ISBN: 9781933435367,  365 pgs, $21.95 US

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Preview the Book!

Time and Money

The Economy and the Planets

(second edition)

by

Robert Gover

Author of the American cult classic novel

One Hundred Dollar Misundertanding

 

"Robert Gover's challenging and fascinating new book is both massive in its scope and startling in its vision. It truly offers something for everyone."

-Tim Bost, editor FinancialCyclesWeekly.com

 

Can the planets predict economic conditions? In Time and Money, best-selling author Robert Gover links the planets to major economic turning points in US history, going back to Columbus. Using planetary patterns that coincide with past economic hard times and social upheavals, Gover reveals why the 2000-teens are going to be the most horrendous decade in US history.

 

“It is Gover's experience as a social commentator, however, that makes Time and Money worth a read, regardless of one's views about astrology. While touting itself as a guide to the planet cycles and the US economy, the book is clearly a commentary on America's evolution and the resulting political and economic environment.”

- Helen Avery, Euromoney Magazine

 

“Using the art of astrology, Robert Gover predicts fundamental changes, even revolutions around the world, from 2008 all the way to 2020. I agree with many of his forecasts. Gover offers an alternative way of stock market and economic predictions that investors could find useful.”

- Dr. Ravi Batra, Southern Methodist University

 

"Time and Money is highly recommended for every student of astro-economics. It explores economic history ... stressing that astrology is much more than just a tool to make money, it's a philosophy that reminds us of our higher responsibilities."

- Manfred Zimmel, editor Amanita Financial Newsletter

 

"If you're an economist or historian, Gover's perspectives will give you much to ponder. If you're an astrologer, they will awaken you to the powerful role this ancient science can play in the modern world. And if you're just someone who hopes to maintain a little bit of sanity and financial stability as you weave your way through today's media-hyped political minefields and economic booby traps, Time and Money is essential reading."

-         Tim Bost, editor FinancialCyclesWeekly.com

 

"I can't remember when last I enjoyed a piece of writing so much, this charting of the past, present & future of Uncle Sam. There is never a dull moment."

- Lennox Raphael, playwright, Copenhagen, Denmark

 

“Gover's easy to read style allows him to communicate Astrological information to readers who know nothing about Astrology. … Time & Money entertains, educates and gets us thinking. It keeps us turning pages and inspires us to examine who we are and where our country is right now.” 

- Maryanne Raphael, www.authorsden.com/maryanneraphael

 

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A Preview of Time and Money

(Book includes a detailed index, over 60 charts, and 386 pages of analysis.)

 

Introduction

One way of stating the basis of astrology is that the Earth, and thus we Earthlings, are part of a much larger environment. If you could look down on our Solar System from light-years above the North Pole, you'd see a community of planets moving counter-clockwise around a Sun. You'd see that the paths of the planets are flat, and elliptical rather than circular. From that perspective, it would be obvious that Earth is part of this community we call the Solar System. We passengers on planet Earth are a minuscule part of this Solar System environment just as it is a minuscule part of the surrounding universe.

Astrology is also how we measure time. There is clock time, the cycles of days and nights, minutes and seconds, and the four seasons we experience as our planet orbits the Sun. And there is "Solar System time," measured by the cycles of primary angles made by the planets as seen from Earth. Clock time duplicates every 24 hours. In Solar System time, even though we measure it in earth-bound clock time, no two moments are ever exactly the same.

What we experience each year as winter is due to the Earth's rocking motion as it rolls around the Sun. Every winter brings cold but some winters are much colder than others. Planetary cycles are not so regular and they occur in an ever-changing celestial context. Every 28 days when the Sun and Moon come conjunct at the Lunation or New Moon, the other planets are in different angular relationships—-by longitude, latitude, or degrees above or below the Ecliptic (the Sun’s path)—to each other and each Lunation.

 

Time Factor

In Astrology and Stock Market Forecasting, published in 1936, Louise McWhirter said: “The way conditions exist today, man is the victim of the business cycle. With detailed charts and graphs, he can tell you when business began to pick up, and when a recession started, but he cannot tell you these factors in advance, with all his statistical research, because he has no time factor.”

Astrology provides that time factor. Saturn takes 28-30 Earth years to complete one orbit around the Sun, Uranus averages 84 years, Neptune 165 years, Pluto 248 years. Those four outermost are the "astro-economic indicators." By reviewing history to find what patterns they formed during past great depressions, we can gauge when another great depression is likely. Incidentally, Uranus is pronounced “your-an-us,” nor “your anis.”

