How to Repel the Mosquitoes This Summer

Now that Summer is here so are the Mosquitos. And so that means, so is the DEET. NPR had a cute little show about the search to find a replacement product for DEET that's just as effective. They don't like how the stuff smells. DEET repels the mosquitoes by confusing their olfactory senses. They won't bite you because you won't smell like a human. Unfortunately, you will smell like DEET. And I can assure you that's not good. The Wikipedia statistics say that 30 percent of the population of the U.S. will use DEET this Summer. Nothing, but nothing's, going to be buzzing around them this summer, hew.

I thought maybe there was some interesting astrology to look up here and found a whole lot more. First, about the Smell detail. DEET was first used by the U.S. Army in 1946. Pluto rules, or at least partly rules, the sense of smell. At least the part of the smell sense that rules deep, dark emotional memories, think Jungle imagery. Towards the end of 1946, Saturn was just joining Pluto in a conjunction in Leo. Man v. Jungle. Man controls the Jungle. Man can finally sleep. Man's so happy that Saturn is finally out of Cancer which is always a miserable transit. And, well, actually DEET has been found to create insomnia, so the mosquitoes won't bother you, but you still won't sleep.

Really odd thing is that DEET dissolves plastics. It's a solvent. I didn't know anything could dissolve plastics. I thought plastics weren't biodegradable. Plastics have to be recycled because they don't mix back in with the earth. So this is very confusing. If you spray DEET on your clothes and your clothes are made of synthetics they will burst apart. But for some reason we aren't concerned about what will burst apart if we spray DEET on our skin. Why would we spray something on our bodies which can dissolve something that is so durable it doesn't dissolve on its own? Our bodies are biodegradable. That's pretty weird. So, go wash that stuff out. It will go straight into the oceans where 90 percent of the fish have vanished, mysteriously. Dissolving fish, how Neptunian.

The rulerships for Plastics isn't confirmed really. Uranus would be involved because Uranus rules man's innovations. Mercury might also be involved for the same reason. Neptune is involved because Plastics are so moldable. Solvents are ruled by Neptune, unless they're acids and then they're ruled by Mars.

During 1946, there was a really awesome aspect between Uranus and Neptune. Uranus and the North Node were in Gemini so that's great for innovation. Jupiter and Neptune were in Libra. During various times the Libra outer planets were in trine with the Gemini Uranus-NN conjunction. What a great year for manufacturing Plastics.

Actually DEET wasn't sold to the public until 1957. (Isn't it amazing how the Servicemen got to be the Guinea Pigs for testing out these new products? Is that PTSD you've got? Or ....) Uranus was in Leo close to the spot where the Saturn-Pluto conjunction was. And Pluto moved into Virgo, sign of Public Health. Neptune had just moved into Scorpio so I suppose for a while there was confusion about what was healthy and what was poison. Between the DEET, the monkeyvirus vaccinations, and who knows what else, the outer planets were really having their jollies hooking men into some long-term, difficult to understand health issues. Malaria's no joke, of course, so the DEET's around for some really good reasons.

The Italians used to throw fresh Basil on the floor of the kitchen to keep the mosquitoes away. That's my preferred method, of course, although I've recently used DEET (my socks all mysteriously fell apart and the leather on my shoes completely split apart, the guy at the shoe store said wow that's weird).

There's also a new product now out called Icaridin. It doesn't smell and it doesn't melt plastic. I guess it doesn't have an appropriate Outer Planet configuration to latch on to for marketing purposes yet.