Dear Friend and Reader,

Today Mercury is opposite Admetos in Taurus. It’s a very interesting relationship having to do with the mind (Mercury) and a Uranian Point called Admetos.

Photo by Danielle Voirin.

This aspect finds Mercury in Scorpio. Hickey describes this energy as being swift, sharp, and aware of weakness, knowing precisely where to strike. My other sources concur that say that Mercury in Scorpio is on an inexhaustable search for the truth, and delves into the heart of the matter on this quest. This is not the kind of Mercury given to letting things lie for the purposes of an illusion. Some famous people with Mercury in Scorpio include Pablo Picasso, John Lennon, and Deepak Chopra: with these men, the intense, delving, philosophical mind is highlighted. Simply put, Mercury in Scorpio is that FBI agent obsessed with finding the truth, nothing but the truth, so help you god if his eye falls upon you.

Trans-Neptunian Points, TNPs, or Uranian Points are not bodies in space, but rather sensitive points in the fabric of the Universe. If you were to jump into a rocket ship, and try to find Admetos, you wouldn’t be able to — it’s not there in the sense of something you can stab a flag into. Here at the Planet Waves bat cave, we prefer to call them Uranian Points to keep clear of any confusion between TNOs and TNPs. I will save the TNO talk to a time when there’s one being aspected, but to keep it clear, the TNPs (Trans-Neptunian Points) do not exist in the sense of a planet or a comet that can smash into a planet. They do not exist in the physical sense…but I digress.

The Uranian Points were first established by Alfred Witte, founder of the Hamburg School of Astrology. The purpose of Uranian astrology was different from that of more traditional methods of astrology, in that it is more precise compared to traditional astrology’s evocative tendencies.

Martha Lang-Wescott writes that Admetos is about “facing blockages…encountering delays…taking inventory…storage.” For a more detailed definition of Admetos from her website, click here. There are quite a few sites devoted to Uranian astrology interpretations. One of the better ones I’ve found is here at this site. Eileen Naumann, Uranian astrologer from the tripod site linked above, suggests that Admetos is about blockages, as well as sludge, seeds, the origins of problems, the beginnings of growth in a medical or earthy sense, as well as soul recovery and extraction.

Admetos is in Taurus today, further highlighting the earth-bound, bodily sense of this Point. I would suggest that this aspect has to do with searching for the heart of an ailment, or understanding in a holistic sense the problems and illnesses of the self and others. Scoprio-Mercury slices down to the heart of the matter on its quest for the truth, while Admetos presides over seeds and the beginnings of things. It seems to me that this is about the Truth and about Origin and our relationships to them.

The Moon is in Virgo today: adding emphasis to matters of health and maintenance.

Merry Met,

Genevieve

Editor’s Note: The following article was originally published in The Sun, but we felt the information was important enough to call to your attention. –Rachel Asher

It has now been confirmed that Hitler only had one testicle.

AN EXTRAORDINARY account from a German army medic has finally confirmed what the world long suspected: Hitler only had one ball.

War veteran Johan Jambor made the revelation to a priest in the 1960s, who wrote it down.

The priest’s document has now come to light – 23 years after Johan’s death.

The war tyrant’s medical condition has been mocked for years in a British song.

The lyrics are: “Hitler has only got one ball, the other is in the Albert Hall. His mother, the dirty b****r, cut it off when he was small.’

Until now there has never been complete proof Hitler was monorchic – the medical term for having one testicle.

But the document tells how Johan saw the proof with his own eyes. In the account, he relives the horror of serving as an army medic in World War I.

He died aged 94 in 1985, but had told his secret to priest Franciszek Pawlar, who kept a note of their conversation.

Continue Reading »

Dear Friend and Reader,

AFTER THE RANCOROUS presidential primary between Senators Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton for the nomination, one wonders why we’d be watching a Hil-and-Bill show once again as we ponder Obama’s possible appointment of Senator Clinton as Secretary of State?

Bill Clinton on the campaign trail, before the US presidential election. Photo by Don Heupel/AP.

Utilizing talent from previous administrations to staff a new one is nothing new. In fact, one would not want to approach the Office of the President with its myriad trap doors, secret deals and back-door diplomacy without at least a few people on the team who know where the bodies are buried. And I am certain that the Clintons and people from their administration know a few locations.

The Clintons learned about the need for having some “graybeards” on board the hard way when Bill Clinton first took office in 1993. Going in as a unified and experienced team can help move your agenda through the already rough terrain of a hostile opposition party or even a recalcitrant party-in-power.

Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book “Team of Rivals” on the Lincoln Cabinet is the current frame of reference on the forming of President-elect Barack Obama’s new cabinet. Looking at today’s events, Goodwin suggests picking Clinton would be similar to Lincoln’s choice of political rival William Seward for the same gig in 1861. “The parallel with Hilary is almost eerie,” Goodwin says.

Continue Reading »

Dear Friend and Reader,

Today finds us in the midst of a trine between Eros and Uranus. Both of these deities in myth are said to be primordial: Eros is one of the fundamental building blocks of existence, and Uranus is the starry sky, who conceived the gods with Gaia, thus giving them form.

