New York, April 26, 2013 | Read about the benefits of Planet Waves membership
Once Upon a Time in Boston

Dear Friend and Reader:

I walked into Dominick's Cafe to buy some newspapers on Saturday, April 20, and Dominick asked me: "What the heck just happened in Boston?"

That's the question, isn't it. And it's a good one.

The fairytale version goes like this: Terrifying, mysterious bombers attacked the crowd at a great athletic event. The nation spared no expense, used its best technology and figured out who might have done the terrible deed, then sent its bravest fighters in to catch them. Everyone helped with this effort. One suspect was killed; the other took flight, was hunted down and was caught.

Bag at the exact scene of one of the explosions was not a backpack, as police claim the bombs were contained in. Was this really the bomb? What about the backpacks?

Then all the people of the kingdom came out in the streets and cheered the brave warriors who had saved the day, joyful that they were now safe again.

Alternate versions go like this: we witnessed a vast over-reaction by public officials; or we saw a planned event designed to insure the budgets of federal agencies against sequestration.

Or, people who federal anti-terrorism authorities knew about and were supposed to be watching went overlooked.

Or like many other events, this was a Shock Doctrine event designed to destabilize society in some way, and force yet another take-away of individual rights, complete with a martial law drill/mass psychology experiment conducted in the virgin target of Boston. Depending on what country is eventually blamed, we may be looking at an excuse to go to war. One problem we have now is that what I call the "false flag meme" is extremely popular -- that creates a lot of noise when trying to sort out the truth behind the official story.

I heard about the bombing of the Boston Marathon shortly after it happened Monday afternoon April 15 on a flight from Portland, Oregon, to Chicago. Fortunately, it was a flight with WiFi. However, the first thing I did before reading any of the news reports was to cast the chart. In doing forensic astrology (if possible), I prefer to see the chart before I know the facts, then make some observations and perhaps come up with a theory. Then I study the facts to either dismiss or support my hunches.

What I noticed first about the chart was that Neptune is looming on the western horizon. Also called the 7th house or descendant (opposite the ascendant, which is to the east), that angle of a chart gives a picture of the environment and describes one's relationship to one's environment. Neptune's themes cover illusions, delusions, denial and deception. Neptune also includes inspiration, a talent for fantasy, music and photography and in a natal chart, it can point to one's taste for drink and drugs.

Many photos of the scene were accused of being fakes. This turned out to be a real photo of Jeff Bauman, who in fact lost both of his legs in the bombing. Photo by Charles Krupa, AP.

Neptune in the 7th is a warning to be especially discerning about what you see, hear and think. My sense was that everything we were about to be told would be distorted, incorrect or made up.

Moments after seeing the chart, I posted to Planet Waves: "Nothing says 'don't trust the story' like Neptune on the 7th. It's like looking into a fog, and you need special vision to see through it."

So began a week of misreported facts, misidentified suspects, conflicting versions of the story, government officials offering facts, then taking them back, photos circulating around the Internet featuring scenes that could have come out of movie studios, plus all the usual stories of selfless heroism, love of country and determination to go on. The bombing happened not just at the Boston Marathon but also on a day venerated in Boston -- Patriot's Day, commemorating the start of the American Revolution in 1775.

It was a perfectly strange week in every other way. Just 48 hours after the 200 people were hurt in a domestic bombing incident, the Senate voted down a series of measures designed to keep assault rifles out of the hands of known felons and terrorists. This is newsworthy on a galactic scale. Now the next time we have a mass shooting incident, we'll know it was officially endorsed by the United States Senate, in the name of keeping us all safer.

Letters laced with the poison ricin were allegedly sent to the president and a senator, and a suspect was arrested and charged with the crime. He was later released because there was no evidence against him. There was a massive explosion in a fertilizer plant in West, Texas, close to the anniversary of another fertilizer explosion in 1947 that killed nearly 600 people. There were many, many other horrid anniversaries in American history the week of the bombing.

