I picked this up a week ago and I’m blown away with how good it is. Like taking class again. I’m recommending that you just buy this out right and not join their ongoing reading program. It’s $8 (normally $33), 14 different titles and over 20 hours of audio. I got it so that I could listen to something in the morning when I first got up and I sure am enjoying it. Any questions, let me know. Aloha.
–Steve Hines
(Astrobutterfly.com)
In ancient Mesopotamia, commercial dealings and debts were recorded on clay tablets.
With time, more and more records would accumulate across the tablet. At some point, these tablets would become almost impossible to decipher and make sense of, and no one could fully tell anymore who owed whom what.
That’s why, periodically, usually upon the ascendancy of new monarchs, the tablets would be cleared – the slate would be wiped clean. It no longer mattered what was recorded on the old tablet – what was owed, or to whom.
They simply started from zero. A new tablet.
And the world would go on, keep functioning, no massive collapse, no burden carried forward.
The world debt is over 300% of world GDP. States are in debt, corporations are in debt, individuals are in debt. Everyone owes something to someone.
Who owns this 300+ trillion debt? If only pension funds were that wealthy. It’s not sitting somewhere in real assets either – all megayachts in the world amount to something like 0.06% of the debt ledger.
Most debt is not really real. It is looped through financial institutions as a ‘claim’ on future value – a claim on tomorrow’s labor, tomorrow’s growth, tomorrow’s productivity.
A claim that keeps most of us living slightly ahead of ourselves, conditioned to consume before we create, to postpone the bill arriving, to build our lives on promises rather than presence.
As always, when we look for meta-influences – the type of influences that shape society as a whole, rather than individual lives – we look at the outer planets. Outer planets describe what is happening at a collective level in the world, the slow-moving tides underneath history.
We have 3 outer planets, or 3 gods: Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. Uranus is the sky. Pluto is the Earth.
And Neptune is everything in between – oceans, movement, currents, connection, the invisible spaces that link one shore to another.
And in our societies, Neptune represents exactly that: supply chains, trade routes, abstract systems, intermediaries, financial plumbing, the instruments that allow value to move across distance and time.
Neptune also represents financial abstraction – things like debt, credit, leverage, as well as the invisible mathematical ‘formulas’ through which modern economies operate.
Still think Neptune is a heads-in-the-clouds artist signature only?
Chart after chart reveals that many scientists, mathematicians, IT architects, systems thinkers, financial strategists – read Warren Buffett – people whose work involves abstract manipulation of reality – carry strong Neptune placements.
Saturn is the clay tablet – the place where reality is recorded, stored, and made concrete. Saturn is what makes something feel real through rules, frameworks, accountability, structure, and consequence.
If Saturn is the 3D reality we can relate to, Neptune is the meta-level reality – the deeper reality underneath the forms. It is the one we’ve been pretending not to see, or calling it ‘illusion’ whenever our personal reality didn’t align with it.
In the past decades, Neptune has moved through the last 3 signs of the zodiac – Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces – and we have watched entire systems of claims become instruments of power and control – corporate structures, financial abstraction, digital networks, invisible intermediaries.
The collective world has become so complex that meaning gets lost inside the machinery itself. Things become so abstract that the average person can no longer see where value begins, where obligation ends, or who is truly accountable.
Most of us have lost the thread, and have no idea how the world ‘works’.
And in these conditions, whoever controls the instruments controls the rules – and benefits from the fog.
This is not (only) about ‘institutions’ or ‘corrupt politicians’. Sure, whenever power is abused, there’s an imbalance, and someone carries the weight – unfairly.
But many times it is also our own participation: spending beyond our means, acquiring something that we haven’t created value for yet, living ‘dreams’ that have no possibility of being materialized, keeping ourselves busy with distraction instead of action, with consumption instead of creation.
Of course, the system is structurally incentivized to expand debt and control – banks, interest, monetary policy, asset inflation. The machinery thrives on forward promises.
But the individual is also complicit, because debt is a way of consuming a life we have not yet produced, instead of meeting the present with what is actually ours.
And really, here debt is not about “money.” It is about time.
Debt is dependence on the future cooperating. It is saying: “I will take now what belongs to later”. It is never only imposed from above – it is also chosen from below.
And what we’re really, really talking about here is energetic debt – the subtle ledger of self-betrayal, self-abandonment, and unclaimed agency. The feeling that something is “owed” back to life.
Debt, in its deepest sense, is living with an imbalance between what is dreamed, and what is true.
When left unconscious, debt becomes a quiet agreement: I will keep postponing. Society will keep rolling forward. The slate will never be called due.