Photo by Danielle Voirin.

Kim Falconer of falconstrology.com relays a tale told by Aristophanes of Eros coming into being from a germless egg layed by Night (or Nyx). After a long time, Eros sprang from this egg and mated with Chaos in the depths of Tartarus, thus bringing the immortal Olympians into existence.

Another myth claims the goddess of rainbows and the god of the north wind are the parents of Eros. Still another traces the heritage to Uranus and Gaia, or Artemis and Hermes. Falconer writes:

“The mixed parenthood of Eros, as well as his transforming images, (some versions of [the] myth have him assisting Aphrodite at her birth and in others he is her offspring), may illustrates ongoing changes in the collective awareness of the concept of love and creativity.  As the son of chaos, he has no tangible form.  He is the power of attraction that co-ordinates the elements of the universe bringing harmony to all creation.  In this image, Eros is more a cosmic force than an actual god of passionate or personal love.”

For an excellent article regarding the myths involving Eros, including his origins and an impressive list of sources, please visit the above link. It’s a really interesting read.

Falconer also suggests that throughout the metamorphoses of Eros, one thing remains the same: it is his fundamental power to make things mingle. Without his assistance, there would be no striving and no interactions. This, in my opinion, puts him in close relation to Mars.

So here we have the god of elemental attraction and co-mingling in a trine with Uranus, also attributed with the formation of the gods. According to Wikipedia, Uranus is attributed as being lord of the night sky and of the stars. He was the first god in a long pattern of cannibal infanticide, ending with the young god Saturn castrating him with a scythe and tossing his balls into the sea.

Continue Reading »

Here are two videos that give you a sense of what happened in Jonestown. The first appears to be a movie trailer. The second is footage from the History Channel set to the music of Blue Oyster Cult.

Dear Friend and Reader:

Aftermath of the murders, which are often referred to as suicides. The vat containing the cyanide is visible in the foreground.

AS YOU MAY be hearing from places like NPR — or any news media that has a memory longer than three days — today is the 30th anniversary of the Jonestown massacre in Georgetown, Guyana.

Anyone who is old enough to even vaguely remember surely does; that edition of Time magazine was unforgettable; I was 14 at the time and kept my copy for many years. Its page after page of stark, bright photos and blunt reporting may have influenced my choice to be a journalist. The link takes you to the cover, which in turn links to the original article. Jonestown is the source of cultural references to “drinking the Kool-Aid” (or purple Kool-Aid it may have actually been a similar product called Flavor Aid, or a mix of the two, laced with what was believed at the time to be cyanide; I am now hearing that there is some contention over this).

In any event, 918 people ended up dead, including more than 200 kids, a United States congressman named Leo Ryan, his party and a number of defectors from the cult. The adults were coerced into killing themselves, told that men would parachute in from the sky and torture them if they did not. The kids were killed by the adults; syringes were used to squirt the sweet poison into their mouths.

Formally called the People’s Temple Agricultural Project, the group transplanted from San Francisco to Guyana. Here are two parts of a congressional chronology and background summary on the incident (part one and part two). Let’s take a brief look at two charts associated with the event.

The first is the Rev. Jim Jones himself. His chart is dominated by Aries and Taurus; his conjunction of Venus and Uranus in Aries, along with the Moon, pretty much qualify him as a certified narcisist. Not that we needed astrology to tell us that. We might ask what about his chart says “cult leader” — and two things come to mind.

The first is Jupiter conjunct Pluto in the 7th house, in Cancer. Pluto focuses that religous aspect of Jupiter and tells us of someone who really does have spiritual understanding, but because it’s in his 7th house, he tends to project it onto externals (he claimed to be an atheist, a Marxist, a socialist) and eventually became a selfist, naming a “town” after himself and loading it up with money, guns and cyanide.

He also has a Sun-Chiron conjunction. Chiron was not discovered at the time of his birth, but it was discovered at the time of his death, just one year earlier; in his own birth sign and Chiron sign. Notably, Jones has Mercury precisely in the degree where Chiron was discovered just one year earlier (the “rainbow bridge” degree for which Barbara Hand Clow named her book). Sun-Chiron tells us how we express the energy of the healer; this placement gives rise to the wounded healer attribute of Chiron that is so famously characterized as its only meaning. It’s just an aspect of that meaning, though it comes out at times in very brash ways; this was one.

In the chart for the event itself, the Moon is in Cancer; a touch of cosmic irony. We have Chiron, newly discovered in Taurus and close to Jones’ Sun-Chiron conjunction. But the thing about this chart, the central image, occurs in the 8th house, in Sagittarius: a nexus of religion and death. Sometimes the symbolism of a chart is so glaring it would seem you don’t need any astrology training to see it.

