Post by Sowelu on Aug 10, 2007 0:24:27 GMT -5
Give Me Something Built To Last
Planet Waves
Astrology News
Dear Friend and Reader:
When that bridge collapsed in Minneapolis last week, it was more than a symbol of America's national infrastructure crumbling -- it was the real thing.
There were miracles (the school bus full of kids that didn't explode) and there are warnings (much of the infrastructure of the United States is the same age and construction type as the I-35 bridge), but it's fair to say that this event is part of something significantly larger.
As an astrologer, I notice this because the Galactic Core (along with Pluto) was exactly rising at the moment the bridge tumbled as gracefully as if it had been taken out by controlled demolition. Indeed, the last thing we saw float to the ground with such devastating grace was the World Trade Center, another event wherein Pluto factored prominently.
By rising, I don't just mean that Pluto and the GC are on the east side of the chart (the broadest technical definition) or occupying the sign rising (a commonly used definition). Rather, I mean that Pluto and the Galactic Core were focused to within one degree of the eastern horizon, a condition that exists for about five minutes a day. Remembering that Pluto is only conjunct the Galactic Core every 248 years, this chart is a little like throwing a dart from a moving train and hitting the bull's eye.
Sagittarius is involved, painting a global message in broad strokes, as this sign always does. The core, in Sagittarius, tends to work behind the scenes but have sweeping effects. For those unfamiliar with the concept, our Sun is part of a spiral in space containing a few hundred billion stars. At the center of this spiral is a cluster of stars, held together by a supermassive black hole and broadcasting radio and X-ray signals from several point sources within or near the core.
I've been watching the Galactic Core in charts for almost a decade, and I find it difficult to grasp -- so I would add that phrase to the top of the list of my delineations. I got a better idea working on the Spiral Door, contemplating the charts of people with the Sun in late Sagittarius, conjunct this point. [See article from Spiral Door.]
One of them was a guy named Robert Moses, a New Yorker who oversaw construction of much of that city's infrastructure from the 1930s through the mid-20th century, and whose ideas became a worldwide phenomenon. It was Moses who, as a public official and something of a speculator, created the suburban sprawl, freeway-based model of how Americans are supposed to live. He had help from petroleum, car and tire companies (light rail systems are not nearly as profitable as selling and maintaining billions of individual automobiles), but he was the high priest who gave the model much of its shape and his divine Sagittarian blessing.
"Although he never held elected office, Moses was arguably the most powerful person in New York City government from the 1930s to the 1950s," Wikipedia writes. "He changed shorelines, built roadways in the sky, and transformed neighborhoods forever. His decisions favoring highways over public transit helped create the modern suburbs of Long Island and influenced a generation of engineers, architects, and urban planners who spread his philosophies across the nation."
And it was one of those very freeways inspired by this vision that slipped out of existence last week, reminding us how things that seem so solid we don't even know we're walking on them can fall to the ground with no notice whatsoever.
Whether you like him and what he did or not, Robert Moses had one thing that we tend to lack: a vision. For the most part, the current version of the American Dream seems to include building a waterproof, debris-proof car that can withstand a collapse like this, rather than fixing the road, or building it well originally. In other words, the whole dream is hogged up on individual needs and a culture that pumps up the value of every man for himself. In this vision, anything that takes care of us, as in all of us, was thrown out with socialism and communism. This, is, stupid.
Pluto in Sagittarius, particularly conjunct the Galactic Core, is howling for a vision, an idea, a concept of what we need. This was the same astrology that led to the Enlightenment and to the development of the U.S. Constitution, with its protections of liberty and dignity.
It may be that the vision of which I'm speaking is brewing underneath our collective disillusionment, cynicism and self-interest and waiting to burst into public awareness, if anyone will give it the 15 minutes of world fame it deserves. Jupiter is the ruler of the rising sign (Sagittarius is rising, and Jupiter rules Sagittarius), and that planet is exactly occupying the cusp of the 11th and 12th houses. It's there -- but it's hidden, tucked into the end of the zodiac.
