Dear Friend and Reader:
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ShakeMap of earthquake in China. |
Yesterday’s earthquake in China is the second of two recent events that qualify as Aries Point events. The first was the cyclone (known in our culture as a hurricane) that made landfall in Burma on May 2 and has, so far, killed an estimated 100,000 people.
Earlier in May, I explained how the May 5 New Moon was precisely on the cross-quarter — that is, at 15+ degrees of a fixed sign, in this case Taurus. I explained how this is 135 degrees (a sesquiquadrate aspect, which is a square plus a semi-square) to one of the cardinal points, which tends to magnify the news. In the past decade, all these events have the feeling of what used to be called Earth changes (this language originally came from Edgar Cayce and was adopted by the New Age in the 1980s). Two other memorable examples of Aries Point events are the Sept. 11 false flag attacks and the Asian tsunami of late 2004. Each has this sense that “something big is happening” and if you’re the type to use such language, “the end is near.”
The New Moon was square the centaur planet Nessus. A friend summed it up well when she wrote that Nessus “is associated with the dynamics of power and abuse, and in Aquarius is about those situations we are all collectively responsible for.” The concept of responsibility stands tall now: both tragedies are mired in politics, including American politics. We could do more; we cannot (for one example) offend China, from whom we borrow $2 billion a day.
Yesterday’s was a 7.9 magnitude earthquake, the worst in the region since 1976. For the record, 7.9 is not the same thing everywhere. I felt a 6.8 once and though this is significantly less, it felt like a Jell-o mold jiggling; the beer bottles didn’t fall of the shelf in the local tavern. If the waves hit a different way, you can level part of society.
This is the second major disaster since the Taurus New Moon. As Judith Gayle writes in our Political Waves feature about the cyclone in Burma or, officially, the Union of Myanmar:
Take the Myanmar tragedy, with the complications projected to take a million lives; relief is still being kept out generally, but the junta continues to vigorously export rice to Bangladesh and other points, while throwing their citizens the spoiled leftovers. The “election” went on as planned, even though 100,000 people are dead or unaccounted for and the country is in chaos.
I sincerely feel that astrology needs to get out of the business of predicting disasters — you won’t read that stuff here — but we do need to see the patterns for what they are and know what we are dealing with. So, an estimated 10,000 have died at one time in one day (it’s China, so you can quadruple it), and 10 to 100 times more in Myanmar. This is beyond comprehension — think of the families of all those people, the communities lost, the networks.
What is particularly sad regarding the event in China is the proximity to Tibet, one of the true points of historical grief on the planet at the moment. Associated Press reported that the earthquake occurred along a faultline “where South Asia pushes against the Eurasian land mass, smashing the Sichuan plain into mountains leading to the Tibetan highlands – near communities that held sometimes violent protests against Chinese rule in mid-March.”
Then consider how about 154,000 people a day leave the planet, every day. Consider how an estimated 24,000 of those people a day die of hunger, every day — many thousands of them children. Consider in light of the Sept. 11 false flag attacks, wherein 2,998 people died, and then the United States tore up Afghanistan and Iraq, and is apparently still planning an attack on Iran. To be clear, on Sept. 11, many more children died of starvation than New Yorkers perished in the event. And we don’t hear about them except on late night infomercials. We still hear about Sept. 11 in one form or another every time a politician opens his or hear mouth.Therefore, while it’s deeply tragic and truly beyond the sphere of an individual’s understanding to hear of these events, I suggest that what we need to be questioning is the death manufacturing industry. We are not impressed until these deaths happen all at once; it’s like we don’t notice the pain of the world otherwise.
And there is plenty of it now. And that, too, presents a paradox: awareness immediately leads to the awareness of the world’s pain. We have a lot of incentive not to pay attention. At least these events cause us to notice for a little while.
This being said, we have the question of how to respond. Is this rightly an excuse to stop living the adventure of our lives? Well, not if we really are doing that, and many of us know perfectly well that we are not. In which case, we can remind ourselves of the fleeting transience of existence as we perceive it, take a breath and resolve to live every day.
Tuesday 13 May 2008
Pallas (26+ Aries) trine Galactic Center (26+ Sagittarius)
Mercury (14+ Gemini) septile 1992 QB1 (22+ Aries)
Atlantis (14+ Libra Rx) sextile Great Attractor (14+ Sagittarius)
Mercury (14+ Gemini) quincunx Pandora (14+ Scorpio Rx)
Juno (27+ Sagittarius Rx) trine Orcus (27+ Leo)
Venus (15+ Taurus) sesquiquadrate Pluto (0+ Capricorn Rx)
Mercury (14+ Gemini) trine Nessus (14+ Aquarius)
Atlantis (14+ Libra Rx) sextile Ixion (14+ Sagittarius Rx)
Mars (2+ Leo) quintile Atlantis (14+ Libra Rx)
Venus (16+ Taurus) sesquiquadrate M87 (1+ Libra)
Eros (4+ Gemini) opposite Hylonome (4+ Sagittarius Rx)
Ceres (17+ Gemini) quincunx Psyche (17+ Scorpio Rx)
Psyche (17+ Scorpio Rx) trine Varuna (17+ Cancer)
Amor (6+ Taurus) quintile Neptune (24+ Aquarius)
Apollo (26+ Cancer) quincunx Galactic Center (26+ Sagittarius)
January 10, 2002 – Cancer – Weekly
Sitting here wondering just how to put into words such a beautiful new moon in your house of relationships two Grateful Dead songs come to mind both with the idea of rolling in their words: Let the Good Times Roll and Franklin’s Tower (roll away the dew). You can trust the flow of what is happening in your life. I know things got strange with people for a while there and it really shook your faith in the one attribute of this life you cherish the most. And we both know there can be no doubt that to open your heart involves risk. These days it’s a risk well worth taking.