For a few months we’ve been describing the Varuna-Eris square at 22+ Cancer/Aries. This is a slow-moving alignment that we put out to our readers back in April to see what they had to say about it. Perhaps there will be something prescient in the numerous responses we received. Here is a short introduction. In the text, there are links for Varuna and Eris into detailed essays about those relatively new points (Varuna shows up in 2000, and Eris in 2005; both were major discoveries from an astronomical standpoint).
There are numerous points in alignment at 22+ of various degrees, including Moon, Venus, Mars, South Node, Nessus, Varuna and Eris. They are all working together to describe this incident. [Please see first comment below.] I consider Varuna-Eris the backbone of this incident because they are, by far, the two slowest points — but Nessus, with an orbital period of 122 years, is also pretty slow so I would say the backbone, the thing describing the historical process involved, is all three. Every point I am describing is in our solar system.
Just as that square was set off by simultaneous conjunctions to Varuna in Cancer (from Venus), and the Aries Moon (conjunct Eris), the Oslo attacks happened, beginning with a bombing of the government center. This was terrorism that turned the Norwegian capital in to a veritable war zone, with the government complex torn apart by a massive bomb blast (potentially something similar to what was used at Oklahoma City, using a lot of fertilizer). Then about two hours later there was a shooting, believed to be by the same perpetrator, at a youth camp on an island, where more than 85 people, mostly 15 to 16 years old, were killed in a two hour rampage.
The same suspect is accused in both incidents, and is in police custody. Here is the report from The New York Times to give a basic description of the scenario. Here is the CNN version.
Considering the event in the context of the chart, we see some of the rage that is lurking underneath the Varuna-Eris square, an aspect which we have previously associated with the right wing movement’s ongoing war on women in the United States. Today was a unique expression of that aspect in that four other points aligned with it to the degree: the Moon, Venus, Mars and the South Node of the Moon. The personal planets lining up — principally ones addressing the themes of sex and gender — has given a physical expression to this deep-in-the-background astrology: the square of ultra-slow moving Varuna and Eris. I have described this as a generational aspect, one that is lurking right in the background of existence, describing and perhaps shaping some unique qualities of our moment in history.
I am not going to get into the potential motives in this discussion — in truth an action like this is beyond explaining with any kind of conventional analysis, since it defies reason. Until now we have not seen terrorism directed specifically at young people, as was the attack on the summer camp where the sons of certain Norwegian politicians were spending their vacation.
If you’re relatively new to astrology and are trying to see these details in the chart, look at how many different points have a 22 next to them; those are the ones involved, and an additional one not shown in the chart — Varuna, which is precisely in the degree of Venus.
Among them is a conjunction of Mars and the South Node, which in a natal chart often indicates some kind of violent streak. An example is the Sibley chart of the United States, which has this placement. That Mars/South Node are aligned in Gemini describes a seemingly intractable mental split of some kind, arguably describing the nature of violence itself — caused by deep inner stress between two seemingly polarized aspects of the mind.
In any event, it’s stunning that this diversity of near-Earth points aligning with Varuna-Eris happens synchronously with this type of event so precisely. It’s enough to be tempting to attribute causality to the astrology, particularly given the presence of the Moon. Mars is in the configuration, who is the mythological brother of Eris; I described the pair in Friday’s edition (the two points appear conjunct in the chart for the first Space Shuttle mission, and I mentioned that together they are responsible for a lot of warfare).
I have not taken a look at additional minor planets; here they are on a 90-degree sort. Using this tool you can look for what turns up in the degrees in question — anything in range of 22+ of the cardinals, and other triggering degrees. The chart above/to the left shows some of these points as they have aligned with Varuna-Eris on the cardinal cross. You can tell how close the alignments are by how close in value the numbers are.
One last note. The Sun is void of course in this chart; the attacks happened within hours of the Sun’s ingress from Cancer into Leo. I note Sun voids as ‘very unlikely things are possible’, and an example I sometimes (but prefer not to) give is the assassination of John F. Kennedy. On that day — Nov. 22, 1963 at 12:30 pm local time in Dallas, the Sun was void in the very last degree of Scorpio, and today’s Sun was closely aspecting this degree.
ah yes, David Solte’s very popular chart. by David’s reckoning, the Articles of Confederation were approved on Nov. 15, 1777 at 12:46pm.
http://www.hermes3.net/scorpusa.htm
Wow, this is a very interesting chart – The Articles of Confederation. It also has Neptune trine Pluto but the present day Galactic Core/Center is conjunct this chart’s MC and squaring that Neptune. Also I believe it had Mars in Gemini trining the Sibly Saturn. Could you tell me the date (I can’t see it clearly on my poor computer!)
be
I was thinking of the other really good USA chart, Scorpionic America — the chart for the Articles of Confederation. This has Mars/South Node conjunct at 11+ to 12+ Capricorn and to me reveals a lot about our verging no perpetually bloody history.