The Sun in the 8th house of radical transformation, legacy and shared resources is exactly trine Jupiter. Look at the degrees and minutes -- it is trine to a little over half a degree (called partile, or exact within one degree). Trines work like a door opening. Trines open up the flow of energy, and when that flow opens it can really open. Both planets are in fire signs, extremely well placed. This is not a chart about a bridge falling down -- it is about something else, something much more radical and promising.
We saw a trine this shocking in the Sept. 11 chart, also involving the ascendant: Mercury in Libra (exactly in the ascendant) was partile trine Saturn in Gemini. As we witnessed, that event opened the floodgates to a lot besides itself, a great deal more than was necessary and much that you were probably not quite expecting.
If nothing else, this chart tells us that we have, at least for now, the resources to do what we need to do and indeed what we want to do, if we will only allow ourselves to change and decide what that might be. Money without a clear vision is dangerous stuff: it usually goes to finance murder in one form or another. Once that starts to happen, we can end up just like we have, with a country that is gradually turning into something on a spiritual level resembling the Ninth Ward of New Orleans.
We have a little self-esteem problem, suggested by Chiron and Neptune in the 2nd house. The 2nd is the house of one's own resources, and how one feels about oneself. Chiron in this house is about a painful injury to how we feel about ourselves, and in Aquarius, that is a collective phenomenon. Who among your friends is willing to speak on behalf of the national shame that most people refuse to own, admit or even acknowledge the possibility of?
Neptune here is like the remnant of the American Dream, recently torn ragged by Saturn's opposition transit (Saturn opposite Neptune). The 2nd house is how we feel about ourselves, and how we feel is, at the moment, hurt and anaesthetized. But the injury inflicted by Chiron always works to raise awareness. What Chiron in Aquarius is searching for is a place where an individual can connect to the collective.
This is not possible, however, without an individual seeing and experiencing himself as such. If we wonder why people have such a hard time getting together, let's consider the possibility that what we really have is a crisis of individuality; once again we've come back to times where it's usually considered bad to stand out of the crowd. Chiron here is saying we don't really have a choice; we need to distinguish ourselves, or have it done for us by being cast out.
Looking at the Moon, we see a promising sign. She's in Pisces, making an exact conjunction to an asteroid (Pallas Athene). Pallas is about protection (the guardian of Athens), wisdom and most of all, having a strategy. Pallas Athene is nothing if not forward thinking and intelligent. She is conjunct her consort Uranus. I read Uranus as Prometheus; he and Athene did some good work together and are currently in a long conjunction. Uranus is the inventor, the revolutionary, the liberator. Both Uranus and Pallas Athene are retrograde, meaning the energy is contained, and being directed inwardly.
In Pisces and on the 3rd house cusp, we can feel that vision brewing, but we may not have words for it. Whatever that idea may be, and however it may elude language or clear concept, it goes a lot further than inspecting rivets and welds all across our great nation and hoping this doesn't happen again. We can also be sure that it's going to start locally: the 3rd house is always local, immediate and accessible. Our idea for a new world will invariably start with a vision for local community.
We are now in the peak of the Pluto-Galactic Core conjunction. This is the warm-up to, and transition into, the long anticipated and somewhat dreaded experience of Pluto in Capricorn. Pluto in Capricorn has, on the one hand, the feeling of Shiva the Destroyer. It is better to have a vision for what you want long before the thing you currently inhabit, in this case the structure of a society, meets its end. What we want is change, not finality, and the way we feed that is by allowing ourselves to be bold enough to imagine the world to come.
Take that personally, if you like: sooner or later, you're going to have to, and you may want to ask what exactly you're waiting for. Is it for the world to end, or for the world to begin? What if you're the one who gets to decide?
Yours & truly,
www.planetwaves.net/