The inner planets are those closest to the Earth: Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars and Jupiter. They are of secondary concern because they move too swiftly to mark years or decades of major economic cycles.

Every time the USA has gone through a great depression, the outermost, slowest moving planets have formed what astrologers call a grand cross with the USA's natal Sun and Saturn. Every time Uranus has returned to early Gemini where it was when the USA was “born” July 4, 1776, America has experienced its worst wars. Every time Uranus and Pluto have moved into conjunctions or 90-degree squares and simultaneously come conjunct, opposite or square sensitive points in the US birth chart, America has experienced social changes or upheavals. (Planetary angles are explained below.)

Other wars occur when the US natal Uranus is "afflicted" by transiting planets, as happened when the World Trade Center and Pentagon were attacked. Saturn and Pluto form 180-degree oppositions three times a century, the latest being in effect on September 11, 2001. The previous Saturn-Pluto opposition coincided with the tempestuous period we now call The Sixties; the one before that with what we now call The Great Depression (1930s).

Astrologers speak of the planets influencing but not controlling us. We have free will, intelligence, historic memory, judgment. We don't freeze to death in winter because we're prepared. We can also prepare for economic winters and times of radical social change.

 

Beliefs and Evidence

A kind of dialogue occurs between an entity's cultural assumptions and the planetary influences. Our cultural assumptions contain our most basic and unquestioned beliefs. We tend to interpret evidence according to our beliefs, and too often find what we believe should be rather than what the evidence indicates. I synthesize this human proclivity in the phrase, belief trumps evidence. A capitalist and socialist viewing Third World poverty will prescribe different remedies based on their different beliefs.

Astrology has been called God's newsletter. The basic message it brings is that we humans are not in charge here. We must harmonize with God's will or suffer consequences. By adding astrology to economic forecasting, we can much more intelligently predict when the next economically difficult period will arrive.

Although humans have been stargazing for millennia, no one has discovered the why or how of these coincidences or synchronicities or correlations. All we know for sure is that certain planetary cycles and angles coincide with certain types of events here on planet Earth.

 

Money

Just as baffling as the effect of the planets on our lives, and paralleling the development of astrology, is the development of money. An interesting perspective on money in the 20th Century came from a former director of the Bank of England, Lord Josiah Stemp, who in 1937 said, “The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of slight of hand that was ever invented...If you want to be slaves of the bankers, and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let the banks create money.”

As far back as 700 BC people found they could expand economic well-being by using things like cowry shells, seeds, rare stones and bits of metal to facilitate trading. In the past three centuries it was deemed more convenient to keep precious metals in vaults and use paper money that could be exchanged for those precious metals. “...the paper bill was originally the equivalent of a receipt showing that the bearer owned an amount of precious metal, but the paper receipt was more convenient and transportable.”

But paper money has brought out humankind’s proclivity for self-destructive greed, and this proclivity has mushroomed during the last quarter of the 20th Century and first years of the 21st Century. “Money has become almost pure abstraction delinked from anything of value.” (When Corporations Rule the World by David C. Korten, 2001, Barrett-Koehler Publisher, page 179.) “There are two common ways to create money without creating value,” continues Korten. “One is by creating debt. Another is by building up asset values. The global financial system is adept at using both of these devices to create money delinked from the creation of value.” (Page 181.)

This we have done and it has led to a growing problem. One past US Treasury secretary, Nicholas F. Brady, put it this way: “If the assets were gold or oil, this phenomenon (unrestrained creation of more and more dollars) would be called inflation. In stocks, it’s called wealth creation.”

With the delinking of money from the gold standard and the invention of computers, coupled with our human urge to amass wealth, “The global financial system has become a parasitic predator that lives off the flesh of its host – the productive economy.” Page 185.

 

Money and Mayan Astrologers

We must keep the distinction between finances and the economy clear. I define the economy as all our efforts to produce and distribute food, clothing and shelter, and the amenities, arts and sciences. Our modern, industrial economy, national and global, needs capital investments. Investors usually seek as much profit as quickly as possible. Their profits may or may not benefit the overall economy. When trillions of dollars are made or lost in instantaneous computerized trades having nothing to do with the production of goods and services, the prediction of Mayan astrologers centuries ago is validated.

The Maya, like other Native Americans, believed (to paraphrase) that Mother Nature is the kingpin capitalist. From the perspective of the ancient Mayan astrologers, the abstracting of money from our Earthly environment means our modern world's financial system is ripe for radical change around 2012, change more revolutionary than any known in recorded history. That Maya prediction correlates with Western astrology’s history of Pluto’s 248-year visits to Sagittarius, to be combined with an angle to Uranus which will be impacting in 2012. Uranus “rules” electricity.

