{"id":37195,"date":"2011-04-20T08:27:22","date_gmt":"2011-04-20T13:27:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=37195"},"modified":"2011-05-17T09:57:32","modified_gmt":"2011-05-17T14:57:32","slug":"tales-from-topographic-oceans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/daily-astrology\/tales-from-topographic-oceans\/","title":{"rendered":"Tales from Topographic Oceans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Note to Readers: <\/strong>Today we are offering a retrospective of our coverage of the BP oil spill that began one year ago today. The rig blowout happened within hours of Chiron first entering Pisces on April 20.<\/em><\/p>\n

At the time, this news was so agonizing that few of us could imagine things could or would get worse. Now, with several nuclear reactors damaged and spilling radioactive steam and water into the environment, we do indeed have a worse global situation on our hands. Yet today, we peons out here in the public don’t have a clue the real extent of the damage.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

By some estimates, BP was allowed to intentionally dump nearly as much Corexit dispersant into the ocean, as there was oil that leaked. The contents of that chemical, millions of pounds of which were dumped into one of the world’s most exploited fishing areas, are not known to the public. And one year on, the regulations for blowout preventers are no better than they were that day.<\/em><\/p>\n

New deepwater drilling permits are being issued allowing use of the same technology that caused the BP blowout and spill on April 20, 2010. This article was published May 7, 2010. Here is a link to the original presentation<\/a>. –efc <\/em><\/p>\n

\u25ca
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

What happened to wonders we once knew so well?
\nDid we forget what happened, surely we can tell.
\n<\/em>— Jon Anderson, Yes<\/p>\n

Dear Friend and Reader:<\/p>\n

It’s ominous to me that the explosion aboard the BP\/Transocean\/Mitsubishi oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico happened within hours of Chiron entering Pisces on April 20. Chiron, a planet that has a knack for revealing the weakness in a system, ingressed Pisces at about 1:31 am CDT; by 10 PM the oil rig was in flames and 210,000 gallons a day of crude was leaking into the gulf. A survivor said in an interview<\/strong><\/a> that the workers had about five minutes to evacuate.<\/p>\n

Two days later the burning rig sank, taking 700,000 gallons of diesel fuel with it, leaving a snarled tangle of metal over the wellhead on the sea floor a mile down. All work that happens from this point on will be done by robotic submarines, working in the dark, in the midst of a gushing flow of crude oil.<\/p>\n

Many frightening questions remain unanswered, and many are not being asked by the cosmetic journalism that is covering this story, or rather covering it up: for example, how much oil can we dump into one ocean and not threaten life in the rest of them? How little does it take to disrupt the ecosystems of the Earth and make our one and only planet unsuitable for life?<\/p>\n

As Jonathan Schell said in The Fate of the Earth<\/em>, we don’t have another planet to experiment on, so we don’t want to take too many chances. But we are taking many. I never thought I would be writing an obituary for the Gulf of Mexico. With this event, the world as we know it has changed irrevocably. It is on the level of an undersea Chernobyl — the 24th anniversary of which passed on April 27, as this event was in its early days. The impact of that event, too, has been grossly minimized: a new book has come out<\/strong><\/a> presenting evidence that the death toll was not 4,000 but closer to one million. The ‘story of the environment’ — any story, and all of them added up — looks one way when it’s told by industry or government, and another way when it’s looked at honestly.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, if anybody knows how the explosion, which likely involved natural gas found in oil wells, actually happened, nobody is saying. There is speculation that it was an accident, that it was terrorism or that it was sabotage. It may have been the result of shoddy work by Halliburton and I read one report that said BP understated the depth of the well, therefore misrepresenting the pressures that would be involved. What we do know was that Halliburton was in the process of capping the well around the time the incident occurred; that has become a discussion point. What does the astrology say about all of this? In the second half of this article, I will look at the chart for the incident.<\/p>\n