Because these upward promises and deferred settlements can only lead to imbalances, and when these imbalances grow too high, there comes a correction. Something needs to happen to restore equilibrium.
At an individual level – which is really the only place where we have any control, and the only place we should care about, especially since we’re talking about 0° Aries – it’s about recognizing where we’ve been acting out of energetic debt.
Life knows when something is outstanding, and will eventually call it due.
Neptune and Saturn at 0° Aries in February 2026 is that moment when it gets called due.
The Aries 0 point – the equinox point, when day is equal to night everywhere on Earth – is the point-zero, inevitable place when the slate is wiped clean – and where something new must be inscribed.
This conjunction asks us to come back to ourselves, and live from who we are, in the now.
No longer allowing ourselves to be controlled by anything that is not real – no longer playing by the rules of the game when these rules are not honoring Truth.
No longer saying yes when we mean no, giving away life force because we were conditioned to please, or allowing others to write the terms of our inner contract.
It also means no longer hiding in complacency, postponing our calling, living beneath our potential, or consuming comfort without creating value.
Whether this comes upstream or downstream – whether it is due to others taking too much, or us giving too little – it means recognizing that living on borrowed terms pulls us away from full authorship of our life.
With Neptune and Saturn leaving Pisces and meeting at 0° Aries in February 2026, we are invited to cross the threshold – from illusion, into Reality. From borrowed time, into the Now.
If Neptune at 0° Aries comes to reveal: “This was never real”, Saturn says: “Then let’s build what is”.
Neptune conjunct Saturn at 0° Aries is a new tablet – a new contract, a new beginning.
It is the ending of a life lived on borrowed terms. It is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to return to essence, start from truth, and inscribe something real.
Translation is a 5-step process of “straight thinking in the abstract” comparing and contrasting what seems to be truth with what you can syllogistically, axiomatically and mathematically (using word equations) prove is the truth. It is not an effort to change, alter or heal anything other than our consciousness.
The claims in a Translation should be outrageous and mind-blowing, but they are always (or should always be) based on self-evident syllogistic reasoning. Here is one Translation from this week.
1) Truth is that which is so. That which is not truth is not so. Therefore Truth is all that is. Truth being all is therefore total, therefore limitless, therefore infinite, therefore endless, therefore beginningless, therefore always. I think therefore I am. Since I am and since Truth is all that is, therefore I, being, am Truth. Since I am Truth and since it is knowing which informs me of my being, therefore Truth is Knowing, Truth is Consciousness.
2) I am so anxious that it affects my blood pressure.
Word-tracking:
anxious: to choke, to render speechless, euphonic, to suffocate
blood pressure: too much (or too little) life flow, life force
blood: divine truth
hot-blooded: passionate
passion: patient, not controlled
3) Truth being all that is, thus Truth is all that exists, all that lives. Since Truth is all that lives and since Truth is all that is, there is no killing (suffocating, choking, anxiety) in Truth, therefore Truth/Life is indestructible. Truth being life, therefore life flow, and Truth being that which is right, proper, appropriate, thus there cannot be too little or too much life flow. Therefore Truth is always the appropriate amount of life flow. Truth being limitless and passion being the loss of control, the loss of restraint, therefore Truth is passion.
4) Truth is all that lives.
Truth/Life is indestructible.
Truth is always the appropriate amount of life flow.
Truth is passion.
5) Truth is passion.
For information about Translation or other Prosperos classes go to: https://www.theprosperos.org/teaching.
Weekly Invitational Translation Group invites your participation. If you would like to submit a Translation on any subject, feel free to send your weekly Translation to zonta1111@aol.com and we will anonymously post it on the Bathtub Bulletin on Friday.
January 31: 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM PST
Mike Zonta, H.W., M.
In a crisis — any crisis — The Prosperos offers Translation. Translation Saturday Meetings is a weekly series of Translation presentations by veteran Translators, live and up to date on the issues of the day.
It is not a Translation workshop, It is not a Translation class. It is not a group Translation, though group participation is encouraged.
It is, however, restricted to those who have taken Translation class. So if you have never taken Translation class, check the calendar tab on The Prosperos website (TheProsperos.org) or get in touch with us and we will schedule a class.
Last week our sense testimony was: Anxiety can cause disease of the gut. Out conclusion: Gut is the expression of Truth, the synchronous opportunity for ease of Consciousness.
