Planet Waves FM :: Return to Titanic; Meet the Thresholders

This is a short introduction to Wednesday’s Planet Waves FM, which today is doubling as Daily Astrology. In this edition of FM, I begin with an overview of the astrology for the rest of the week, particularly Mercury in Aries, jumping into the Uranus-Pluto square.

Eric Francis

Then I return to the scene of (my coverage of) the Titanic and explain how I missed the most obvious thing in the charts. I look at two different alternative narratives of what happened, a discussion that began on these pages over the weekend.

During the program I mention that I’ll be sharing the subscriber edition from last week — Titanic: The Atlantis Connection — so you can see what I’m talking about.

In part two, I cover one of the recently-discovered small worlds, 1992 QB1. I associate this planet with people who help others cross thresholds — birth, death and orgasm. I describe the concept of what I call a Thresholder, which I am describing in my fiction, though I’m sharing the idea here today since the Sun is conjunct 1992 QB1. For those additionally curious about 1992 QB1, you may read this article about Radharani, this April Fool’s article called Her Name is Radha (with the infamous vegetarian horoscope satire on Jonathan Cainer), and this article about my presentation at the American Psychological Association talking about Book of Blue.

Here is your link to the lyrics to Crazy Fingers.

It is late, and I have been editing for a while — but I think the program is in pretty good shape. Please let me know how you like it. Here is your program in the old player, where you’ll find the full archives and a downloadable zip file.

Thanks for tuning in.

Did you know that Planet Waves offers you astrological readings for every sign in audio format including birthday reports? You’re invited to check them out in our audio store. If you’d like access to Eric’s weekly and monthly horoscopes, visit this link to access your free trial to our premium twice-weekly astrology service.

30 thoughts on “Planet Waves FM :: Return to Titanic; Meet the Thresholders”

  1. Eric we were thinking the easy way to check would be to find the ‘Olympic’ now and see if she was named Titanic underneath (except Wiki says she was dismantled in the 30’s. Another way would be to go back to the wreck and take off the other plates to possibly reveal Olympic?

  2. As synchronicity would have it, the discussion of 1992 QB1 brought to mind the word “psychopomp”, recently used in a PW comment thread. It wouldn’t take much to extend psychopomp as a guide of souls not just for birth and death, but also for the orgasmic life between. Jung used the term to describe a mediator between the conscious and unconscious realms, certainly appropriate when considering sex and orgasms. Wikipedia has a long list of cultures that have psychopomps, and in spite of Eric’s “naming” of 1992 QB1, maybe there is an alternate choice from mythology or other cultures to embody the concepts and seed the planet’s identity.

    Fascinating information on the Titanic and Olympic. I’ve had no interest in the Titanic, either then or now, and have not seen the movie. (I may be the only living being in western culture that hasn’t seen it; then again, I still have a prodigy email address.) But, the articles and podcast on that ship brought out so much more to consider, and as Eric noted, we are living and watching our very own Atlantis.

    Thanks as always for a website that keeps me alert.

    JannKinz

  3. “The shift in values appears to have been sprung from the World Wars and the dread of communism….this was a day and age when even wars were still fought with gallantry….”. Yes, I see your point, dear JKR. The country I ‘ve lived in half my life, Italy, went through terrible years of terrorism (“Gli anni di piombo), in the late sixties and seventies – when the ‘threat’ of communists coming into power loomed large – and still today, terrible massacres from terrorist acts have found no culprits. Many believe that this is because the Italian and American secret services were involved. A new film about one of these ‘massacres’ has just come out: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/story-a-massacre-film-review-306441. However, no war has ever ever been ‘fought with gallantry’.

  4. The fog of world war one distracted everybody, and when people looked back they wanted to see a romantic pinnacle, the end of a glamorous era, not a grubby insurance scam by some charlatan bankers. It doesn’t take much when war is around to call truth-speakers unpatriotic – just look at the dixie chicks.

  5. @ Eric….

    How about those of us that would represent the “weak links”…there must be some fair representation of those “types” within the framework of this kind of scenario. If I was under the gun to keep hush about something of this magnitude, I’d buckle to be sure. Imagine the stoic determination it would take to keep a secret this large…imagine if it was you keeping this kind of secret…I should think you’d eventually go nuts. I know I would. Either that or I’d spill the beans…

    ….You could conceivably decide to keep quiet – but I do believe there is something in human nature that would make even the loneliest most resolvedly secretive person on Earth tell a stranger on a bus the wildest story ever…

    …(just more thinking out loud here)…

  6. Geoff, what we’re talking about is mass psychology. I am specifically referring to things where many, many people suspect a problem; where many conspirators were required; where a number of people had to be directly involved. Even today when everything is recorded, people can still pretend something that just happened did not happen.

