September 10th, the 2 inner planets – Mercury and Venus – change signs and enter relationship territory, and yes, shadow territory.
Because relationships bring us face to face with the Other – the mirror – and with parts of ourselves that can only be understood and awakened through reflection.
The process is never easy because the mirror is never neutral. Whenever things get intense, whenever you find yourself getting swept into old patterns, remember: this is the price of admission for real intimacy, and yes, it is worth it.
On September 11th, 2026, we have a New Moon at 18° Virgo.
This is a supportive lunation – tightly sextile Mars. The New Moon ruler, Mercury – now in the early degrees of Libra – is feeling pretty good too, trining Uranus and Pluto.
Now that we’ve seen what we’ve seen in the aftermath of the eclipse season, what actually needs doing – like, in the real world? No one knows better than Virgo how to take something from “this makes sense” to “this actually works”.
On September 11th, 2026, Uranus goes retrograde at 5° Gemini.
As always with the outer planets – pay attention to their stations even more than you would pay to their aspects.
Uranus is still fresh in Gemini, still making acquaintance with the sign, so the station – especially in the context of the New Moon – can feel like Uranus turning up the volume on its new Gemini agenda.
We might get a very clear hint of what the next 7 years are actually about.
When Mercury hits 3-5° Libra, it plugs into the whole generational architecture.
We have talked a lot about what it means that the 3 outer planets – Uranus, Neptune and Pluto – are now in new signs and aspecting each other. But unless they are activated by a personal planet like Mercury, it all remains a little bit abstract.
We are so used to treating our thoughts and inner dialogue as THE truth. But the truth is that our poor Mercury, when left to itself, more often than not, gets lost in translation.
Incorporating the actual reality – the other perspectives, the way things are actually unfolding at a much greater scale, and how they fit into a much larger picture – can be humbling, but also freeing
This Mercury sequence will take us out of the little story in our heads and plug us into a much bigger reality.
On September 14th, 2026, Black Moon Lilith enters Capricorn.
Lilith is the shadow of the Moon – all those feelings, impressions and psychological complexes that never make it into the light of consciousness. But that doesn’t mean they disappear. They go underground, becoming lodged in the body as raw, unfiltered psychic material.
Black Moon Lilith is basically what the Moon wants when the Sun is not looking. So when this part of us enters Capricorn, it brings out the more Lilith-ish sides of the sign.
Capricorn is cardinal earth – it speaks to how we claim our ground, what we are prepared to work for, and what becomes non-negotiable in the physical world.
This might look like rebellion against false authority, or rediscovering an ambition we haven’t allowed ourselves to own before.
Or, on the contrary, realizing that being a workaholic or keeping up with the Joneses can be a substitute for – rather than an expression of – our TRUE ambition and fulfillment.
On September 15th, 2026, Venus at 3° Scorpio squares Pluto, giving us a taste of what our next months will feel like.
Venus will retrograde in early October at 8° Scorpio, but it’s already moving super slowly, which means that the Venus-Pluto square will be in play for an unusually long time. We are basically talking about an almost 3-month transit.
Compare this to the regular 1-2 days of a Venus-Pluto transit, and you get the scale of what we are dealing with.
No one on the face of this Earth gets to stay on the surface with this transit. You have been warned – and a detailed report about this transit will follow closer to the date.
On September 15th, 2026, Neptune and Pluto meet in an exact sextile. This is a subtle but very important aspect.
This is not the first Neptune-Pluto sextile – we had several exact alignments in previous decades – but this is the first one with Neptune in Aries and Pluto in Aquarius.
The exact alignment is a celestial ‘stamp’ – a moment when the aspect crystallizes. All the months and years when Neptune and Pluto dance around each other are in a way a preparation for these exact meetings.
In the most direct interpretation of the transit, this is good news. It suggests that beyond our understanding, the universe has scaffolding in place – giving possibility the support it needs to become real.
The exact ‘click’ might be one of those moments when even us mortals can notice it. A clarity might arrive about how something we sensed was important but couldn’t quite grasp actually fits into a much larger process.
The houses in your chart where you have Aquarius and Aries will give you further clues about where this cosmic collaboration might begin to make itself visible in your life.
After dipping its hooves in Taurus, Chiron re-enters Aries to finish any unfinished, last-degree Aries business.
We have from now until April 2027 to clear and heal the Aries house – and then we move to Taurus territory for good.
On September 23rd, 2026, the Sun enters Libra. Happy b-day to all Libras out there and happy equinox to everyone!
The Equinox is that time of the year when the day is equal to the night.
This point of equilibrium is also a turning point → the balance between day and night now shifts. There’s a new season bringing new developments, new opportunities, and new beginnings.
And while Libra is almost synonymous with the word “balance” – and balance sounds a bit like inaction -, let’s not forget that Libra is a cardinal sign.
The Libra season is actually a great time to take action – get yourself out there, initiate intellectual projects, or make new social connections.
On September 26th, 2026, we have a Full Moon at 3° Aries.
Exactly conjunct Neptune, this is the kind of lunation that brings to mind what Carl Jung called a “big dream” – a numinous archetypal dream that reveals something extraordinary about ourselves and our purpose.
This means: pay attention to messages that don’t come through the usual channels. There’s something trying to emerge about your purpose (Aries) – a missing piece that will make the different parts of your story click into place.
More literally, this could be a “dreams come true” lunation since it activates the Neptune-Pluto sextile almost exactly. The fuzzy transpersonal territory now becomes personal.
On September 28th, 2026, Mars leaves Cancer to enter Leo.
In all astrological honesty, Mars in Cancer was not an easy transit – and not just because of essential dignity reasons.
Mars in Cancer meant Mars squaring Neptune and Saturn – without much support from water or earth signs because, unlike in previous years, the outer planets have all moved into fire and air.
Which should make us at least a little bit enthusiastic about Mars in Leo.
Warning: the first aspect will be an opposition to Pluto – and Mars opposite Pluto is Mars opposite Pluto. Even that is eased by a trine to Neptune and a sextile to Uranus.
But then things start to get interesting as Mars approaches Jupiter and then the South Node.
This will be a very interesting Mars transit also because next year Mars will retrograde back into Leo, so we’re talking about a much longer Mars-in-Leo story than usual. Mars enters its retrograde shadow in Leo in November and won’t clear the entire retrograde cycle until June 2027.
A detailed report about the Mars in Leo transit – and its retrograde implications – will follow closer to the date.
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