Madam Moonbeam is bent over the tarot cards, her right index finger resting on the Ten of Swords, and her left on The Tower. Not good, she thinks. But together with what she already knew, it is only to be expected.
She purses her lips and looks up. Well, she says, at least The Devil is hiding his face, although I sense he’s crouched somewhere in the background, ready to pounce. But then, you’d know more about him than I do…
The Man sits forward. Never mind all that, he says, what about tomorrow and next week? What do the stars portend? I’ve got a life- and death decision to make, and I need to know what’s lurking round the next corner! Help me out here!
Madam Moonbeam gives him a sideways look. Hmm, she says, I’ve heard on the grapevine that you are between a rock and a hard place, the rock being spying for the government, and the hard place being some of your questionable CatCryptTrophe investors who won’t take kindly to being spied upon. Any truth in that?
None of your concern, snaps The Man, and don’t believe everything you hear on ‘the grapevine’! So I’ll thank you to keep your nose out of my business and just do what I’m paying you handsomely to do!
Madam Moonbeam is unabashed. Right, she says, studying her astral chart, in two days the Moon will be in the seventh house and Jupiter aligned with Mars. So being an Aquarius on the cusp of Capricorn, you are by nature a cautious rebel, which is, of course, a contradiction in terms.
Furthermore, with Capricorn ruled by Saturn, and Aquarius partly ruled by Uranus, this cusp suggests you are caught between being a to hell-with-it swash-buckling pirate on the one hand and a pragmatic realist politician on the other.
And while your attitude to life is generally disciplined, you are at heart a con- trarian who likes to push boundaries, but only after calculating the odds of success or failure based on the vagaries of human nature. How am I doing so far?
The Man sits back. Very good, he says. And I have to admit the bit about being a swashbuckling pirate strikes a chord. But what has all that got to do with my current predicament, which, as you so rightly point out, puts me in a very difficult position, to say the least?
Well, says Madam Moonbeam, by your own admission, you have two basic choices—to paddle in the political shallows alongside most of your fellow MPs, or to swim with the deep-state sharks.
My advice is to look forward, not back to the future. Your so-called career as a National List member of parliament will likely not survive the feeding frenzy of the next general election, by which time economic headwinds may well have reached gale force, so best to have a Plan B!
Exactly, thinks The Man, recalling the words of his hero, Niccolò Machiavelli, the infamous Prince of Darkness: ‘The one who adapts his course of action to the times will succeed, and likewise, the one whose course of action clashes with the times will not…’