    The modern equivalent is 9/11 but in particular what happened with Building 7. Nearly everyone accepts that WTC 1 and WTC 2 fell down because they were struck by airplanes. But WTC 7 fell down because…why? Well until recently hardly anyone knew a third tower fell down. many who know think that it could have just imploded later the same day because it was damaged. There had to be many people involved in this…and the thing that keeps things quiet is mass denial.

    Even if we look no further than the janitors in Gage Hall at SUNY New Paltz, who tell me they know they are getting contaminated, I can never get them on the record, they fear for their job, they have to feed their family. So the coverup on many levels is banal and self-centered. There are other layers; consensus reality is extremely dense, and people are afraid of being called crazy. Then the people involved know they can be killed, since the whole thing is murder anyway. I think however that the first two kinds of mass denial are really the most impenetrable — fear of not being able to eat, and fear of being ostracized, of being considered a nut case.

    The history of psychology is full of studies that demonstrate that people will rarely ever break consensus. The bigger the scale, the more potent the effect. And when you start to add why people NEED to believe something because to not believe it would challenge what amounts to their whole identity structure, or their construct of society…well…

  7. I do appreciate your experience in the realms of these shenanigans, Eric, but the idea that a cover-up on this scale could be kept to a few participants “in the know” doesn’t seem likely. Crew members would surely have suspected that this was not a new ship if she had already travelled from Southampton to New York and back. If the linoleum needed covering with carpet there were no doubt many other signs of wear and tear, particularly below decks, which would have been apparent.
    At some point in the last hundred years those suspicions might have been communicated to a friend or relative once the fear of reprisal had dissipated. Running this theory past present-day relations of those who worked on the Titanic might uncover corroborative personal testimony. One hundred years is indeed a long time for such memories but my father was 15 when the Titanic was launched. He would have been old enough to have worked on her.

  8. btw — in understanding coverups, that’s the central issue — why people who know stay quiet. There would not be, or need to be, whistleblowers unless everyone else was trying to keep the information hush. I have seen this manifest so many times, in so many ways, that it’s almost stopped confounding me.

  9. If this was done, you can be pretty sure that security precautions were taken. Most people are kept in the dark. A small crew of trusted men was likely used, which is typical. The people who do have information in anything like this tend to take the role of the “insider” and covet their position of power or inside knowledge.

    I am curious to hear what you find. A century is a long time ago. Yet the signature of the Titanic disaster lives on in nearly everything that “goes wrong” to the present day.

  10. Eric, I understand and take your point. What I can’t quite get my head around is the fact that none of the workers who must have known have said anything since, not even after the White Star Line was subsumed into Cunard. I live about 20 miles from Southampton and am going to try contacting the relatives of anyone connected with the Titanic during her short stay there through the local newspaper.

  11. I highly recommend that everyone rises up in their perspective, NOW. Snake venom is the antidote used in the treatment of a bite. This is the perspective I use to stay emotionally detached:
    We are in the mind of God and He/She has written a movie, The Greatest Story Ever Told. We are the actors. SOMEONE had to play the bad, evil guys. As far as I’m concerned, Bush was just awesome and deserves his Oscar (his movie career was his training ground). The people that died, whether they were murdered, tortured, sent to war under deceit of intent, WHATEVER, played their parts that THEY (their soul) PICKED TO PLAY very well.
    I, for one, am very fucking happy that we have reached the final curtain in this story. Remember, the truth shall set you free. Will you choose to use the poison to create more hate and anger, or use it to heal?
    It’s just a movie folks. It’s not real. As Morpheus said to Neo “The mind makes it real.”

  12. @ Huffy…Hi….

    There’s something very elitist about the whole Titanic venture itself. Think of the timeline and how prestigious it was to be sailing on this type of vessel at that time. Think also about the logistics of the trip itself and the navigational challenges/capabilties of the day. Think also about the money-making potential of the vessel as a working world class liner had it made even a few more trips. All of these are mitigating factors. I know what you’re saying, but those days were like the apex of cultural superiority and the Titanic represented entree into that standard of “modernity”. To me, it doesn’t stand to reason that the whole thing would be staged as a cash cow scam when the cash cow was the allure of thing in itself. I believe Eric tapped into something significant, but the minutae of how it played out might be more elusive than what seems apparent. I hate to use that pithy expression….but when it comes to something as big as the Titanic (literally and figuratively), it would seem that “loose lips [really do] sink ships” – in other words, a scam of this magnitude would never have been seamlessly pulled off – especially when the lives of nationals were involved. The shift in values appears to have been sprung from the World Wars and the dread of communism….this was a day and age when even wars were still fought with gallantry….