– – – – – – – – – -Expose Yourself fo Translation!!!- – – – – – – – – –
Here’s the link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81749347119
For more info and link to join please Email Mike Zonta at:
by Scott Horton
February 26, 2008 (Harpers.org)
Hört, ihr Richter! Einen anderen Wahnsinn giebt es noch: und der ist vor der That. Ach, ihr krocht mir nicht tief genug in diese Seele! So spricht der rothe Richter: “was mordete doch dieser Verbrecher? Er wollte rauben.” Aber ich sage euch: seine Seele wollte Blut, nicht Raub: er dürstete nach dem Glück des Messers!
Seine arme Vernunft aber begriff diesen Wahnsinn nicht und überredete ihn. “Was liegt an Blut! sprach sie; willst du nicht zum mindesten einen Raub dabei machen? Eine Rache nehmen?” Und er horchte auf seine arme Vernunft: wie Blei lag ihre Rede auf ihm, — da raubte er, als er mordete. Er wollte sich nicht seines Wahnsinns schämen.
Und nun wieder liegt das Blei seiner Schuld auf ihm, und wieder ist seine arme Vernunft so steif, so gelähmt, so schwer. Wenn er nur den Kopf schütteln könnte, so würde seine Last herabrollen: aber wer schüttelt diesen Kopf?
Was ist dieser Mensch? Ein Haufen von Krankheiten, welche durch den
Geist in die Welt hinausgreifen: da wollen sie ihre Beute machen. Was ist dieser Mensch? Ein Knäuel wilder Schlangen, welche selten bei einander Ruhe haben, — da gehn sie für sich fort und suchen Beute in der Welt.
Seht diesen armen Leib! Was er litt und begehrte, das deutete sich diese arme Seele, — sie deutete es als mörderische Lust und Gier nach dem Glück des Messers.
Listen, judges! There is another lunacy, the one which precedes the deed. You have not dug deep enough into this soul! So spoke the red judge: “Why did this criminal commit murder? He meant to rob.” But I tell you, that his soul wanted blood, not the prize of theft: he thirsted for the happiness of the knife!
But his poor reason understood not this madness, and it persuaded him. “What use is blood to you!” it said; “would you not at least take some plunder in the process? Or take revenge?” And he followed his weak reason: its words pressed upon him like lead—and so he robbed when he murdered. He did not wish to be ashamed of his madness.
And now once more the lead of his guilt weighs upon him, and once more is his weak reason so brittle, so paralyzed, and so heavy. If he could shake his head, then his burden would roll off; but who could shake this head?
What is this man? A mass of diseases that reach out into the world through the spirit; there they seek their quarry. What is this man? A coil of wild serpents that are seldom at peace among themselves–so each goes forth separately and seeks its quarry in the world.
Look at that poor body! What it suffered and craved, the poor soul interpreted for itself–it interpreted it as murderous desire, and a craving for the happiness of the knife.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen, “Die Reden Zarathustras,” ch. 6 (1883) in: Werke in drei Bänden, vol. 2, pp. 304-05 (K. Schlechta ed. 1973)(S.H. transl.)
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra is an enigmatic book, easily misunderstood, and hard to grasp with any measure of certainty. And this passage, the chapter about the “pale criminal,” is one of the most enigmatic. At first blush this and several other segments of Zarathustra seem to be a glorification of the mind of a violent criminal, of the person who “rises above” social morals, and particularly the Wilhelmine Christian morality which Nietzsche so thoroughly despised—of an individual who is self-actuated and prepared to do “whatever it takes” to achieve his end. It smells a bit of Benvenuto Cellini, of the famous passage in his Autobiography where he describes his homicidal assault on persons who plagued him in a lawsuit, or perhaps of Vautrin, the mysterious, unapologetic and rather hypnotic criminal mastermind of Balzac’s Le père Goriot. But on closer inspection, can that understanding be correct? Isn’t Nietzsche’s meaning something different? Isn’t his perspective that of a plunge into the collective consciousness of humankind, or indeed, into the subconscious? We who judge too quickly do not “penetrate deeply enough” into the man, Nietzsche suggests. Nietzsche writes before the real dawn of modern psychoanalysis, but it seems plain enough that he’s a bloodhound working his way down the path that Freud and Jung, among many others, would very shortly be taking.
That would suggest that this passage is an attempt to parse the mentality of a common criminal—not a criminal genius like a Vautrin—but the petty creature. He commits a murder in the course of some minor crime not because he designs to murder, but because it seems expedient for the moment. Then the reality of what he has done seeps in, and he is horrified. In this sense, I think, Nietzsche uses the word “pale,” as if the blood is running from his head, as the shock of his crime sets in. He has not killed because of an animal impulse that regales in the kill—the primal Blutlust to which Nietzsche alludes, which rests in his subconscious but does not drive his conduct. The sublimating force of society still has an incomplete grasp on him.