Notably, this arrangement is in mid cardinal so it will be taking transits from Saturn, Uranus and Pluto for a while. Here is what that chart looks like:
http://bp0.blogger.com/_-uGpx0_gPO8/RfXr-SVcAaI/AAAAAAAAABE/tc5WWiK0iVo/s1600-h/SCORP.GIF
you might want to correct that statement about a Mars/S Node conjunction in the Sibly chart?
just curious eric: do you mention only the south node & not north node simply b/c it is understood that it will have the same degree, or because it is not making the more meaningful aspects as the south node is? i mean, that’s a hell of a lot of 22 floating around.
btw… fixed the article so that mars is eris’ brother, not her sister. 😉
i’m just still trying to wrap my head around this whole incident. so much for the south node draining off those violent impulses, huh? or is that kind of interpretation simply less valid/strong when there are a bazillion other high-voltage planets in aspect?
i keep thinking of the teens at the Seeds of Peace camp near where my mom lives. kids from countries in conflict get brought together to live in maine for a few weeks and deal with the issues of their country the best possible way: by realizing they’re not so different from each other and want the same thing — to be able to grow up without the hatred and violence they’re inheriting. but because they *are* from areas with tremendous conflict, when they march in the local parade, they have a state police escort every year.
anyway, i keep thinking that they and all kids who are enjoying summer camp must be pretty shaken by this.
Norway’s Nessus at 22 Pisces 22 conjuncts Circe at 22 Pisces 47 and opposes Isis at 21 Virgo 46 conjunct Pholus at 19 Virgo 20. Check out the rest of the planets for this grieving country whose birthdate is June 7, 1905, Oslo 59N56, 10E43, 11:00 LMT or 10:00 GMT.
Breivik’s birthchart reveals a group of 5 Aquarian planets from 18+ to 29+ degrees all of whom square natal Uranus at 20 Scorpio 56. Chiron at 5 Taurus has been trine transiting Pluto off and on for over a year and on the day of the massacre it was exact within 10 arc minutes. I found it thought provoking that his progressed Jupiter retrograde was at 29+ Cancer, the degree of the transiting Sun on that same day.
When trans. Pluto stationed retrograde this past April at 7 Capricorn 30 it was one degree short of his natal Venus at 8+ Cap. Elsa-Elsa has his chart on her website here….
http://www.elsaelsa.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Anders-Behring-Breivik.gif
Paola – Just trying (like Wings) to fill in the holes. I had not heard that there were any helicopters in the area, so you filled in one for me!
I read today that the Oslo (or national?) police chief admitted they had no police helicopter available, the closest one being in the south of the country and unable to respond in time. He also went on to say that they didn’t have a boat available right away, and had to wait for one to arrive from Oslo by road. There was one boat right there, but it was too small and leaking badly, and they felt it was too risky to use.
A horrifying day no matter what.
My apologies to any who were confused about the 2 sextiles I referred to earlier, between Mars and Eris and Mars and Venus because I was looking at Isis at 22 Leo, and in my haste mistook her position as Venus’ position. My bad but Mars still divides the Cancer Venus/Varuna and Aries Moon/Eris conjunctions, but not equally. Only the Mars and Moon/Eris are 60 degrees apart in this chart. Still divided but not equally changes things, for one thing the Moon Eris conjunction would benefit most or have the greater emphasis or strength from the Mars contact. Not at all equal is the Venus-Varuna semi-sextile to Mars. In the big picture it favors the Eris side of the square rather than the Varuna side.
But now I must ponder the sextile between Mars and Isis, at least for a little while!
Paola – wasn’t trying or meaning to judge.
Just saw Eric was looking for more info and reporting what I had read from an AP article where the chief of police said the SWAT team didn’t have helicopters on standby. It made sense to me considering Norway’s lower risk level and that they might not have trained for an island rescue operation but would have been more prepared for responding to something in Oslo.
I also agree that any helicopter wouldn’t’ have landed on the island with the guy still shooting. The article also said that another helicopter (news?) was taking photos of the shooter and that contributed to the perception the police were slow to respond. Perhaps that helicopter was helping to rescue people. I agree the facts are probably still in a state of flux. Here’s the article link.
http://news.yahoo.com/norway-police-arrive-90-minutes-firing-began-205033309.html
Brendan and wings,
I think that we don’t have the elements to judge how they reacted and acted in reality, they are telling different things, we have no idea: for example, I read a totally different version: the helicopters arrived right away, saved the people that were escaping by boat, but diddn’t land immediately because the shooter was still shooting.