Drilling for Oil in a Mine Field
\n<\/strong>
\nFirst I have news: a Planet Waves investigation has revealed that the entire vicinity of the explosion was a widespread debris field for unexploded ordnance that was dumped as ships were returning to port from various wars. Some 31 million pounds of unexploded ordnance was dumped into oceans and seas, much of it near United States coastlines — with many such areas in the Gulf of Mexico. While some are indicated on maps, many are not — and things under open water tend to drift over the years and decades.<\/p>\n

\"The
The issue of unexploded ordnance doesn't affect only the Gulf of Mexico -- it is a worldwide problem. Here is a photo of a possible G-Series WWII German ground mine resting in 157 feet of water, adjacent to a pipeline in the North Sea. Photo from Samuel-Herbert PDF.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The U.S. Government’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) warned oil companies who leased blocks of land about the hazard, in one document saying, “The U.S. Air Force has released an indeterminable amount of unexploded ordnance throughout Eglin Water Test Areas. The exact location of the unexploded ordnance is unknown, and lessees are advised that all lease blocks included in this sale within these water test areas should be considered potentially hazardous to drilling and platform and pipeline placement.”<\/p>\n

The issue was the subject of at least one discussion at an oil industry Offshore Technology Conference held three years ago last week. Lynn Samuel and John Herbert presented a talk on imaging systems that are used to identify where the unexploded bombs and torpedoes are located. In their paper, they wrote<\/strong><\/a>, “Two of the latest directives from the Minerals Management Service indicate a growing concern about Unexploded Ordnance (UXO) located in close proximity to deepwater exploration and development sites within the Gulf of Mexico.”<\/p>\n

The authors explain the history: “From 1946 through 1970, military ordnance was dumped in the Gulf of Mexico by the U.S. armed forces, and it was the primary disposal site for the excess munitions originating from a number of large ordnance houses in the Southeastern United States. That ordnance included, but was not limited to, projectiles, bombs and chemical ordnance.<\/p>\n

“As [the oil] industry continues to progress into deeper and deeper water, it will continue to encounter the world’s munitions dumping grounds, charted and uncharted. Because records were poorly kept and navigation was not as precise as it is today, ordnance has and will be encountered outside known munitions dumping grounds. Many of these munitions may be either armed or in such an unstable condition that a minor influence could detonate them.” Notably, the authors say that dumping was banned in the mid-Sixties, but it continued for six more years until 1970. The implication is that those old bombs could be anywhere, because after the ban it’s unlikely that any rules were followed, or that any records were kept.<\/p>\n

\"Stacked
Stacked WWII 1,000-pound bombs. They came in 250, 500 and 1,000 pound sizes. Many excess bombs were dumped overboard from ships returning to port, in all more than 31 million pounds of them.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Just in case you’re wondering how I figured this out, it started over the weekend, when I was looking for the location of the oil drilling platform that burned down. I didn’t want to use a shore point for the coordinates. So I started looking around the Internet and came up with a map published by a government agency called NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), which was published in Wikipedia. This map specifically mentions ordnance dumping grounds. I re-published the document<\/strong><\/a> to Planet Waves, referencing the underwater bomb dump sites. Meanwhile, Tracy Delaney, my collaborator in Wales, came up with the coordinates from documents associated with the government lease of the oil field to BP, and with the location confirmed, we had a good chart.<\/p>\n

A few days later, Planet Waves editor Carol van Strum was reading our main blog [Daily Astrology & Adventure], found the map and my mention of the explosives, and went ballistic. Carol has a knack for locating obscure government and corporate documents, and started to turn up the gems I’ve quoted above. As of Thursday, no other media have picked up the story: BP was digging for oil in the middle of a mine field. Madame Arcati, whose blog is read furiously by the U.K. tabloids and U.S. media folk, posted a link to the story. One of our readers re-posted it to a Daily Show<\/em> discussion forum. But so far nobody has called or emailed.<\/p>\n

