Air Travel in Transformation

 

August 19, 2005 (with chart)

 

http://cainer.com/ericfrancis/aug19.html

 

A soul in tension that's learning to fly

Condition grounded but determined to try

Can't keep my eyes from the circling skies

Tongue-tied and twisted just an earth-bound misfit, I

 

-- Dave Gilmour, Pink Floyd

 

Dear Readers:

 

Computers were not the only thing crashing during the past few weeks of Mercury retrograde. There were an astonishing five crashes of passenger jets, as well as a series of near misses involving the Space Shuttle. And after anticipating this past Shuttle flight for more than two years, the program itself was put on hold by NASA until the fuel tank foam problem can be solved -- if it's even possible to solve it.

 

All of this happened right in the wake of Saturn going into Leo. We learned from the Saturn in Leo research (please see archives) that this transit can unleash floods and dam bursts; this short timeline gives just such an idea, when it comes to burst problems with commercial planes.

 

Each of these incidents has its own charts, but aviation itself is charted by the 12-second, 120-feet flight of Orville Wright the morning of Thursday, Dec. 17, 1903 in North Carolina. In all likelihood, the Wrights' were the first public flights; as you can read in this Wikipedia entry, there were likely successes by other inventors in 1901 and 1902.

 

Here is the chart for Kitty Hawk, which sounds like somebody's flying cat, or a really cool totem animal:

 

For those of us who board airliners expecting the vegetarian meal and aisle seat we ticked on the Internet a month earlier, it is difficult to fathom the intensity, the drive, the mental power, the determination and the sheer guts it took mankind to get off the ground. And think -- two bicycle repair guys got the credit, and their father said they couldn't do it. Don't always believe what your father says is not possible.

 

Each of us shares a little of that courage and determination when we board an airplane, and we take a little risk, too.

 

The chart for the Wright Brothers' flight tells us as much about astrology as it does about aviation. The very prominent signs are Sagittarius (including the Sun and Moon) -- this sign representing long distance travel, visionary achievements, and as a result of this chart, flight itself; and Aquarius rising -- inventions, revolutionary developments, innovations, and standing apart. Astrologers learn and confirm these qualities of human existence from historic charts, but the basic archetypes were established long ago and have been written about for centuries.

 

In the Kitty Hawk chart, Aquarius and Sagittarius are joined together by the presence of Uranus, the modern ruler of Aquarius, conjunct the Sun in Sagittarius.

 

And herein lies the issue, or the situation, with aviation these days: Pluto, the planet of evolution and transformation, is making its way over the Sun and Uranus in the Kitty Hawk chart. Note the respective positions of the two bodies, at 24+ and 25+ Sagittarius. For those wondering about the power of the Galactic Core, located close to 27 degrees of Sagittarius, we see the impact of this one flight reflected in how widespread, and how important, air travel is today.

 

The first exact contact between Pluto and the Kitty Hawk Sun was in February 2005, earlier this year, with a Pluto station just two arc minutes from the Sun's position. The process has begun, and we're about to witness a major transformation for the world of flight. Note that the maiden flight of the massive A380 (the largest-ever airliner) was with Pluto exactly on the Kitty Hawk chart's Sun -- please see the April 29 edition of Astrology Secrets Revealed.

 

Times of change are always challenging, and some people (usually technological pioneers of some kind) always get hurt. But those dedicated to their technology, to service, and for that matter, to making money, will heed the signs of the times. I believe entire airline industry is going to be on the lookout for problems now, because in truth, nobody can afford a crash. Airlines tend to run on very narrow profit margins. And it takes a long time for an airline to recover its reputation after such an incident.

 

I don't mean to say that we're going to get through the transit of Pluto over the Sun-Uranus conjunction during the next year without additional problems, but I am confident that there will be plenty of lessons learned. And by the time we truly get to the other side of this transit in late 2006, there may be more changes than we ever imagined could come over an industry, or a technology, in such a short time.

 

What is really amazing is how few problems there are overall in the commercial airline industry, given the number of flights and the number of things that can go wrong. There can be hundreds of thousands of flights over periods of time when there are no crashes at all.

 

In terms of the astrology, there always needs to be more than one factor to have an effect. During this past month, there have been multiple transits to the Kitty Hawk chart: Mars in Taurus opposing the Venus/Pallas conjunction; Saturn in Leo opposing Kitty's Mars in Aquarius; and the warming up of the Saturn opposition to this chart, now underway; and Jupiter in the 8th house, which seems to be offering more protection than anything else.

 

Personally, my response is going to be flying larger airlines that have a good safety record, that are committed to progress, and that keep serving meals. If an airline can't afford pretzels, coffee and a little pasta for its passengers, what else can't it afford?

 

Here are some more of your questions this week. Each week we'll be awarding a copy of the 2006 Raphael's Ephemeris, sent from the Astrology Shop in London. to the most interesting question we receive. And four times a year, we'll be awarding the full-century Aureas ephemeris to the best question of the season. So please keep your questions coming. See you over at Planet Waves. And hey, thanks for all your sweet letters the week I was standing in. And to those who responded to the indexing project, thank you for writing and thanks for your patience -- it's been busy times around here; feel free to drop me a reminder that you're still interested. I would really appreciate that.