Narrative control

Gemini 2021

It is now quite common to see Mercury retrograde discussed by non-astrologers. There is a growing interest in celestial occurrences amongst all manner of people, including news providers — eclipses get a lot more press coverage than they once did.

Mercury retro

Doing the rounds on Pinterest

Mercury is indeed retrograde as I write, a good time to go back and look at ‘old’ topics. And since Mercury and Gemini — who are joined at the hip — both rule the news and journalism, I thought it might be a good time to have another rant about the narratives being used to control our diet of information.

Narrative control

We have understood for some time now that censorship on social media is rampant. Facebook, Twitter and Google take down anything that doesn’t fit the controlling narrative. Politics and money have a lot to do with this of course. However, many of us still trust what appear to be good journalistic sources, such as the BBC, which prides itself on delivering in line with its charter. So I will use it as an example of how we are being ‘groomed’, as it is not alone. In my view, this is adding to division in society at large.

The BBC charter: (my highlights in bold)

1. To provide impartial news and information to help people understand and engage with the world around them.
2. To support learning for people of all ages.
3. To show the most creative, highest quality and distinctive output and services.
4. To reflect, represent and serve the diverse communities of all of the United Kingdom’s nations and regions and, in doing so, support the creative economy across the United Kingdom. Part of this one says: raise awareness of the different cultures and alternative viewpoints that make up its society.
5. To reflect the United Kingdom, its culture and values to the world. Part of this one says: based on British values of accuracy, impartiality, and fairness.

Hmm, let’s see how that’s going.

BBC narrative control

Astrologers vs. the BBC

Here are BBC’s  published values (my bold again)

  • Trust is the foundation of the BBC. We’re independent, impartial and honest
  • We put audiences at the heart of everything we do
  • We respect each other and celebrate our diversity
  • We take pride in delivering quality and value for money
  • Creativity is the lifeblood of our organisation
  • We’re one BBC. Great things happen when we work together

Some time ago astrologers took a case to the BBC about its disrespectful, judgmental and dishonest views on astrology. I wrote about it back in 2010 and 2011. Unsurprisingly to us, it went nowhere – so much for their values.

BBC culture

I love a lot of what the BBC does in terms of quality drama, but there too we see narrative control, which is becoming more and more blatant. And there is dishonesty. So this month I was pleased to see the BBC called out yet again on their practices. We had the Jimmy Savile scandal some time ago, however, this time the issue was how the landmark interview with Princess Diana was obtained.

Sneaky and manipulative?

All of this smacks of Pluto and Scorpio being involved with Mercury. Pluto is about control but also about hidden, sneaky, manipulative actions. Many people were well aware that Jimmy Savile was a sexual predator where children were concerned, but no-one spoke up, or if they did, they were ignored or silenced. Pluto can also induce powerlessness, where fear can override doing the right whistle-blowing thing. Fear of job loss, or of being ostracised are powerful drivers. Management and political culture are often based on power used abusively. Whistle-blowers were ignored in the Savile story, as was someone in the Princess Diana case. The BBC say this has changed!

Bashir princess di interview

Princess Diana, Martin Bashir, Tiny Hall Former director General of the BBC and Earl Spencer.

Martin Bashir and the Princess

It is now clear that 25 years ago Martin Bashir, a BBC journalist, produced falsified documents, which were part of his sales tactics to win over Princess Diana through her brother, Earl Spencer. It was a great coup for Bashir at the time and of course the BBC were delighted to obtain such an interview for their Panorama program.

When the true extent of this fraudulent behaviour recently came to light in the Dyson report, BBC management (current and past) were hauled over the coals by a House of Commons inquiry. It’s a long story, but basically their defence was that Bashir was a very good liar and actor! Even though BBC management knew he had lied, they believed he had learned a lesson, and gave him a second chance. He was rehired later, funnily enough as a BBC news religious affairs correspondent. According to their testimony, they were taken in.

Bashir’s horoscope

Martin Bashir’s chart indeed shows the potential for being a very convincing liar! He has the ability to be a very in-depth journalist, but this can go rogue! His Venus contacting Pluto can show this talent as can his Moon in Scorpio, however his Sun being in a very powerful degree in Capricorn can make him ultra-ambitious. And with Mars being in Leo he could have been seduced by his own pride to take fraudulent steps. We will never know the whole story, and he is still saying he did nothing wrong and that Diana was happy to do the interview. However, it does damage the reputation of BBC management. Rightly so, in my view.