This does not solve the current problem, of course. And it is a very, very serious problem. We are not being told the extent of the issue; the situation is unprecedented. Nobody knows how much oil is down there, surfacing at the rate of at least a million gallons every five days (If the current estimates are honest, that’s one Exxon<\/em> Valdez<\/em> worth every six weeks, till it is stopped). There are numerous wildlife sanctuaries in the area, put in place in the day of Teddy Roosevelt. Yet if unchecked, this spill could far exceed the relative containment of the Gulf of Mexico. We are in hurricane season, which could frustrate cleanup efforts and make all those pathetic little yellow oil booms more pointless than they are now. The sad truth is, once the oil is in the water, it’s in the water. Estimates of how much motor oil can contaminate a million gallons of sea water are as low as one quart<\/em> — per million<\/em> gallons of water. So with a million gallons of oil going into the gulf every five days, how long before the entire thing is contaminated? In truth it may already be.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Gold Man was at it again. It was widely reported yesterday that Fabio Tourre of Goldman Sachs, whose face we saw last week, bet on such a disaster — the spirit of enterprise here in the land of 2012. “One oil rig goes down and we’re going to be rolling in dough,” Mr. Tourre wrote in one email<\/strong><\/a>. “Suck it, fishies and birdies!” This sums up America’s attitude succinctly: the environment is always put second to money and jobs; the two are always pitted against one another. I watched Thursday’s impressive Mercury retrograde stock market roller coaster all afternoon on CNBC, and there was not one mention of the oil spill.<\/p>\n

Atlantis, Sphinx, Arachne: Can We Handle Our Technology?
\n<\/strong>
\nNow, what would the chart for such a thing look like? Well, here it is. I am not finding this to be a particularly easy chart to interpret, in this form; so I will describe the main features, and then move onto a level where things seem a little more obvious. The chart has Sagittarius rising, suggesting a global event. The Moon is in Cancer in the 8th house of a life or death crisis. Cancer is the sign of home; which is eco — ecology<\/em> and economy<\/em> are studies of home. The Moon’s last aspect, involving what I will call a ‘major point’, was a simultaneous square to Eris and trine to Jupiter — big chaos. The presence of Eris is disturbing, suggesting subterfuge and an agenda — particularly in a square aspect. The exact trine to Jupiter is like a big flow of energy, or in this case, oil (which is a form of energy).<\/p>\n

\"Chart
Chart for BP rig explosion on April 20, 2010. Note, I just revised this chart from the one I originally published, to apply the day\/night rule for the Part of Fortune, which puts it on the MC -- the corporate and government angle. This raises the question: how do these entities benefit from the events represented by the chart?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Moon is in the 8th house and it rules the 8th house — death, crisis, and the resources of others. The South Node is there, suggesting an old story of the abuse of power.<\/p>\n

Capricorn is on the 2nd house cusp (money, wealth, resources). There is currently a long conjunction in Capricorn: Ceres conjunct Pluto. These planets are about one degree from one another and will be conjunct all year. Retrograde in Capricorn, they suggest a cheap and miserly quality, lending credence to how the shoddy work of Halliburton may have contributed. There is the suggestion here of the exploitation of the Earth’s resources: Earth being Ceres and Capricorn, and exploitation being Pluto.<\/p>\n

On the midheaven of the chart — the corporate and government angle — \u00a0we have Virgo. Virgo points us to Mercury, which is retrograde in Taurus (this is because Mercury rules Virgo, so the two are connected). The retrograde suggests many possibilities, none of them honest.<\/p>\n

Now let’s look at some minor planets. This situation reeks of an asteroid called Atlantis. The modern mythology of Atlantis is a technologically advanced situation that lacked the ethical capacity to handle its own technology. The “lost continent” of Atlantis is an old theme. It’s first mentioned in the dialogs of Plato<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

In its modern form, the society that self-destructs is a mirror of our own. There is a reference to this in Conversations with God<\/em> by Neale Donald Walsch. Whoever you think ‘God’ may be in this conversation, the description is precisely what I think of when I consider the Atlantis factor. It’s about ethics, on the one hand, and becoming the products of our technology, on the other. [Note, I used this quote a couple of years ago in The Atlantis Factor<\/strong><\/a>.]<\/p>\n