That’s not really true, but it’s easy enough to explain. Whenever there is a death, you look to the 8th house of the chart for the story of what happened. Certainly Sagittarius on that cusp fits; it was a religious cult. Three planets are there: Mars, Neptune and Mercury. Mars and Neptune can combine in extremely volatile ways. The theme of isms — belief systems — is spray painted everywhere in this chart, and they are basically all revealed to be lies by the combination of three planets involved; Mercury, Mars and Neptune.

Of course there is no true belief system that would lead you to have 918 people dead and bloating in the jungle Sun; no true belief system that would lead people to squirt poison into the mouths of more than 200 kids; or anything of the kind. The teachers of Jesus Christ, which the Rev. Jones claimed to be, don’t do that. Remember.

Dear Friend and Reader,

On November 18, 1978, 913 people lost their lives in Jonestown, Guyana in a community set up by an evangelistic religious leader by the name of Jim Jones. It was originally reported as a mass suicide under Jones’ direction, but I have lost a few nights of sleep after watching MSNBC’s special “Witness: To Jonestown” and doing some research which has led me to the conclusion that it was not a mass suicide at all.

People’s Temple members in Guyana, standing with Jim Jones (seen here with sunglasses on). The Jim Jones massacre occurred 30 years ago today.

Today is the 30th anniversary of The Jonestown Massacre, an event that is barely conceivable to me and to most of us who see the painful images taken on that day of all those bodies spread out like a quilt in the jungles of Guyana. The name Jim Jones is an urban legend among my generation, and it evokes a feeling of darkness and death. For some reason, I’ve really never bothered to look into what happened. I think the pictures said enough for me.

Now, as I’ve filled my head with the facts and the conspiracy theories that surround the event, I still come back to my original question which was not so much what happened, but how and why something like this could happen. I am fascinated by what motivates groups of people to participate in one common goal. How can an entire group consciousness be directed in such an awesomely evil and violent way?

The Jonestown Massacre stands out in a few ways for me. One is that unlike Nazis or slave-traders, who were doing something really obviously evil, Jim Jones was a comrade to many. I sat down with my Grandmother last night and learned that she had corresponded with him many times as a result of her political activism in the Bay Area during the 60s and early 70s. He was very critical of America’s treatment of Black people, poor people and the disenfranchised. He disapproved of capitalism, racism and classicism.

The apparent intent of setting up shop in Guyana was to have a Socialist community where everyone participated equally and was provided for and given all of the things that many of them were unable to afford in America, i.e. medical care, shelter, a job. But what has really blown my mind is finding out that he was more than just a powerful personality and one of those people who can charm honey out of a bee: he was politically astute, socially aware, racially blind and a kind, generous man. There seems to be this common association with the term “cult” that pre-defines the members as somehow “weak” or “psychologically deficient” in some ways. This is just not the case with the members of the People’s Temple.

Continue Reading »

Dear Friend and Reader,

Today Venus slides into a semi-square with Neptune and shares a sextile with Deucalion. A semi-square is a term that comes from the Uranian Astrological tradition. A semi-square is a square, plus half a square which translates mathematically to 135 degrees in a chart. It can be described as a not-so-tense version of a square.

Because of this, planets that share this relationship bring a faint awareness of one another to the table. Put in normal terms, I would suggest that this aspect is about the power of love, or using love and attraction as a means of intoxication. Seduction comes to mind with this aspect, though it is not the right-out-in-the-open kind that a person can guess at from a mile away.

Photo by Danielle Voirin.

Venus is also in a sextile with Deucalion today, which gives me the pleasure of discussing the myth of Deucalion in as brief a way as I can. Deucalion was a son of Prometheus and the Greek equivalent of the biblical Noah. When Zues got tired of mankind’s hubristic tendencies, he flooded the world in an attempt to drown everyone alive. Deucalion’s father Prometheus warned him and gave him instructions for an ark. After the deluge, Deucalion and his wife stood on top of a mountain, totally at a loss of what to do next. Then a riddle came to them: “Throw the bones of your mother over your shoulder.” This they did, and from those stones came the new race of humans into the world.

Back in 2005, Eric wrote a piece delineating possible meanings for Deucalion. Feelings of being overwhelmed, or conscious of the burden of humanity are two ways of looking at Deucalion. I don’t really know what it means, personally. But I find it interesting that in the myth Deucalion is instructed to throw his mother’s bones over his shoulders. “Throwing the bones” is a term used to describe rituals involving the Norse runes. I am a student of the runes, and so this statement stuck out to me.

Also, some interesting observations can be drawn about Deucalion by looking at the Hurricane Katrina chart of 2007. For example, on that day, Deucalion was conjoined with Hebe when Katrina made landfall. President Bush did not get to survey the damage left by the storm for three days because he was hangin’ at the ranch. Hebe is looked at as a significator of co-dependency.

In other news, the Moon will be opposite to Pluto tomorrow. We’ll be discussing the energy of that on Wednesday.

Merry Met,

Genevieve

Editor’s Note: On Saturday, Nov. 15, an international protest was held against Proposition 8, the ballot vote that threatens to overturn gay marriage in California. Here are some videos from across the United States, and the world. They’re only a random selection — many more can be found on YouTube. –RA

Continue Reading »