The Ring of Fire and the Wake of the Flood

Easter Island and the Annular Eclipse Conjunct Makemake

Dear Friend and Reader:

Events surrounding Wednesday’s “ring of fire” annular solar eclipse in Libra have been troubling. Eclipses have two main properties, which might seem to conflict. One is they represent a shift in the storyline, or of the historical process. The other is that conditions at the time of an eclipse can be preserved as a new status quo.

They also tend to stir up fear. I’m concerned about the level of anxiety that is crackling through the population. People are doing their best to put on a happy face, but anyone can smell the worry. Many are looking for more ‘news’ to confirm that they should be very afraid.

Then there are the people who claim to be happy that what we’re hearing about or witnessing proves that we are living at “the end of times.”

It may seem true enough, though this idea has been percolating as a modern concept for hundreds of years. Much early immigration to the New World from Europe was by people who wanted to be somewhere better for “The End.” I suspect that many people have no idea how seriously this notion of “The End” is taken by many of their neighbors — or their representatives in Congress. But it’s always struck me as a cop-out for not dealing with one’s problems, much less those of society.

The ‘News’ Has Been Disturbing

Among the events at the time of the eclipse include the development of full-scale war between Israel and its neighbors. Iran is now involved, along with Lebanon, Yemen, Gaza and the West Bank of the Palestinian Authority. What we are seeing today has been going on nearly nonstop through the whole history of Israel.

At press time, Israel was bombing Beirut, and the world is waiting for its response against Tehran for the rockets launched at it earlier this week. The U.S. is preparing to get involved. The subtext here, of course, is about whether this will lead to nuclear war.

This all follows the revelation last month that electronic devices such as phones and tablets were deployed as bombs — a tactic that immediately drew Iran into the crisis.

Hurricane Helene arrived on the Florida coast with 175 deaths in six states, destroying roads, bridges and other infrastructure, plus homes and businesses. The governors of Florida, Georgia, Alabama, the Carolinas and Virginia all declared emergencies in their states, according to press reports.

Once again “the greatest nation on Earth” was not prepared for an emergency — and the “greatest military” has not been ordered to respond. Many people think climate change (the Frank Luntz friendlier rewrite of ‘global warming’) is a hoax, but the climate is actually changing.

The Felon, the Prosecutor and the Denial Trip

In the presidential race, a convicted felon is running against a wonky former prosecutor nobody ever heard of five years ago. Yet in the din of society, the whole election ritual is barely noticeable.

Politics has always been weird, but it’s now more insane than ever. From the “right,” there are open threats of banning no-fault divorce and abortion. From the “left,” we have the ongoing indoctrination, in schools, that boys are worthless and that all are potential rapists.

I would add that society is on a denial trip pretending that we’re not living in the ruins of the country and the world that we were before the “covid” shutdowns, lockdowns and mass migration of everyone and everything toward the internet. Grocery prices are up to 30% higher than before the lockdown crisis; wages are not.

Currently the governments of the world and the WHO are selling six or so different nonexistent “pandemics,” from monkeypox to polio ebola to equine encephalitis (the latter being an alleged official emergency where I live in New York). If you still think you can “catch covid,” please read at least the introduction to my chronology.

A Concentration of Events and the Feeling of Fate

What we’re seeing matches with my basic list of properties of an eclipse: a concentration of events and the feeling (not necessarily) the reality that those events are somehow fated.

But what I don’t hear is people saying they want something different, and asking how that might be possible. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “All experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”

So what exactly is insufferable? We all pay at least 10 different taxes, starting with a large chunk of our income taken off the top, and then the money is shipped abroad in the form of U.S.-sponsored warfare: countless trillions of dollars to buy weapons that only have one purpose and one result.

Flying Air Force One Costs $3,000 Per Minute

Today the president will be flying around in a giant 747 called Air Force One (flight time at a cost of $3,000 per minute, or $178,000 per hour) allegedly to console hurricane survivors. What exactly is their government doing for them?

Other people in other countries have similar concerns. But it seems like our forms of government are intractable; they cannot be revoked or changed. That is the actual definition of tyranny: elections don’t matter.

I’m more concerned about whether people’s values and attitudes are intractable. What worries me is the seeming addiction to anxiety that so many people have, which they feed by imbibing constant reports of disaster. I am concerned that total immersion in digital makes it difficult to notice how you feel, or think your feelings matter.

I’m concerned that people struggle to make the most basic changes to their life patterns. I’m concerned that in the world of labor-saving devices, people have never had less time or attention span for one another. I am concerned that there is nothing left for people to be optimistic about.

I’m concerned that everyone feels so stretched and like they have nothing to give, and no time for anything, when under any potential solution scenario, we are all going to need to give a lot.

About Easter Island or Rapa Nui

There was something truly unusual about Wednesday’s solar eclipse. First, it was an annular eclipse, not a partial as I said a couple of times. An annular is a total eclipse but the Moon is at apogee, so it appears smaller and is not big enough relative to Earth to cover the disk of the Sun. (The little crescent cross to the left of the Moon, called Black Moon Lilith, describes the part about the apogee.)

The eclipse was conjunct two minor planets. They are written just above the Moon. One was Astraea, an asteroid about what intervenes in the serving of justice. At the moment there is certainly plenty, including the lack of any notion of what justice might be.

Then there is Makemake. This is a large planet discovered in 2005 (in the same group as Eris) that orbits our Sun in 306 years. It’s a little further back from the Sun than is Pluto. (For those following this branch of science, it’s technically a classical Kuiper object or cubewano.) While Makemake has many important properties from an astronomical standpoint, I find it confounding astrologically, and I don’t mention about it much.

The name ‘Makemake’ is associated with a later-era creator god of Rapa Nui, or Easter Island. One of the remotest places on Earth, this is the island known for the giant statues of the ancestors made famous by the book Kon Tiki. This god is from the “bird-man cult,” which came later than the cult that created the statues of the ancestors (most of which were toppled, and then had to be restored to their positions).

The Eclipse was Conjunct Makemake and Visible from Rapa Nui

As I mentioned, despite knowing about it for about 19 years, I have not been able to get a working delineation of Makemake. But we have a proving moment right now. Wednesday’s annular eclipse had an extremely narrow band of visibility. You basically had to be right under it to see it. And one of the places it was visible from was Rapa Nui, home of Makrmake himself.

Did any astronomer make this connection? I only know about it because we have a little branch of Planet Waves in Finland, organized by Kirsti Melto, who has written the Sphinx blog for about 20 years. That’s pretty obscure.

Rapa Nui is a place almost like Galapagos, but it’s been inhabited for a while. While we know something about it, though everything is shrouded in mystery, rumor of war and environmental devastation. And how did South Pacific islanders in loin cloths and grass skirts create and transport monuments weighing 85 tons?

I think the question of Rapa Nui is the same question that future civilizations will be asking about our own: what really happened there?

With love,