 Remains of those killed in the attack on Malaysia Airways Flight 17 are transported by this convoy of hearses. Handling the still-unidentified bodies one by one, the Dutch have attempted to restore a modicum of dignity to the people whose lives were lost. They made part of the trip in refrigerated train cars. World Without EndDear Friend and Reader: As Jupiter and the Sun entered Leo this week (their conjunction was exact Thursday afternoon), one event after the next has offered vivid and painful confirmation of a world in crisis. On the personal level, field reports are coming in with a diversity of responses to the current astrology, though I'm hearing stories in the 'everything all at once' genre. As Mars ingresses Scorpio Friday, leaving Libra for the first time since it arrived in early December, the energy will ramp up even more, followed by yet another boost from the Leo New Moon conjunct Jupiter on Saturday. Then over the next week, Mars moves into a square with Jupiter, representing another burst of energy.
Before I focus on the astrology, however, here is a roundup of the current events. Pulling this together I am getting a queasy, helpless feeling, and I am usually able to stomach this stuff pretty well. Still, I think it's necessary to look with eyes and heart open. In Gaza, a military campaign by Israel waged the past two weeks has taken the lives of nearly 800 Palestinian civilians. The world community is usually tolerant of Israel's efforts to (allegedly) defend itself, though the mounting civilian death toll is focusing anger at the Israelis and sympathy on the Palestinians. So far, three Israeli civilians and 32 of their soldiers have been killed. Israelis don't even like to lose one soldier much less 32 of them, and this will eventually have a political impact in Israel. Residents of Gaza are crammed into a prison-like environment and have nowhere to hide from Israeli artillery. Gaza is not a battlefield; it's a dense urban environment, and any shell or bomb will kill civilians -- everyone knows that. Repeated assertions by the Israeli government that they plan to "finish the job" sound too much like "the final solution" for comfort. Fighting continues in eastern Ukraine, where rebels armed and financed by Russian President Vladimir Putin are attempting to break away and become part of Russia. They have shot down three planes in recent days -- two Ukrainian fighter jets this week and, by my reading of the known facts, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, a 777-200ER with 298 civilians aboard from approximately 17 nations, nearly two-thirds of them Dutch citizens, including 80 children.
It's long odds that the same airline would lose two of the same kind of jet the same year, but even stranger that in neither case is there a properly preserved crime scene. Flight 370 was lost with no physical evidence whatsoever, and Flight 17 crashed in rebel-occupied territory and the crime scene was looted and tampered with before investigators could arrive. A train carrying about 280 bodies recovered from the scene -- mostly by farmers, coal miners and militants -- headed west toward Europe earlier this week, and the Netherlands declared a national day of mourning as the still-unidentified bodies began to arrive in Amsterdam. Two other civilian airplanes crashed overnight Wednesday to Thursday -- an Air Algerie flight carrying 116 people from Burkina Faso to Algeria's capital disappeared from radar early Thursday over northern Mali, and was discovered to have crashed. And ten people survived a crash landing Wednesday that killed 48 other passengers as their plane "failed to reach the runway on a Taiwanese holiday island hit hard by a typhoon. The airline, TransAsia Airways, confirmed the death toll Thursday morning," USA Today reported. Regarding the astrology of these air disasters, I have been tracking the Kitty Hawk chart since March for more information. The short version is that the first flight chart has the Sun and Uranus conjunct in late Sagittarius, where many centaurs and Pluto-like bodies are passing through the territory (quite close to the Galactic Core). The chart describes aviation as a brilliant invention and also as risky business, with a lot of hidden baggage -- most of it involving the military. Kitty Hawk is in fact the chart for the first plane crash since the first flight crash-landed.