Then early in the evening of Thursday, April 18, the FBI released photos of its proposed suspects in the Boston incident, beginning one of the strangest days in modern American history -- the 7-Eleven robbery that may or may not have been part of the scenario, the MIT campus officer shot for no special reason, the carjacking and the midnight firefight that allegedly killed Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, a suspect in the bombings. These developments are what we're told turned Watertown, Massachusetts, into a war zone.

Did these men really do the bombings? Did they have help? Were there additional suspects? Many times people are accused falsely in high-profile cases, and other times they have assistance.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, after casually going to school the day after the bombing, allegedly went on the run. Boston metro area was put under martial law; Harvard, Brandeis, Boston University, MIT and other campuses were shut down.

We witnessed the most impressive show of force aimed at a civilian population on domestic soil ever, as the new Homeland Security militarized police apparatus was rolled out before our eyes, with its robots and X-ray vision. A terrifying door-to-door search ensued. I have a friend in Watertown who was horrified as eight "heavily armed men" searched her condo without a warrant or any actual reason, as she and her kids watched. I have heard next to no commentary or questioning whether this was a violation of the 4th Amendment right against unreasonable search of one's home.

The suspect was then discovered unarmed, outside the police perimeter thanks to a neighbor who noticed blood on the white tarp covering his boat, looked inside and thought he saw a dead body. The reason that didn't happen sooner? Everyone had been ordered indoors.

That person, we're told, was Dzhokhar, who was bleeding so badly he was barely alive. He had, by some miracle, allegedly engaged hundreds of military police in a prolonged firefight without a gun. I was watching at around 7 pm last week just before he was captured, and heard the ongoing gunfire. Exactly what was happening? Who was shooting whom? Was this pure theatrics?

As for his injury: one version of the story goes that he tried to shoot himself in the neck, but missed. One of the purported SWAT team members at the scene said in an interview his neck injury looked like it was inflicted with a knife.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was allegedly so weak he could barely move. How did he wage a firefight with dozens of SWAT team members only to be found without a gun? Image: CBS News.

Through the week, many rumors surfaced -- the InfoWars and Natural News disinfo distribution stations were running around the clock like overheated mimeograph machines, calling foul. Working with collaborators around the 'net on my Conspiracy Response Task Force, we debunked various theories and attempted to assemble valid facts. It felt like swimming up a waterfall of lies. For example, the FEMA event in town that day, supposed proof that the big bosses were all in town for the show, turned out to be a previously scheduled class at Harvard.

The athletic coach running in the marathon who heard an announcement that "this is a drill" was the only person who described that; a second witness would have made his account more plausible. But there does seem to have been some use of the "drill" rumor that day. Then there was the one about the Boston Globe tweet allegedly predicting the incident. That tweet came out an hour after the fact, not in advance, and referred to something else. We do our best to trace these kinds of rumors and ideas back to the source, to cut down on the noise.

Yet as we went through the reported details, no part of the story came out intact. It was like adding a list of numbers from the bottom and the top, getting different results every time. All of these major crime scenes have an element of chaos, and there are always unresolved issues, but it's not usually like this, with the "facts" changing every hour. There was a lot of sloppy news reporting, but that seemed to magnify a problem that already existed.

Then as the week progressed, we learned that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older brother, was the subject of an international terrorism inquiry in 2011. The Russian government had asked the FBI to look into him; the FBI investigated and interviewed him, and said it had no reason to suspect him of anything. This is at best bad police work and at worst a cover story. Later in the week we learned that he was also known to the Department of Homeland Security and the CIA. Who was this guy? Was he really a threat who the government ignored, or was he an asset?

Sunil Tripathi, falsely accused of the bombings, had gone missing in March and was found dead this week in waters off India Point Park, Rhode Island. Family photo.

What is true and what is not? Neptune indeed. The sense of chaos, confusion, slippery facts and squirming versions of the truth are all attributes of Neptune.

But Chiron is also in the 7th house, close to Neptune, and that suggests that clarity is available, and that it will come if one focuses on documented information first and honors intuition second. (This order of operations is not only true -- it's my reading of this particular chart. In almost any chart, however, Chiron will emphasize the idea of tracking what we know and how we know it -- one of its themes is documentation.)