Bigger fish to fry

I think that Princess Diana was very happy to have a go at the royal family, and she had a responsibility to decide for herself. But it was 25 years ago when times were very different. Now, I am more concerned about censorship and narrative control. I am pleased to see many scientists and academics getting upset about this now too. They are getting a taste of what we have had to put up with for a very long time. Maybe they will make more headway and hopefully the BBC might listen to its own charter sometime soon. Let’s look at the BBC chart.

BBC horoscope and narrative control

The BBC was set up as a company in 1922. Later it became the BBC, The British Broadcasting Corporation on January 1st 1927. I like the first company chart because the BBC publishes that date and it is the real start. This is the voice of the first Managing Director John Reith, appointed in December of 1922. He talks of being pure and honest as well!

BBC founded

The British Broadcasting company horoscope.

The stated BBC values fit this chart well. As a company with a Libra Sun and Mercury — spreading balanced news — as well as having Jupiter and Saturn in Libra, it is a company that, at its heart, believes in fairness. However there are links from Mercury, the indicator of communication, with Saturn and Pluto. This can result in a controlling and authoritarian view on what is broadcast. Also a traditional and powerful one.

The Dyson inquiry

The Dyson report was commissioned on November 18, 2020 to investigate claims about the Princess Diana interview. We were all still undergoing Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto’s powerful journey through Capricorn. And Pluto is still there. However, this was a bit of a fateful day for the BBC, as not only were these planets wanting to investigate the ways things were done (Mars), they were also calling for a deep look at management culture (a square aspect to Sun together with Jupiter). This was true for many companies in terms of general trends, however it was very ‘personal’ for the BBC.

When the report was published on May 20th this year, Pluto had finished with management, but he still has work to do to alter the culture, so there might be hope! And Saturn in Aquarius, as well as Uranus in Taurus, will now venture to challenge this part of the chart too, so this will require new rules for a more egalitarian approach. If it works positively.

Why does this matter …?

… because news organisations such as the BBC have a lot of influence. The way the G7 meetings were reported matters. The way the Biden-Putin summit was reported matters. And in particular the way COVID is being reported matters a lot! But so do subtle story-line plots.

Holby City and Casualty

BBC has two popular medical series. At its peak Holby City had over 9 million viewers. It will stop next year after 23 years, announcing that it was “a “difficult decision” inspired by a desire to “make room for new opportunities” that “better reflect, represent and serve all parts of the country”. One wonders what that will bring. Its sister programme Casualty will continue with its current average viewing figures of around 4 million. These are influential programs.

Challenging issues

Both these series have admirably addressed difficult and sensitive issues, including COVID. Racism, homosexuality, transgender issues and embarrassing medical procedures too, to name but a few. However, it would be nice if they stopped either making fun of alternative medicine or included some fair-minded alternative views. There have been a few feeble efforts, but a current story line is a case of subtle narrative control.

holby city narrative

Max McGerry and her transgender son Louie

Max has the gene!

In Holby, the character Max McGerry is the politically correct (black and a woman) consultant neurosurgeon, who was the CEO. She has recently discovered she has the BRCA1 gene. This was another opportunity to allow discussion and alternative views on breast and ovarian cancer. There is a lot of research out there now on how environment and stress are factors in all cancers. But no – quicker than you can have a COVID jab, her breasts are whipped off and the plot will show how she deals with that.

The narrative here is similar to what we are being told every day about the Coronavirus. Medical intervention based on ‘the science’ is the only answer. What happened to ‘informed consent’ and ‘first do no harm’? And please define ‘the science’. Many scientists don’t recognise it!

Why??

Recently more and more studies are surfacing about research on vaccines against COVID. My FB timeline is getting louder and louder about these studies, highlighting how much is truly unknown about the effects of vaccines, which are still not fully approved. We are the trial group. These claims are not from conspiracy theorists or anti-vaxxers (sigh), they are from virologists, vaccine specialists, academics and doctors in the field. Daily, I hear more local stories about problems. Always the answer is “vaccines are safe”, and now they are fine for children. But are they?

cancel culture

Image from Prettysleepy at Pixabay

Many specialists are being gagged or worse when they sound the alarm. Cancel culture is alive and well. These people are usually not against vaccines but are worried about what they are hearing in both research and in the field. Why do we hear very few of these voices on the BBC? What happened to independent, impartial and honest?