"Assume that, for whatever reason, all the information in all the computers of the banks of the world were suddenly eradicated. This would mean that all accounts and holdings of money, stock, options, etc., would disappear. Although many individuals would regard this as a catastrophe, we may ask if anything of value would be lost. Obviously not! All natural resources, buildings, machines, human knowledge, goods, etc., that existed before, would remain untouched by such a hypothetical synchronistic crash in all the world's bank computers. In terms of real values, nothing would be lost and the world could easily pick up the day after (leaving aside the emotional effects this occurrence would have on many)."

The author of the above is Carl Johan Calleman, a biomedical scientist with a Ph. D. from the University of Stockholm. He has dedicated himself to studying the Mayan Calendar and finding correlations between it and economic history. And he has concluded this:

"The correlation between (economic and Mayan cycles) is so strong that most economists could only dream of attaining a similar concordance to support their theories."

 

What’s the Economy For?

The question running through this book is this: What’s the economy for? The money profit of a few, or the well-being of all? What is the long-range goal of our economic busyness?

As I write this, it’s become obvious that the global economy is way out of whack: it produces too much wealth for the few, too little for the many.

Columbus sailed forth to find a shortcut to India and obtain gold and the slaves to dig it up for him. That mission is the essence of what motivates modern global corporations. The costumes, tools and architecture have changed since Columbus, but essentially the same beliefs drive the search for wealth.

We respond to economic crises both individually and collectively. When the great depression of the 1930s arrived, the American nation suffered as a whole, most individuals suffered personally, but a few founded new family fortunes.

 

Times and Fortunes

The observable fact is that each nation and each individual has a relationship with planetary patterns as surely as the tides of the seas are moved by the Moon. One person's combination of planetary influences, beliefs, and economic circumstances may result in that person prospering while most around him suffer. An heiress and an orphan, born at the same time and place, will respond differently to an economic downturn. One of my grandfathers suffered during the great depression of the 1930s; the other grandfather grew abundant crops for his own family and had an excess to sell or share with those less fortunate.

Planetary cycles repeat but each moment in celestial time is unique. History repeats but never duplicates. Economic cycles repeat but in an ever-changing context. The astrological clock is complex.

My aim is to keep this presentation as simple as possible in order to communicate to as many as possible. So I will keep the focus on “transit to natal” studies, showing that repeating planetary cycles and the major angles formed to certain points in the USA’s horoscope coincide with times of major economic changes.

What I’ve done, to oversimplify, is sit with a history book in one hand and a table of daily planetary positions in the other hand, and search for similar planetary patterns which repeat with similar economic events – except that I’ve used a computer instead of a huge library.

The historic events referred to are easily checked. To communicate astrological information to readers who are not versed in the language of astrology, I try to keep it as simple as possible – while enabling other astrologers to check my charts and interpretations.

 

USA’s Birth Time

Among astrologers there is ongoing debate as to precisely what time on July 4, 1776, should be used to erect the USA’s natal chart. Historic evidence suggests that the time was in the afternoon of July 4, with philosophical Sagittarius Rising. Another historic time used gives a Scorpio Rising chart. The Gemini Rising time I use is not based on historical evidence, yet it’s been used by many astrologers over the past two centuries. This is because the most influential Founders were Masons, who understood the basics of astrology. As Masons, they would want to have Sun, Jupiter and Venus in the 2nd house of wealth. One could hardly ask for a more fortunate 2nd house trio than those, promising great prosperity. Indeed the USA soon became the world’s wealthiest nation. This suggests the Founders, being Masons, would fix the time on July 4 between 2 am to roughly 2:30 am, placing these three most beneficent planets together in the “house of money.”

History shows that Uncle Sam has behaved as an entity with Uranus conjunct Gemini Rising. The key words for Uranus here are “free and independent, original and unique, sharing exciting ideas.” The USA has, since its formation, aggressively asserted its independence, promoted freedom and individuality, and come forth with some of mankind’s most exciting ideas and inventions, prominent among these being political democracy and The Bill of Rights addendum to the Constitution.

The negative tendencies of Uranus in Gemini on the Ascendant are bullheadedness and aggressive proselytizing, and over its brief history the USA has shown these tendencies too. Uranus here often describes an eccentric genius who is by turns admired and ostracized, and in the community of nations, the USA has certainly been both.

 

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Time and Money: The Economy and The Planets by Robert Gover . . .