The chart for the Boston Marathon bombing has several plot lines that unfold simultaneously. Charts often have that attribute, and it's necessary to sort out the significators as carefully as possible -- that is, to have a clear sense what planet represents whom, or what. This can take a little time to sort out, but with patience, it happens. The chart has proven to time the events well and describe them accurately. Let's take a closer look and see what it says.

Orcus is Rising


This chart has Virgo rising, and right in the exact degree rising was a newly discovered planet called Orcus. Essentially the twin of Pluto, located in the same region of space (the inner Kuiper Belt), Orcus was named for an early European prototype from the Hades/Pluto cycle of myths.

Chart for the Boston Marathon bombing. Though it's not shown in this chart, the ascendant is occupied by Orcus at 3+ Virgo. It's a planet similar to Pluto, named for an older god of death and the underworld.

He's an underworld god, and he has a famous namesake in modern literature -- J.R.R. Tolkien named his monstrous, smelly orcs after Orcus. Orcus in the ascendant is an image of the troll under the bridge; the lurking factor of which we must be very afraid.

Virgo rising suggests something meticulously planned by intelligent people. The bombs went off less than 15 seconds apart, and they performed as designed. Indeed, one thing Virgo rising tells us about this plot is that it was meticulously planned. Even though the end decayed into chaos, that, too, appears to have been planned, since it seems so 'destined' by the chart, and Virgo leaves little to chance.

Here's where we see that. When Virgo is rising, the next place to look is the planet that rules Virgo -- Mercury, and that turned out to be an influential planet as the event unfolded. Mercury in a world chart like this can represent a person, and it can represent an idea or a message -- whatever message comes out of the incident, whatever is taken by the public.

Mercury was newly in Aries, after months in Pisces. In the bombing chart it is on the Aries Point, indicating the intersection of something deeply personal with something widely collective. (By the way -- I underestimated the power of the Mercury sign change to Aries, after it had spent more than two months in Pisces. I knew enough to read this one, but I missed it: it was as if Mercury was gathering energy in Pisces and then released it all moments after it got into Aries, making contact with the Aries Point.)

Plus, at the time of the bombings, Mercury was about to make a conjunction to Uranus in Aries -- and pass through the Uranus-Pluto square that defines what I call the 2012 era -- approximately 2011-2016, with a few years on either side as a warmup and cool-down. Mercury made that pass the weekend of April 21-22. What we witnessed was a generational event. It was an event that sent us a message about the nature of the times in which we're living.

Planets as People

Early in my inquiry, I saw Mercury as representing a young person. My take is that Mercury represents Dzhokhar, the younger brother, in the capacity of one who seems to have been haplessly drawn into this plot. As Mercury made its exact conjunction to Uranus, the scenario seemed too crazy, Dzhokhar was on the run and Boston was under martial law.

Focus of the action in the bombing chart. Notice Neptune, the blue trident, on the 7th house cusp. Nessus is right below it, indicating a culprit that is out of sight. Mercury, in green, is about to make a conjunction to Uranus, in blue.

In a terrorism plot, there's also the matter of a secret enemy -- the behind-the-scenes perpetrator. We find information on that in the sign and planet that rule the 12th house. Leo is on the 12th house cusp -- and that says to look at the Sun (the ruler of Leo). This character in the story is dramatic and important-seeming. The Aries Sun is about to make a conjunction to Mars, which has the image of dying violently.

I believe this represents Tamerlan, the older brother. Tamerlan is also the international connection -- Sun/Mars is on the 9th house cusp. There is some involvement with a foreign government or other large influence, or the scenario will be portrayed that way.

We don't know his actual involvement in this, and the chart portrays him more as a victim, that is, as a scapegoat, than as a perpetrator. Now he's dead in the style of Lee Harvey Oswald, and we won't ever hear from him.