Instead, as an example, a report I saw this week announcing that 43 people had died in the UK after contracting the Delta variant of COVID and 47 percent were unvaccinated. Surely that means that 53 percent had had at least one vaccination?? Is this statistics bent to a narrative? I’m not suggesting vaccination isn’t helping, but why announce it this way? The headline in a newspaper reporting the same story read ‘Just 26 fully vaccinated people died of the Indian COVID variant.’ Just?? If one of these was a loved one, I would be very upset about this headline. As if sacrificing a few along the way doesn’t matter.

More of the same

On a religious programme (yes — my Sunday morning shout at the TV time) even religious leaders were saying it is our duty to be vaccinated. I thought a couple of them might be on the side of god, in the sense that god might have created bodies that have a strong immune system. But no.

The narrative is ‘get the vaccine’ no matter what. It’s always spun to explain why any tricky news about vaccines should not worry us. I think this is dangerous as it stops any form of questioning discussion. It is dividing us. We can’t have conversations anymore.

censored

Image andreabencik on Pixabay

The wonderful web and narrative control

Even Dr. Robert Malone who the originator of the development of mRNA vaccines is being flagged by Facebook as spreading false claims! If he doesn’t know how it works, who the hell does? Here’s what the warning says: “The headline on a YouTube video and a person who speaks in it make a troubling claim about the way the COVID-19 vaccines work. This is false.”

Masters of narrative control

On a slightly lighter note, but not unimportant, I watched the coverage of the Biden-Putin summit. Biden is a Scorpio with Sun conjunct Mercury in this sign. His whole life is about narrative control, including the fact that he had to master a stutter.

Plutonic Putin

I have always thought of Putin as a very Plutonic character. Controlling, powerful, and secretive. I wrote a little about him in my 2014 post Power is the drug.  He is actually a Libra, but his official horoscope gives him a very Pluto-Scorpio flavour with Pluto strongly placed, picking up Mercury, and a Scorpio ascendant. Another master of narrative control.

However, perhaps fitting with this signature, there is story that he was actually born two years earlier on the same date in what is now Georgia. I give a link to this story below. I think the official date fits him better, but who knows? It adds to the intrigue. Either way the Saturn-Uranus square that we are under all this year is very personal to him, it was exactly picking up his Sun on the day of the summit. Maybe things will change. Interestingly they discussed rules (Saturn) around Cyberspace (Uranus) at the summit.

Joe and Vlad go solo

Biden decided to do a solo press conference after the summit, not wanting a repeat of the Trump-Biden summit scenario. That way, both he and Putin could do heavy narrative control. They selected the questioners and gave their version of events beforehand.

Because we didn’t see much of the actual meetings, the media had to resort to reading body language. My favourite was when they described Putin’s stance as open and strong and Biden’s as ‘figleaf’! At least Biden is strong enough to start another probe into the origin of the Coronavirus. There is clearly heavy narrative control and conflicts of interest in this topic. But that’s another story. There are some links below.

biden pose

Putin and Biden with the Swiss President Guy Parmelin

There was a lot of other analysis of the summit as well – all very entertaining. Whose hand was where, Putin tapping the chair, etc etc.  The BBC couldn’t really say much about content while the summit was taking place so they were reporting, in several different ways, that it was all about the ‘optics’. So we have optics control as well!

Mercury with Pluto

Although Saturn and Uranus are the main players now, squaring up to each other all year, Pluto is very important in this topic. I wrote about Saturn and Uranus in my Beautiful collisions post. These planets brilliantly describe the push back from experts on authoritarian rules and narratives. But the control aspect is of a different order. I always say the solution is in the problem, when it comes to astrological archetypes. It’s what I call astreopathy.  So what can we learn from Mercury being controlled by Pluto?

speak up

We need to unmute! Image by mika-baumeister on Unsplash

What should we do?

Let’s take a look at a positive way of using this duo. Astrology offers a wonderful tool for gaining insight in this way. At every level we need to do research (Pluto) into communication (Mercury). What are we being told? Who is saying it? What’s in it for them? And how can we take back control (Pluto) of our own thoughts (Mercury)? We need to own our real opinions and dare to whistle-blow. Otherwise we are at the mercy of others’ opinions.

This means we need to be empowered in our thinking and that means we need to do the work! We need to deeply question anything we see, hear or read. We need to really listen to others, in our relationships, but also listen to other groups. We need to demand more transparency and alternative, fair views, both online and with influential broadcasters like the BBC. We shouldn’t just fall for the ‘grooming’ narrative without a fight.

Faye Blake

Interesting websites

I got a bit carried away again.

