No More Shopping Days Left

It's Christmas Eve (and I have to warn you this is not a cozy, coal roasted, mitten tugging blog). Are you busy ripping off little pieces of Scotch Tape (Registered Trademark) and getting them stuck onto little pieces of ribbon that won't turn correctly into proper bow shaped shapes while the cat is scurrying over and under the paper with his high beams on? What happened to that story the adults told us when we were little kids, "The Littlest Angel" about the Angel who only didn't have a proper present for God while all the other Angels were wrapping up TVs, Computers and BMW's? And somehow the Littlest Angel won because his gift was the most sincere? I don't remember the story. Maybe something about the present being from his heart? I can't remember. May the person with the most debt and best gift wrap win a lottery ticket to sit on God's lap.

So a quick glance at the History and Rise of the Shopping Mall as gifted out by Wikipedia. It looks like the idea of the Bazaar kicked off this craze out in the Middle East. There was Isafan's in the 10th Century and Tehran's sometime after. They were outdone by Istanbul in the 15th Century.

Markets are ruled by Mercury and Consumerism is ruled by (sorry I haven't looked it up, Rex Bills is in the car). What really is consumerism? It's a feeling of never having enough and of the Joy of Acquisition and also the Hunger of knowing that one always wants more. The charts of the shopping malls I'm about to discuss have similar aspects all of which seem to show the true indicators for consumerism. In the two charts with dates: Sun, Jupiter and the Nodes are in strong aspect. Also Venus and Pluto in strong aspect.

The English got in on the act when they built Oxford Covered Market in Oxford, England. Still going today apparently. First opened up on November 1, 1774. By now we all know this means that Pluto was in Capricorn. Yowzah! That means that we'll have an even awesomer Shopping Mall in a few more years! In this chart, the Sun was at 10 Scorpio opposite Jupiter at 12 Taurus. They were sextiling/trining the Nodes in Virgo-Pisces (12 Virgo NN). Venus at 23 Libra (yearning) was squaring Pluto at 23 Capricorn. Venus-Pluto is certainly a power shopper signature representing leisure, power, desire. A Sun-Jupiter aspect is going to be good for growing business and Jupiter in Taurus is expansive for consumerism, possessions.

Wikipedia says then that the first U.S. Shopping Mall was opened in Providence, Rhode Island in 1828 and was called "The Arcade." I can't find an opening date. There are some stories about the construction. There were two owners who couldn't get along and two architects who were competing over the design and 13 of the biggest granite Ionic columns yet to grace a building in the U.S. One column broke during construction and is supposedly still viewable somewhere in Providence. One of the owners almost went broke as well. The Mall was built during 1927 and opened in 1928. On January 1928 Jupiter was in Scorpio, Saturn was in Cancer, Uranus and Neptune were in Capricorn and Pluto was in Aries. The Nodes were in Scorpio and then moved into Libra.

The first Indoor American Shopping Mall was the Lake View Store which opened on July 20, 1916 at 9am. This chart compares very nicely with the English Market because Jupiter is once again in Taurus in strong aspect to both the Sun and Nodes, this time in a square to Sun-SN Cancer opposite NN 28 Capricorn. The Rising Sign of this chart is at 16 Virgo, just a couple of degrees away from the Virgo NN of the English Market Chart. And Venus is conjunct Pluto in Cancer to the degree, both squaring an Aries Moon.