There's one last plot line to cover. The 7th house, where Neptune is looming, is also the house of open enemies (as contrasted with secret ones). We know that Neptune is sitting there in Pisces, warning us that nothing in the official version of events may be true. Pisces also has a traditional ruler -- Jupiter. Jupiter will tell the story of who the open enemy really is, once we look past the movie-like illusion of Neptune.

Where is it, and what story does it tell? Jupiter is in Gemini, and also the 10th house of government. It's in a strange condition -- called intercepted, which means that Gemini has no house cusp running through it (this doesn't happen in every chart, and it can happen anywhere when it does). Intercepted Gemini is like a house hidden within the 10th house, which you can think of as the inner sanctum of government, the intelligence establishment or black operations of some kind.

There are a number of scenarios that fit, but the most basic reading is how various 'intelligence' agencies of the U.S. government knew that he existed. What their actual relationship to him was has yet to be exposed. We just don't know, and we may never know -- though the influence of Chiron and other factors in this chart suggests that the truth may yet come out. At this point, I think that there is no basis for ruling out anything. We know that the federal government has been involved in bomb plots before.

This chart has many alignments with the chart for the 9/11 incident. That Jupiter is conjunct the 9/11 Saturn to the degree, and Saturn is one of the most influential planets in the 9/11 chart. The Moon is within two degrees of the 9/11 Moon. There are many other alignments -- the charts fit together like puzzle pieces.

Gemini, above left, doesn't have a house cusp running through it. That's called an interception. Jupiter and other planets are tucked away in a 'house within a house' and represent a subplot to the story. The government is represented by the 10th house in most charts.

In closing I will say this. If you're thinking that two bombs justified the house arrest of more than a million people, please think more slowly. These ideas would best be phrased as questions rather than as statements. Was that governmental response justified? What was the emotional cost, and the price we paid in our freedom?

What is the agenda that will ultimately be served? Seeing who benefits is the best way to understand something; in that sense, the truth of whodunnit matters less than the truth of who exploits something.

Many people who lived through having their homes searched are emotionally traumatized. They may never think of the concept of 'home' the same way again. Yet as gun advocates push their strict reading of the 2nd Amendment, they miss the point of the 4th Amendment.

Our social contract in the U.S. is clear. "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated…" Was the response we witnessed reasonable, in the moral and legal sense of the word? We need to have a long conversation with our neighbors about this.

We also need a national conversation. What we witnessed in Boston, from the improvised explosive devices to the firefights in urban areas to the door-to-door searches, sound a lot like what the American government has been involved with in Afghanistan and Iraq for more than 10 years. The war literally came home to Boston and its suburbs and raged in the streets and door to door. Every aspect of life was disrupted.

We don't like bombs going off in our public places and I hope we on't like armored vehicles in our neighborhoods, SWAT teams in our homes and high-powered rifles being fired in the streets.

The new concept of 'police' is different from the beat cop casually swinging his baton. It's paramilitary force that was put on display in Boston last week. Photo: The Boston Globe.

It's also time to ask when we're going to stop doing this to other countries, and using everything as an excuse to ramp up militarization, constantly preparing for threats.

James Madison, one of the most beloved fathers of the American Revolution, cautioned us at the 1787 Constitutional Convention: "Constant apprehension of War, has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body. A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home."

It's also time for 'non-political' people to raise questions about the conduct of our leaders, both at home and abroad. It's time to learn not to feel like an asshole for actually caring -- and for being willing to speak up, including when it's considered socially inappropriate. Which is usually.

And this is the heart of where the political intersects with the personal. To what extent are your views shaped by what is acceptable to society, including to your friends? When you begin to consider other ideas, and they start to threaten the worldview you've had since childhood, how do you feel and what do you do?

This is where the Boston Marathon bombing becomes a deeply personal question; indeed, a spiritual question.

Lovingly,

Thanks to my Rumor Debunking and Crisis Reporting Team: Fe Bongolan, Liam Carey, Amanda Painter, Susan Scheck, Carol van Strum, Lizanne Webb and many, many Planet Waves friends on Facebook who helped us track this story the past two weeks.