BBC and Princess Diana

BBC’s mission, charter and values

A guardian article about the Princess Diana interview

Timeline of the Martin Bashir story

Vaccines

From the British Medical Journal blog – Why we petitioned the FDA …

Just one example of the problems doctors are facing – this time in Canada but it is the same in other countries. To illustrate the point and as is typical, this video of doctors speaking out has been censored.

I rest my case!

One on Mind Control (in Dutch) by heart surgeon Prof. Dr. Jan Grandjean. It is still up here but has been taken down on Youtube etc.

If you are interested in alternative views on COVID

You can sign up to UK HART group newsletter. This from their site: “HART is a group of highly qualified UK doctors, scientists, economists, psychologists and other academic experts.  We came together over shared concerns about policy and guidance recommendations relating to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

In the Netherlands there is : Stichting Artsen Covid Collectief. This is a also a group of medical professionals and doctors. Their remit is similar with a broader view. I find both groups well researched and reasonable.

The summit

I know – it’s the Sun – but it made me smile. Supervillain Putin, full alpha mode and scared Biden.

Putin’s mother? A fascinating story

Narrative control

An article from Ed Newman He who controls the narrative controls the people.

An article on Narrative control from 2015 from the wonderfully named website The Logical Contrarian.

Wuhan Lab

Jonathon Cook asks: Was there a Wuhan leak? An enquiry won’t dig out the truth. It will deepen the deception. This also highlights what the BBC doesn’t report!

Quote of the month

“I heard the stories of the storytellers, telling the stories people wanted to hear. Everyone finds the narrative that matches the narrative they already know and want. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to share the truth. It wasn’t that I feared the response. It was that I no longer believed in a truth.”

From the book: The Moonborn: or, Moby-Dick on the Moon by D.F Lovett.

For astrologers

BBC Company: 18th November, 1922, 0:00, London, UK.

BBC Corporation: 1st January, 1927, 0:00, London, UK.

Not discussed – BBC First broadcast: 14th November, 1922, 17:33, London, UK.

Martin Bashir: 19th January, 1963,12:30, London, UK.

Dyson report commissioned: 18th November, 2020, London, UK.

Dyson report published: 20th May, 2021, London, UK.

Joe Biden: 20th November, 1942, 8:30, Scranton, Pennsylvania, US.

Vladimir Putin: official time and date: 7th October 1952, 9:30, St. Petersburg, Russia.

Vladimir Putin: alternative date: 7th October, 1950, time unknown, Ochyor, Georgia.

Time of Biden-Putin summit, taken when journalists left the four delegates alone: 16th June, 2021, 13:40, Geneva Switzerland. I love the way this chart reflects the moment – Sun in Gemini on the MC quincunx Pluto, conjunct Mercury retro.  Leaders in the spotlight meet to discuss old and difficult issues. And of course narrative control!

Comments 4

  1. Putin is good on his symbolism, – horses, sitting with tamed leopards, I think he has been through every Tarot card bar the Queen, Empress and High Priestess.
    I am certain that if I knew what mercury squared anything and all the other terms meant I could have a go at making them the talk of youtube too. Are the planets in opposition, – squared onto one another? Are they silently ganging up?
    I need a RELIABLE definition

  2. Post
    Author

    Yes with Putin – definitely about the optics:) I was talking more generally about when archetypes interact – when Pluto and Mercury combine in any aspect then you get a mixing of energies. And this can work out positively or negatively depending on (imo) levels of consciousness in individuals, groups, countries and globally. When I look at a topic like narrative control I hear Mercury and Pluto – if that’s what is happening then we can use that as a tool to see how to turn that around and use it positively. If you use the official chart for Putin he has Mercury sextile Pluto. Biden has Mercury in Scorpio which is a similar theme. Archetypes work for both signs and planets. Mercury moves quickly so for looking at world events any aspects with Mercury will be short term.

  3. Interesting as ever, Faye, thank you. Ever since the vote on Brexit I have found it hard to listen to the BBC (used to listen to Radio 4 at different times of day) as it felt as if, in an attempt to be impartial, it went over the other way. Now I find it’s (radio) content quite one-sided and am always curious to hear if they have managed to have presenters who don’t have received English pronunciation. If I, as a white middle class person with privilege feel like that about the BBC, I can well imagine how alienated and unrepresented vast swathes of the population feel. Rant inspired by your rant! (Astrology also interesting!)

  4. Post
    Author

    Hi Sophie – yes I was using BBC as an example – it’s everywhere of course. Glad to have inspired a rant though – always good:) Thnaks for your reaction.

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