{"id":6507,"date":"2008-11-18T12:08:22","date_gmt":"2008-11-18T17:08:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=6507"},"modified":"2008-11-19T15:16:35","modified_gmt":"2008-11-19T20:16:35","slug":"30th-anniversary-of-the-jonestown-massacre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/daily-astrology\/30th-anniversary-of-the-jonestown-massacre\/","title":{"rendered":"30th Anniversary of the Jonestown Massacre"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

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

\"Aftermath<\/a>
Aftermath of the murders, which are often referred to as suicides. The vat containing the cyanide is visible in the foreground.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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<\/a><\/strong> in Georgetown, Guyana.<\/p>\n

Anyone who is old enough to even vaguely remember surely does; that edition of Time magazine<\/a><\/strong> 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).<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a><\/strong> and part two<\/a>).<\/strong> Let’s take a brief look at two charts associated with the event.<\/p>\n

The first is the Rev. Jim Jones<\/a><\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

In the chart for the event itself<\/a><\/strong>, 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36,31,594,593,602],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6507"}],"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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6507\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}