I don’t know when, but somewhere along the way, the university became the enemy of the USA. It’s insane, yes, but we live in an era of Dunning-Kruger Effect dipshittery like none other.

I could point to all kinds of reasons – religious fundamentalism being the biggest culprit. Alas, it is much more complicated, but I think we can all see who the cheerleaders are for defunding education.

Venerated universities in the USA have interesting histories. All were estabilshed under some kind of religious dispensation or sanction. Over time, as knowledge crystalized, many eschewed that religious mission and evolved into secular institutions. The philosophers and the scientists began to agree that religious claims of the supernatural simply cannot stand up to reason, experiment, or even the laugh test.

The educated “elite” have simply moved beyond the superstitions of religion, and that intellectual progress has threatened the very survival of religion, not just in the USA, but in all of the First World. Of course, the USA remains the most religiously-affiliated population of any Western democracy, but to hear it from the fundies, we would think that the atheists have taken over and are about to ban the bible. It’s all quite mad in the Cosmos of Absurdity.

We must ask, then, what are universities for? To get young people into good jobs? Football weekends? One would hope that the core purpose of higher education is to cultivate the higher minds of humans, which in turn will improve humanity in every arena. Education is the spine of civilization.

The only way to properly cultivate that erudite mind is to allow a wide berth for freedom of thought and consciousness, to find “the truth.” The only way a mind can grow is by questioning the prevailing wisdom of the day, and then reasoning through the answers. This process is often called thinking.

Thinking – that quaint notion – seems to be in short supply these days. “He says what I’m thinking” is a refrain oft heard from the mouths of Trumpkins, but of course it’s an absurd claim that any kind of thinking has actually gone on. With them, it’s all about feelings, mostly of anger and anxiety.

Having feelings is not thinking. Having feelings is the opposite of thinking. Feelings are just glandular excretions caused by stimuli. Thinking is how we rise above that. But, thinking people don’t vote for tyrants. The tyrant says what they feel, and tells them their feelings are the best feelings to ever have, and that thinking is for idiots.

I’m getting off-track here, but the point is that, somehow, Columbia University began hurting the feelings of those folks wasting away in MAGAritaville. Somehow, our vaunted and cherished freedom to speak and express in an instutution of thinking became very troubling for certain others, and had to be stopped. Some people were spooked, apparently, but we do know the original charter for the institution that became Columbia was granted on Halloween of 1754. Boo! And since April 17 of 2024, it’s been all tricks and no treats.

Poor Columbia U, getting punched from all sides. Academics are boycotting and scolding them, while the unholy and tyrannical coalition of MAGA and Zionism are looking to ruin them financially. The genocide in Gaza? Meh, never mind, some Jewish students were not spoken to properly – not by Palestinian students, but by other Jewish students!

It’s an impossible situation, much like when the wife asks if she looks fat in that dress right before a night out – the internal panic dialogue runs through all the possible routines, but eventually the husband just takes his lumps. “Just tell me what to say, please!”

Yes, yes, the Cosmos of Absurdity – welcome to Gaia, birthplace of religion and genocide.

Just Get To The Astrology, FFS

The original chart for the school that became Columbia U looks fantastic. A Full Moon aligned with Mars and the star that marks Saturn’s exaltation, Zubenelgenubi [ZEG], quite excellent for vigorous efforts, and also shows prominence. Jupiter and Saturn are in a happy trine, and both are direct in motion. The North Node – in opposition to the Black Moon – is conjunct the stars that mark Mercury’s exaltation: Porrima and Vindemiatrix. Mercury itself is in a semi-square to the North Node, and in a quintile to Jupiter. (Kepler would applaud!)

When we add the new planets, however, the chart takes a nosedive. Neptune, the bringer of all kinds of human foibles, is in a T-square to the Full Moon and Mars; Uranus is also aspecting those three, but in a more relaxed trine/sextile arrangement; Pluto is square to Jupiter and “inconjunct” with Saturn.

This may help explain why the college went through so much high strangeness and strife in the first half century.

Relocating that to New York City, we may think we have stumbled onto the reason for this astrological elective chart by the Crown: the Full Moon straddles the horizontal, Saturn’s exaltation star Zubenelgenubi [ZEG] is on the ascendant, and the exaltation stars of Mars [Sad and DeA] are at the nadir, on the meridian:

If we take the original chart, relocated to NYC, but use the ancient fixed zodiac (The Fagan zodiac with Aldebaran and Antares at 15° of Taurus and Scorpio, respectively), things begin to make more sense:

It’s like a master class in ritual astrology, probably the work of some Oxfordian nerd, as it should be: astronomy was still in the Liberal Arts in those days, and casting astrology charts was often a fun exercise for students. Notice that Saturn’s exaltation is at the midpoint of the Jupiter/Saturn trine. Notice that the Full Moon is on the Sun’s exaltation. Notice that Mercury is in the Moon’s “fall” (a fall is simply the opposite point an exaltation).

Of course, this was just the first iteration of the school. The early years were sometimes troubled, and it was almost wiped out during the Revolutionary War. It was an Anglican institution to begin with, but after the War it had to be stripped of any loyalty to the English monarchy and the Anglican Church.

After some very lean and scattered years, the State of New York set out to re-charter the institution, and did so on March 23 of 1810. It is a much less interesting chart, though the conjunction of the Black Moon to Sirius and the sextile from the North Node to Saturn stand out.

Here it is without the stars:

And, wouldn’t we know it, Pluto comes in, fucking up an otherwise placid radix, being square to Saturn, which finally explains why it might be so vulnerable to forces such as the unholy alliance.

Finally, the punch line. The Gaza Solidarity Encampment was initiated in the wee predawn hours (I have defaulted to 4 am) of April 17, 2024, partly in response to Columbia’s President, the Right Honourable Baroness Minouche Shafik, being called to Congress to get harangued by the Israel lobby’s central cast of flunkies, shitheads, and creeps. Shafik, as the name might tell you, is not a Jew or a Christian, but instead a Muslim from Egypt. Oh, the horrors! She had to be made an example of, or Hamas would surely win the war.

I highlighted the main astrological ugliness, but also we can see Encampment Pluto squaring the Charter Moon while sextiling the Charter Sun, and that the Lunar Nodes have flipped 180.

By August 14, Shafik was ousted, after serving only 409 days as President, but the punishment for Columbia, Palestinian students, the Constitution, and academia in general, wasn’t over. The unholy alliance was only getting started, and a new pound of flesh was demanded. The upcoming Saturn/Neptune conjunction in the first degree of Aries could be an even bigger crisis for Columbia, but I am sure that the Constitutional crisis and war on our freedom of mind will find countless casualties almost everywhere.

It’s 1277 all over again, only worse. It’s Academicide.

►Ed