    …Anyway, it’s just an opinion and I’m no expert…just thinking out loud, not trying to prove anything or challenge anything or anyone.

  13. I found it interesting that Titanic was never christened, especially with Neptune so prominent in the charts. It was not the practice of the White Star Line to hold these ceremonies.

    According to wikipedia:
    “Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans called on their gods to protect seamen. The favor of the monarch of the seas — Poseidon in Greek mythology, the Roman Neptune — was evoked. Ship launching participants in ancient Greece wreathed their heads with olive branches, drank wine to honor the gods, and poured water on the new vessel as a symbol of blessing……
    … in 1610…The “standing cup” was a large cup fashioned of precious metal. When the ship began to slide down the ways, the presiding official took a ceremonial sip of wine from the cup, and poured the rest on the deck or over the bow. Usually the cup was thrown overboard and belonged to the lucky retriever. As navies grew larger and launchings more frequent, economy dictated that the costly cup be caught in a net for reuse at other launchings. Late in 17th century Britain, the standing-cup ceremony was replaced by the practice of breaking a bottle across the bow.”

  14. “would seem at least to me, to be beyond the prevailing “honour bound” professional ethics and “gentlemanly comportment” which appears to mark the era”. With all due respect, are you kidding, JKR. Being a brit, I know well how much corruption and ruthlessness is covered up by gentlemanly aplomb and comme il faut manners. I’m thinking of the British Raj, and of the atrocities they perpetrated in India, which was in the same era as the Titanic.

  15. As for the New Moon on June 19 at 28+ Gemini — I have been watching this one, and it’s one of those things that makes 2012 what it is. The article for the prior Friday might be called something like “A Question of Intent” and describe the confluence of all these historic charts with this degree activated. One problem with the prevailing cultural amnesia and epidemic of ADD is that history itself is disappearing. This is a relief for those who don’t want to deal with what happened in the past, but without knowledge of history we’re left without any guidance about the mistakes we’ve made, and the ways we’ve failed to connect the dots.

    As an aside or maybe the central point: Titanic may be one of the earlier examples of the Shock Doctrine in operation.

  16. Very interesting elaboration on the Titanic story, but I can’t help having some niggling questions about how you would reconcile some things against what you’re seeing/perceiving in the astrology. For instance, I don’t think some conscious “showboating” by scraping up against a block of ice was beyond the realm of possible in the early 1900’s mindset, but the idea to play chicken with a high profile behemoth like the Titanic voyage would seem at least to me, to be beyond the prevailing “honour bound” professional ethics and “gentlemanly comportment” which appears to mark the era. Even a few decades later, I might lean toward lining up the variables for a high stakes scam, but at that timeline….hmmmm, not sure.

    On another note….are you really working on a science fiction novel?!…..And, is your idea of the “thresholders” part of a working idea, or something to do with a science fiction plotline? Or may both? Just curious….sometimes, listening to you talk, I’m not sure when you’re overlapping concepts more with reality or fantasy. It would seem the idea of an “orgasm coach” in today’s day and age would catch on rather well with quite a few people…….I’m frankly surprised something like this doesn’t already exist – I think there are a lot of people out there that feel they either missed the orgasm train, or haven’t explored it fully – either way, the idea sounds good, particularly as an interpersonal community idea.

  17. It’s an intriguing point you raise about the June 19 New Moon, Melissa – another aspect to watch for in the ever-expanding 2012 story. My natal Venus is opposite this point in the 1st house, so I’ll be keeping my heart’s eye on the far horizon.
    The launch chart of the Olympic (1910 October 20, Belfast, UK, time not known) offers little succour for the prospect of safer sea voyages than the Titanic’s. Neptune is almost exactly opposite Uranus and is within five degrees square to Venus, Mars, Jupiter and the Sun. Unlike Titanic’s chart, however, Neptune is sextile/trine to the North/South nodes rather than square, and at midday the Moon was one degree away from an exact sextile to Neptune. Neptune is also exactly opposite Altjira, a Kuiper belt object named after the sky god of the native Australians’ dreamtime. Altjira sucks you into the structure underlying this reality, he deals with fantasy, the imagination, deception and faking the spiritual – Neptune vs Neptune?
    The “change of name” theory is certainly intriguing and is not one I’ve come across before. It requires a great deal of belief in the fact that the crew – all of them – could be persuaded to keep quiet about this deception. The Olympic had already sailed across the Atlantic and back and been involved in a collision with a British warship, HMS Hawke, before the Titanic was launched, yet we are asked to believe that no-one would have noticed they were working on a “used” ship or, if they did, not say anything about it? Surely some disgruntled seaman or construction worker would have said something, even if only years later, to arouse suspicion. Then again, perhaps not, for as the film comments these were different times – my father, for example, fought in the trenches during World War I yet what he encountered there was so appalling that he never spoke a single word about his experiences.
    It also means, of course, that during the rest of its long-life the Olympic was really the Titanic, and what a different history she would be accorded if this theory were true. In the First World War she was the only known merchant vessel to sink an enemy warship. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Olympic
    One aspect of the Titanic’s chart that I find interesting is that Venus was conjunct Eris the evening before she left Southampton. It’s almost as if Venus rewrites Greek mythology and picks up the Apple of Discord herself and tells Eris to her face that she, Venus (as Aphrodite), is the most beautiful at the party, at which point Eris storms out, her ploy to sow discord averted. In the “conspiracy of bankers” context it would beg the question – who decided to leave the Titanic the night before she sailed?