And note the mass of images of antiquity that Nietzsche packs into this work. In this passage, we see the coil of snakes. What does this mean? Perhaps the snakes stand for the neuroses or psychoses, the mental ailments that complicate the pale criminal’s mind. The encoiled snakes are the image of the Medusa, associated by the ancients with madness. They hiss and bite one another, robbing him of a clear will and resolve, impeding his clear-headed action. Note he talks of their inclination to go separately out into the world and to seek their own spoils. This points to a psychotic affliction, the possibility perhaps of a multiple-personality disorder.
Finally what is this craving for the “happiness of the knife”? Certainly it is not the repressed desire to kill of which Nietzsche spoke a few lines earlier. This is a reference to the desire for finality, for suicide as an end to a tormented existence. It is an image that covers the self-destructive impulse common in this type.
So the “pale criminal” is a study of evil latent in humankind—not the most dramatic or threatening kind of evil, but rather the sort of evil which infests the small-minded or petty thug, the creature who acts without deeper moral bearings. The “pale criminal” may well commit a deceit, a fraud, a confidence trick, without even thinking of his conduct as a crime, and may experience remorse in the wake of his actions. He is a diseased and crippled specimen. And yet he is very common, and not so frequently observed for what he is. Nietzsche does not glorify in this passage; he catalogues, and having written, passes on.
Thom Hartmann Program Jan 27, 2026 Thom’s Daily Take – The Hartmann Report Will we stand with the generations who expanded freedom through resistance and sacrifice or surrender self-government to fear, force, and authoritarian power? America must decide what kind of nation it will become. The written Daily Take: https://hartmannreport.com/p/once-aga… Thom discusses a deeply unsettling pattern in American history: a crisis cycle occurring approximately every 80 years, forcing the nation to redefine itself. This concept, rooted in economic history, is explored through Neil Howe’s “The Fourth Turning,” highlighting how history patterns shape societal evolution. What kind of nation will we become?
January 24, 2026 (RawStory.com)
Jonathan Ross, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, will not be brought to justice.
Let that sink in. Ross is going to skate, because in Donald Trump‘s America, his agency operates above the law. As Vice President JD Vance put it at a White House press conference the day after the shooting, Ross has “absolute immunity for doing his job.”
Vance’s comments shed light upon the larger legal design behind ICE’s newfound power. In Trump’s second term, the U.S. is rapidly devolving into what the late German émigré legal and political scientist Ernst Fraenkel called a “dual state,” in which acts of violence perpetrated against designated enemies of the regime are not only tolerated, but often celebrated as acts of valor and redemption.
ALSO READ: Here’s the real story of the FBI raid on Fulton County, Atlanta
A socialist attorney who practiced labor law in Berlin, Fraenkel fled Nazi Germany in 1938, eventually settling in Chicago. There he would write his most famous work, The Dual State: A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship, a study of the legal system implemented by the Third Reich in the 1930s.
Fraenkel’s central thesis is that the Nazis did not dismantle the legal structure of the Weimar Republic all at once or entirely, but replaced it with a bifurcated system in which state functions were divided between a “normative” sphere — which operated according to set rules and regulations — and a “prerogative” sphere, where violence was permitted and traditional legal restraints did not apply.
To keep capitalism up and running, Hitler’s government had to maintain the façade of a stable “normative” legal system that permitted businesses and Christian Germans to engage in commerce and settle contract cases, employment disputes, landlord-tenant matters, and other civil issues in court. As University of Chicago law professor Aziz Huq noted in a March 2025 Atlantic essay, this duality allowed capitalism to “jog nicely alongside the brutal suppression of democracy, and even genocide.”
But as the judiciary surrendered its independence through a combination of cooptation and intimidation, the “prerogative” system came to dominate.
“On any given day,” Huq explained:
… people or cases could be jerked out of the normative state and into the prerogative one. In July 1936, for example, Fraenkel won a case for employees of an association taken over by the Nazis. A few days later, he learned that the Gestapo had seized the money owed to his clients and deposited it in the government’s coffers.
The case was closed with no further appeals.
Fraenkel largely attributed the theoretical underpinnings of the dual Nazi state to the work of the German legal philosopher Carl Schmitt. Often referred to as the “Crown Jurist of National Socialism,” Schmitt joined the party in 1933 and went on to serve as president of the National Socialist Association of Legal Professionals.