(Does it make sense? Don’t know. My feeling is that they are telling whatever).
interesting to note that for the link to the NY Times article you included, that article originally stated:
“Terrorism specialists said that even if the authorities ultimately ruled out terrorism as the cause of Friday’s assaults, other kinds of groups or individuals were mimicking al-Qaida’s signature brutality and multiple attacks.”
and went on to speculate the the person/people responsible might have had ‘political motivations’ and was obviously learning from al-Qaida
(they’ve since updated the article to read “… ruled out Islamic terrorism…”)
but it shows how crazy this all is: reading the original copy, we’re put into a worldview where white people don’t commit terrorism, and people who do ‘politically motivated’ violent acts (that aren’t terrorism) are learning it from al-Qaida (b/c they are ‘the’ example of planting bombs or shooting people)
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/07/23/nyt/index.html
From what I have gathered, Oslo has the only police SWAT team in the country as well. Put it all together with the blast in the city center, and they were rather busy. Another thing that came to me was that the highway to Utoya is only two lanes, and if a lot of the parents were driving there lickety split the road was probably clogged.
I hate to see it, but I imagine that the Norwegian police will get a lot of new toys in the immediate future, and a lot more police will get SWAT training. I just hope Norway as a whole does not fall into the trap that we did.
I read that the SWAT team did not have access to a helicopter right away. Not used to responding like in the good ol violent USA. So the drive was 20 minutes to reach the camp and then they could not find a boat. The shooter really did his homework and with the first bombing serving as a distraction he obviously planned very well.
I also saw in another article regarding the shooter “that the personal is political”. It was written numerous times. That he was a right wing Christian fundamentalist and unhappy with “liberal” politics as well as immigrants. That he had both personal and political reasons.
I imagine the people of Norway will never be the same. Just as we have not been the same since the Oklahoma City and 9/11 tragedies.
Just flying on a plane this summer made me aware of those changes. And when we tried to buy cheap, pay-as-you-go Tracfones for our teens who will be going to college this fall, we were told they could not sell us more than two phones, period (we have three going into college). The guy said there’s a camera watching him and he could get fired if he sold me the third one. So my husband had to quietly buy it with me standing far enough away so as not to be in the camera. I am serious about that.
I can only imagine how the lives of individual Norwegians will now change. Especially the families of the dead. This is a sad thing indeed.
That’s the missing piece — you can deploy SWAT teams from Oslo in minutes by helicopter, though those are decisions for the tactical people to make; an air approach might be so good if someone is armed. It’s hard to hide. And you certainly don’t expect to have to secure a summer camp
Ok so we know how these configurations played out in the bigger picture of Norway and large groups and politics and such. The personal is political and I would say the other way around as well; how do these configurations affect each of us personally?
After all, each affects the other; the larger event affects the individual just as the individual created the large event.
I don’t know how long it has taken to secure the island, but I have read that some boys and girls communicated *instantly* with their parents via cell phone and twitter, saying what was going on, asking to call the police. They also sent messages saying not to call them because they were hiding and the sound of the phone would have attracted the shooter. Gosh.
CNN just had a reporter in Oslo who said the shooting on the island lasted for an hour and 1/2. Video from the island with a young girl who witnessed the spree said that police went after the shooters boat. The reporter said the police told him to surrender; not sure if it was at the boat but wherever they caught him, he did surrender and has been questioned all day but still, at this time, have no motive. His website showed animosity towards muslims, and the link below is to a story that reports he lived with his mother in a wealthy area of Oslo, and was described as a ‘loner’. The total dead was up to 94.
http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=130516
One thing I’m looking for is an explanation of how it took two hours to secure the island, which is not far from the mainland. Nobody had a cell phone?
I can believe that about Hebe. . being an enabler. This might mean that somebody is behind whomever gets caught and blamed, another Gemini or duality approach.
be
Paola, that would be Hebe, which indicates young people. Vesta does too, but it’s usually young women.
I think that it’s also worth noting that nearly all the victims are young (teen agers).
BK, Vesta is much more complex than ‘service industry’ — we could say that about Hebe too, which is in the mix. That is much more ‘service industry’ vis bartender or waiter. But Hebe is about much more than that as well — it’s about enabling behavior. (Shows up big in chart used for Cancer birthday report coming out later — discussion of the kinds of codependency indicated by Hebe.)