A beautiful, moist spring in the Pacific Northwest has given way to an unusually hot and dry summer. This "has created a fire-season tinderbox across the Pacific Northwest that exploded over the past week with dozens of wildfires burning hundreds of thousands of acres and forcing thousands of residents from their homes," in the words of The New York Times. And a four-year drought continues through much of the United States, though the Central Valley of California, which produces much of the nation's food supply, is being hit especially hard. Unlike during the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s, there exists the capacity to pump out the aquifers, which is being done at an alarming rate. They will eventually run dry if they are not replenished by rainwater. Bloomberg reported that farmers are paying as much as ten times more for water than before the record drought impacted the supply. Finally, the US-Mexico border is the scene of much drama lately, as Texas Gov. Rick Perry has deployed 1,000 members of the state National Guard in what amounts to a display of political bravado. Current numbers of immigrants appear to be lower than in previous years, but the issue of blocking illegal entry into the United States is a favorite red herring of right-wing politicians and news outlets, so we're hearing more about it. What Astrology Could be Behind All of This? Before I go there, I have a question, in a few parts. Now that the extended sensory system we know as the media can bring us this information instantaneously, sending our eyes and ears to every disaster zone in the world, what are we supposed to do with this information?
Possessing that knowledge invokes a matter of conscience. This is not merely a question of how we're supposed to respond emotionally or even spiritually; or how we're supposed to 'process' all of this information. I believe there must be something more. Every one of these situations that seems to be happening abroad has some parallel in the United States, and in many other countries. Police brutality is out of control in the U.S. these days, so we have our own form of government-sanctioned domestic terrorism. It is beyond my comprehension why Americans do not object to, yet personally pay for, a paramilitary police force that is used against them; why we tolerate SWAT teams responding to routine arrests and even agricultural complaints involving raw milk. I will propose one response, which is that when there is chaos and turmoil, that is the cue to get one's house in order. By house, I mean the politics of one's community and one's nation. By politics, I mean all matters of leadership. As all of this is unfolding, there is an astonishing social and political complacency that has a hold on our society. Part of that complacency is a state of feeling overwhelmed, and even if most Americans are busy, we still have pretty good lives. If there is a spiritual piece to this, here is what I propose. Those who draw strength from being seekers on the path have access to additional strength so that they may actually respond in a meaningful way. It's one thing to pray and send light. It's another thing to be grounded in your faith and therefore have the clarity and strength to take action.
Uranus square Pluto -- the astrology that marks our era -- is most definitely a call to action, especially in cardinal signs Aries and Capricorn. Yet it's as if only the most reactionary elements of society are hearing, or responding to, the calling of the current Uranus-Pluto aspect. Uranus square Pluto is the first and most significant astrological factor to look to, because it's the most potent, longest-term and most pervasive aspect of our era. We are now heading for the sixth of seven exact squares between June 2012 and March 2015. Since the Capricorn Full Moon two weeks ago, we have been getting the last burst of energy in the cardinal grand cross that has surrounded the Uranus-Pluto square all year. This includes Mercury and Venus currently passing through the territory. Mercury just made an opposition to Pluto, and Venus is about to -- pushing ideas, images and the feeling of death right in our faces. But Pluto is also about the need, indeed, the unstoppable impulse, for transformation and change, and Mercury and Venus are making that deeply personal. Widely accepted as the planet of evolution, we might ask whether that evolution involves any actual adaptation, change or progress. We might ask whether it's a passive process or an active one. We might ask what action an evolved person would take in the face of an ethical crisis.
We still engage in war for profit, or worse, war for its own sake. We still engage in genocide, staging attacks on civilian populations. Even if you go back to World War I, which had its 100th anniversary this summer, what exactly has changed? Military airplanes are faster and rifles have lasers? Some days it seems like some people have developed more humane personal values, but is this really true? And if it's true, where is the evidence of those values changing, in terms of action, choice, involvement, resistance and most important, creating creative solutions not just to world problems but to the puzzle of surviving on Earth? Getting ourselves out of this mess is going to involve many factors, one of which is applying our intelligence and awareness to the situations we know require focus and healing. Humans like to distinguish ourselves by how smart we are, but most days it seems like every other form of life is way ahead of us. On the way to accessing our intelligence, it's necessary to cultivate inner sensitivity and to do what we can to solve our problems, though of course we meet many people who make little room in their lives for either. Being in a state of constant crisis would seem to grant a pass from getting involved in larger issues. However I assure you that many people who have accomplished the most had a great many problems and ongoing grief that they refused to let stop them. It also works the other way. Personal work and self-improvement, study of astrology or metaphysics, yoga, meditation or any other spiritual path can become self-serving, and all-consuming, complete with the aims of enlightenment and perfection. And then what?
