Note to Readers: We will be running a different article about 9/11 from the archives every day for the rest of the week. This one was originally published in the subscriber series in October 2001. If you’re interested in understanding 9/11 I would refer you to our special resource area dedicated to the subject. — efc
— David Byrne / Talking Heads
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Dear Friend and Reader:
Yesterday’s Libra New Moon quietly marked a threshold in world history, if you use astrology as a way of keeping track. We know that the 9th anniversary of the Sept. 11 incident was last month. Our culture is obsessed with anniversaries, but nature works on a little different schedule. Astrology points to its own moments of passage, and we happen to be at one right now. During the New Moon of Thursday, Oct. 7, the Sun and Moon were conjunct within two arc minutes — that is, 1/30th of a degree — to the ascendant of the chart for Sept. 11, 2001.
In the nine years since that incident, yesterday’s was the closest New Moon to the chart’s ascendant, and the only one occupying that degree, and it was close. My impression is that we have a rare moment of transparency around an event that shaped our lives, changed the world and, more significantly, reaffirmed something about human nature.
For those unfamiliar with the concept of the ascendant, it is also called the rising sign. In every chart there is a sign rising — that is, a section of sky, represented by a zodiac sign, rising above the Earth’s horizon in the east. In this case, Libra is the sign rising. There is also a degree rising, which is like the precise address of the chart and what it represents.
Every chart with an exact time has a rising degree, including your natal chart. It’s a good thing to know. On Sept 11, precisely when Flight 11 was flown into the North Tower, that degree was 14+ Libra — remarkable because Mercury was precisely rising at that moment. Mercury in the exact degree rising gave the chart emphasis, and an ominous quality, part of which was ‘this is an event with a message’. (Let’s refer to this as the North Tower chart.)
Libra is an astrological way of saying ‘good show’. The events of Sept. 11 were compelling, even convincing, and they riled up our desire for justice, a Libra quality. But Mercury is the trickster. Behind the elegant image of Libra were a series of layers that remind us that things aren’t always what they seem, and that appearances can deceive.
I consider the North Tower chart to be a world horoscope. The event was used to reshape geopolitics. Several wars were started as a result of the attacks, which have yet to end, and the concept of the ‘post 9-11 world’ was born. So in a sense we have one of the birth charts of the 21st century: what some had thought would be the New American Century. The conservative think tank by that name argued for the new rise of a dominant American military, in a plan that called for waging a multi-front war early in the century. But in September 2000, one year before Sept. 11, it said that “the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor.”