Vesta for its part is sometimes about sacrifices — very prominent in the JFK chart. When you see Vesta in a chart like this, check for themes of sacrifice, devotion, shame, service (to what).
There is also a lot of broken feminine energy here — Venus conjunct Varuna, Moon conjunct Eris — the exaggerated effect of uncontrolled, dogmatic emotion.
I would point interested readers back to this article, about the Virginia Tech shootings of April 2007.
http://planetwavesweekly.com/dadatemp/1646964642.html
One thing that’s interesting is that, starting with Jared Loughner, we are starting to get these suspects in custody alive. Usually they shoot themselves before anyone can ask them what was going on.
And Nessus makes it all the easier for Mars to hit the release button because of his resentment and poisonous retaliation.
be
Listen to this Eric, in his remarks regarding the degree of the south node and Mars, Rudhyar says, in part, about the symbol of ‘3 Fledglings in a Nest High in a Tree’,
“It suggests that the ambitious mass protests of aroused and largely blind desires should be transmuted through harmonization with natural drives and in terms of spontaneous responses attuned to the phases of natural evolution.”
The south node had only reached that degree this past Monday after spending 74 days in the 23+ degree of Gemini. Also this week Eris stationed retrograde giving further strength/stress to the 22 point of Aries.
The fact that 22 Gemini cuts the square of Varuna and Eris in half and forms 2 ‘easy’ sextiles and that it is a sign of blatant duality, and that Dane Rudhyar connects the degree’s symbol to ‘mass protests’ and ‘evolution’ leads me to wonder about the motive(s). The fact that there were 2 attacks, one on the young boys and one on the workers and the affluent, makes your statement about “the seemingly intractable mental split” quite revealing. Is it one person with two polarizing ‘largely blind’ desires that has committed these crimes? Could it be two people or even two groups?
By having the personal planets of the Moon (to Eris) and Venus (to Varuna) separated by Mars (to south node) also seems to divide the female energy through the use of male energy on one level and forcing a release (south node) of some, as yet, unconscious energy in order to proceed with evolution.
Phil Sedgwick lists the negative expression of Varuna as ‘incompetent and blaming, laments losses, holds resentment’ and as it is in a square to stationing (therefore even stronger than usual) Eris, the transiting Venus’ desire element could manifest as some powerful resentment against the elite and what they value; their children. Then as the Moon’s moods and feelings are unconsciously bombarded by Eris’ extremely potent desire to cause strife while at the same time Mars hits the very-easy-to-touch release button of the SN, we get instant evolution. Shocking and painful evolution.
I also think Hebe conjunct Varuna and Venus could be a clue; say somebody in the service industry with deep resentments.
be
CNN: “Norwegian television and newspaper reports have identified the suspect as 32-year-old Anders Behring Breivik, of Norwegian origin.” The same report continues:
Tracy, the author of the Serennu astrology research website, points out that Nessus is also in the mix, at 22+ Gemini. So we have another slow-mover in a dialog with the Varuna-Eris square at 22+ cardinal. Tracy reminded me that Juan Revilla, a minor planet specialist from Costa Rica, proposes that squares to Varuna are associated with dogma, which in this case is square Eris. Eris for her part can describe isolated, outcast people, and describes what is in truth a state of mental fragmentation shared my many people in society; yet specific conditions can make it much worse.
She also writes, “Fundamentalist [Varuna in Cancer] religion square Eris, who specialises in exposing the idiocy of the ego & what it will fight for. It seems that this square describes the situation rather than is its trigger though, I don’t think of either of these objects being related to senseless tragedy & evil. But Nessus is exactly aspecting them, trine Mars at 22 Gemini, like Mars came along & triggered the whole configuration. It’s perhaps an example of how trines are ‘easy’ but not necessarily ‘nice’ as they’re often described – it depends what’s on the other end.”
I would agree with that: I have not seen Varuna or Eris specifically associated with evil, but Eris sometimes does show up in events where there is a disruption of some kind. This chart is composed of a large diversity of factors in an exact aspect structure (at 22+ degrees of many signs — just look at the chart above) we need to consider them all.
We have something here akin to the Sept. 11 chart, which was defined mainly by Mercury Square Saturn — that was the closest aspect that day, and Mercury was rising.
I think that one thing we have to ask ourselves every time something like this happens is, was this a false flag operation? That is to say, is someone being wrongly accused, for a motive that’s not being represented truthfully? I would say that this chart is not the chart for a false flag incident; the incident, the explanation being given, and the chart match up in a way that ‘makes sense’ to the extent something like this can make sense.