  18. Timelines 101

    I am a fan of Coronation Street. Canada has been about 9 months behind their airing schedule. For the last year or so they have been catching us up so we have been getting two shows per day instead of one. This ended last Friday, the 13th, and we are now back to one show a day.

    The Costa Concordia was insured by companies including Assicurazioni Generali SpA, RSA Insurance Group Plc and XL Group Plc, said three people with knowledge of the policies. They are among several insurers facing total costs of about 405 million euros ($513 million), said one of the people, who declined to be identified because the terms of the policies are confidential.
    http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-25/carnival-falls-as-cruise-ship-disaster-may-cost-95-million.html

    Titanic Timeline of Events:
    http://www.thisisthewestcountry.co.uk/news/9645222.TITANIC__Timeline_of_events/r/?ref=rss
    “the lookout sees the iceberg and rings the warning bell rings three times with the moment of impact at 11.40pm”

    3+1=4 9+2=11. There are 92 days (13 weeks) between January 13 and April 14, this being a Leap year. 1912 was also a Leap year.

    In the movie The Fifth Element they need to get to the Gemini cruise ship.

    Cruise being marketed in Canada for Coronation Street fans:
    “There are a number of cabins reserved for a 12 Night British Isles Cruise on the Caribbean Princess departing from Southampton on June 7, 2012 which will dock in Liverpool on June 11, 2012.”

    Isaiah 32:3 Then everyone who has eyes will be able to see the truth,
    and everyone who has ears will be able to hear it…………..

    Have fun down the rabbit hole, but don’t stay too long.

    To dream the impossible dream………And they all lived happily ever after.

  19. Thanks dear Eric! I love stuff about etymology. When I have time I’ll check out the names of the other months. xx

  20. March is named after Mars because the Sun is in the sign Aries which is named for Aries, who is Mars.

    From Etymology Online —

    third month, c.1200, from Anglo-Fr. marche, from O.Fr. marz, from L. Martius (mensis) “(month) of Mars,” from Mars (gen. Martis). Replaced O.E. hreðmonaþ, the first part of which is of uncertain meaning, perhaps from hræd “quick, nimble, ready, active, alert, prompt.” For March hare, proverbial type of madness, see mad.

  21. Thanks for that nugget of information, Eric! (the unconscious mind ‘knows’), but do you know why that is?

  22. Thank you all for everything.

    I appreciate the insight into the sinking of the Olympic (Titanic). I wonder if there is something in the chart of the launching of the Olympic that may shed light on the scene.

    You mentioned the Moon in the degree 28 Gemini showing up in several charts. What is the significance of it showing up as the New Moon degree on June 19?

  23. ‘reaching for the golden ring down inside’. grateful dead.
    the hieros gamos or golden ring is the sacred marriage, the holy union in orgasm, uniting male and female, radarhani and krishna, the golden ring of death and rebirth.

  24. Love the thresholder concept. With Sun Mars and Venus conjunct in Pisces in the 8th House and Vesta on the Ascendent, I reckon I might fit the profile. Radarhani is known as the ‘pleasure potency’ a delicious way of describing the energy dynamic between birth, death and orgasm. The sufi mystic al Ghazali called it the ‘elixir of blissfulness’.

  25. What the world needs now: I love the idea of an orgasm midwife who guides people through to sexual and emotional surrender. Orgasm is the most powerful emotionally and spiritually transformative energy we can naturally access from within our own bodies, next to birth and death, which are rather more one-way and permanent! I hadn’t considered this consciously before, but it’s a an incredibly useful truth to be aware of, especially these days. So thank you.

  26. Yes – thanks for the advice, dearest Eric, March inches forward, slowly does it… Yesterday was offered some interesting, well-paid work, but won’t see any pay till December (I should live so long..!). Of course, I accepted it – but I’m hanging on in there, am sure there’s more to come – slowly does it, faith and patience.

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