“As I have said, this isn’t the first time your civilization has been at this brink,” God says. “I want to repeat this, because it is vital that you hear this. Once before on your planet, the technology you developed was far greater than your ability to use it responsibly. You are approaching the same point in human history again. It is vitally important that you understand this. Your present technology is threatening to outstrip your ability to use it wisely. Your society is on the verge of becoming a product of your technology rather than your technology being a product of your society. When a society becomes a product of its own technology, it destroys itself.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Kronos<\/td>\n4 Cancer 25′<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Ceres<\/td>\n4 Capricorn 27<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Pluto-Charon Rx<\/td>\n5 Capricorn 22<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Nemesis<\/td>\n5 Cancer 37′<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Pelion<\/td>\n7 Aries 12′<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Arachne<\/td>\n7 Aries 32′<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Sphinx<\/td>\n8 Cancer 19′<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Atlantis<\/td>\n8 Cancer 24′<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Industria<\/td>\n8 Aries 37′<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Karma<\/td>\n9 Capricorn 14′<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Niobe<\/td>\n9 Cancer 34′<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Now let’s cast Atlantis into the chart. I found the position using the ephemeris at Serennu.com<\/a><\/strong>. I sorted so that it would arrange the planets in a 90-degree configuration: that is to say, it would find Atlantis, and anything nearby making a conjunction, square or opposition. These are the points most likely to be working together with Atlantis. Here is what the sort looks like. Note that the degrees of all of these minor planets are aligned with what I am calling the 2012 alignment — the cardinal T-square — that stretches from right about now through well past 2012. This alignment will be standing in the early cardinal signs like a some UXO submerged beneath the sea floor.<\/p>\n

Atlantis appears in a conjunction: with the asteroid Sphinx. Both are in Cancer, a water sign. So we have the issue of technology connected with the asteroid Sphinx — a kind of eternal mystery. Sphinx is something that we’re unlikely to get to the bottom of, or that is so old the truth is lost. The Great Sphinx in Egypt is much older than we are being told — there is water damage and there are repairs dating from the Old Kingdom, when the thing was supposedly brand new.<\/p>\n

Arachne is making a very close square to this conjunction; that is about a story that’s woven. Anything aspecting Arachne can be associated with a conspiracy or web of intrigue. For example, if you have Venus conjunct Arachne in your natal chart, your love affairs may all have plots like a spy thriller. So we have that feeling here. Arachne is in a conjunction with Industria, which stands in for all things of an industrial nature, and we are clearly in that territory. The third planet in the conjunction is Pelion, a centaur (named for a mountain) about aspiration and also about the land itself; the land is the scene of the industrial conspiracy. And Atlantis\/Arachne\/Pelion is opposed by the asteroid Karma. Do we need to know more?<\/p>\n

There are a few other bits. The Ceres-Pluto conjunction is right there; as is asteroid Nemesis, whose name says enough for our purposes. Finally, we have Niobe. That’s the story about being so proud of your creations that you forget everything else.<\/p>\n

So, we have some hints of terrorism or sabotage in this chart. We have hints of a miserly approach to business, which is about greed and a profit motive. We have a good bit of hubris. And we have the karma of the industrialized world showing up, along with our agonizing failure to have the ethics and morality to handle our technology without destroying our planet. In 2006, BP moved about $265 billion worth of product, making a profit of about $22 billion. But I ask: what exactly makes the oil under the surface of the Earth private property? Why isn’t it the property of the people of the planet? How did a profit motive get involved? These and other questions — many others — are the ones we need to be asking now.<\/p>\n

Yours & truly,
\n\"Eric<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Note to Readers: Today we are offering a retrospective of our coverage of the BP oil spill that began one year ago today. The rig blowout happened within hours of Chiron first entering Pisces on April 20. At the time, this news was so agonizing that few of us could imagine things could or would … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37195"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}