Spirituality, if it's a real thing, is based on love, ethics and willingness to involve oneself in life. It is natural, not a matter of debate, of philosophy or of intellect. A degree of mental training is involved for those who want to serve in a fully conscious way, though that is relatively quick (in A Course in Miracles, limited to one year). Some specialized forms of healing require training or certification, but everyone knows that most of what practitioners know they learn from doing the work, not from school. The actual elements that qualify one as a healer are listening to the voice of God all the time, and being willing to help, all the time. God's voice speaks to me all through the day. I am here only to be truly helpful. I am one with my creator. Your task is not to seek for love but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself which you have built against it. It is not necessary to seek for what is true, but it is necessary to seek for what is false. Every illusion is one of fear, whatever form it takes. And the attempt to escape from one illusion into another must fail. If you seek love outside yourself, you can be certain that you perceive hatred within, and are afraid of it. Yet peace will never come from the illusion of love, but only from its reality. Yours in friendship,  Additional research: Amy Elliott, Elizabeth Michaud, Amanda Painter, Anatoly Ryzhenko and Len Wallick. Planet Waves (ISSN 1933-9135) is published each Tuesday morning and Thursday afternoon in Kingston, New York by Planet Waves, Inc. Annual basic subscription rate: $99/year. Core community membership: $149/year. Editor and Publisher: Eric Francis Coppolino. Business Manager: Chelsea Bottinelli. Web Developer: Anatoly Ryzhenko. Copy Editor: Jessica Keet. Research, Writing and Editing: Planet Waves is produced by a team consisting of Fe Bongolan, Brendan Merritt, Amy Elliott, Judith Gayle, Kelly Janes, Elizabeth Michaud, Amanda Moreno, Amanda Painter, Casey Smith, Carol van Strum, Len Wallick, Lizanne Webb and Chad Woodward. Special thanks to the Fact Checkers List, and to our main astrology fact-checker Alex Miller, and Amanda, who goes over all their suggestions. Aunt Josie Forever! Good as Gold: the 2014 Midyear Reading for All 12 Signs If you have not already noticed, 2014 is really two years in one, with version 2.0 beginning right about now. With all of the inner planets direct, Jupiter entering a fire sign and Mars coming home to its native Scorpio, a whole new concept of life and of astrology is reaching out to us. I will be unfolding this brand-new aspect pattern for all 12 signs and rising signs in my midyear reading, called Good as Gold.
I will provide ideas, strategies, motivational rants (my speciality) and ideas I've learned in therapy to get the blocks out of the way, access your courage, and invoke your vision for yourself. Jupiter is about potential, but that also means that the human part of the equation is making that potential real. How do you manage the transition out of something old that is not really working and into something new, with the simultaneous demands of a learning curve, balancing yourself financially and staying inspired? These and other things are what I will be exploring. Good as Gold is available for pre-order now, at $49.95 for all 12 signs. As usual, we start with the lowest price for all 12, gradually raise the price, then sell one reading for about what we were initially asking for all 12. Now is the time to get the best rate on the whole package, so you can listen to your Sun, Moon and rising signs, and check in with the readings for your collaborators. To unsubscribe, click here e Wiki | Friends | Editors | Contact Us Copyright © 2014 by Planet Waves, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Other copyrights may apply. Some images used under Fair Use or Share Alike attribution. |