Schmitt was an unrelenting critic of liberalism, decrying its weaknesses for embracing universal human rights and what he deemed its hypocritical and indecisive fixations on discussion, debate, negotiation, and compromise. As a counter to universalism, he promoted a “friend-enemy” concept of politics, insisting that all states necessarily distinguish between those whom it embraces as friends worthy of protection and those who are forever considered enemies, outsiders and invaders deserving of its wrath, retribution, and punishment.
As a complement to the friend-enemy concept, Schmitt promoted the idea of the “state of exception,” arguing that the sovereign in a well-functioning state must be vested with emergency powers to suspend the rule of law to maintain public order and ensure the survival of the nation. Soon after joining the party, he declared that the Enabling Act, which effectively made Hitler a dictator, had become the provisional constitution of Germany. He would go on to enthusiastically support the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, stripping Jews and other “enemies” of citizenship, and to defend Hitler’s right as sovereign to define the enemy as he saw fit.
All of this will sound eerily familiar to anyone who has been paying attention to the news. Since retaking the presidency, Trump has declared nine states of emergency on a range of issues stretching from the imposition of bloated tariffs on foreign goods to designating drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, and proclaiming a national emergency at the southern border. The border proclamation, issued on Jan. 20, his first day back in office, cited the now-familiar charge of an “alien invasion” of “criminal gangs, known terrorists, human traffickers, smugglers,” and laid the groundwork for both his mass-deportation program and for giving ICE the largest budget of any police agency in the country.
ICE is now a formidable paramilitary force, having hired 12,000 new agents in the past year, more than doubling its size, and ramping up to hire more. It has been deployed into American cities on orders from Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to root out the invaders. It has become the violent face of the country’s transformation into a new 21st-century dual state.
Undocumented immigrants remain ICE’s primary target, but citizens like Good are also in jeopardy. Good’s case stands out because she was white, and her killing was caught on video. But she is not alone. While there are no official figures that specifically track how many citizens have been victimized by immigration agents, ProPublica reported last October that it had found more than 170 cases where citizens were detained during raids and protests. According to the report:
Americans have been dragged, tackled, beaten, tased, and shot by immigration agents. They’ve had their necks kneeled on. They’ve been held outside in the rain while in their underwear. At least three citizens were pregnant when agents detained them. One of those women had already had the door of her home blown off while Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem watched.
To date, not a single federal agent has been prosecuted for these incidents. Nor are any prosecutions likely.
In “normal” times, we could at least expect Agent Ross to face a rigorous Justice Department investigation. It is not true, to return to Vance‘s comments, that Ross enjoys absolute immunity under existing law. It has always been difficult to prosecute federal law enforcement officials, but no such immunity exists.
But these are not normal times.
Trump, who now openly directs the Department of Justice and the FBI, has precluded the possibility of any serious federal investigation. Nor can we count on a state investigation conducted in concert with federal law enforcement. The FBI has announced it will exclude Minnesota authorities from participating in any fake pro-forma probe of Good’s death.
Perhaps most regrettably, we cannot count on the Supreme Court to hold Ross and other offending agents to account. The Supreme Court has endowed Trump with the powers of the unitary executive, holding in Trump v. United States that the president may exercise his pardon power however he pleases to excuse anyone from any federal prosecution.
The struggle against ICE and our emerging dual state is now approaching a critical inflection point. We can be heartened by the fact that the United States is not Germany in 1933, and Trump, for all his bluster and megalomania, is not Hitler. The country’s fate remains open, and dependent on the nonviolent and lawful collective action that we — all of us — take in the coming weeks, months, and years.
What don’t we know, and why don’t we know it? What keeps ignorance alive, or allows it to be used as a political instrument? Agnotology―the study of ignorance―provides a new theoretical perspective to broaden traditional questions about “how we know” to Why don’t we know what we don’t know? The essays assembled in Agnotology show that ignorance is often more than just an absence of knowledge; it can also be the outcome of cultural and political struggles. Ignorance has a history and a political geography, but there are also things people don’t want you to know (“Doubt is our product” is the tobacco industry slogan). Individual chapters treat examples from the realms of global climate change, military secrecy, female orgasm, environmental denialism, Native American paleontology, theoretical archaeology, racial ignorance, and more. The goal of this volume is to better understand how and why various forms of knowing do not come to be, or have disappeared, or have become invisible.
American historian of science and Professor of the History of Science at Stanford University. While a professor of the history of science at the University of Pennsylvania in 1999, he became the first historian to testify against the tobacco industry.
(Goodreads.com)
