Astrology of Disaster

PlanetWavesBy ERIC FRANCISParis, Friday, Sept. 2, 2005

Katrina, the Awakener

ONE IMAGE keeps haunting me from this week's journalism, spun by William Rivers Pitt at truthout.org -- that of presidential advisor Karl Rove standing on the roof of the White House in a magician's hat and cape, with a big staff, conjuring Hurricane Katrina. Given the witch-hunt against climate change scientists reported in The Guardian earlier this week, that may not be far from the truth (links below, in blue). On its face, this storm happened at a brilliantly convenient time for world managers who thrive on chaos and distraction, right in the midst of the first meaningful protests against the catastrophic Iraq war gaining momentum -- and with George Bush's approval ratings lower than any president since Nixon at the height of Watergate.

If you recall, moments before Katrina arrived, we were in a reflective, concerned moment as the situation in Iraq descended into worse condition than even staunch pessimists predicted.The US military death toll is near 2,000, and the number of journalists killed in the 30-month conflict has exceeded that of two decades in Vietnam. New, uncontrolled violence takes more Iraqi lives by the day, and sometimes by the hour.

Public attention has now been swayed to a domestic emergency the like of which we have not seen since Sept. 11, 2001. But New Orleans makes what happened four years ago in New York City seem rather dim by comparison, in terms of the number of lives devastated, loss of life, and the destruction of homes. An entire major city has been taken out, not 16 acres of one and the surrounding buildings. The difference now is, there's no one to blame, no emotions of hatred and enmity of some alien outsider to whip up and use to dial in the team spirit -- and the disaster happened to a poor, predominantly black city instead of at the heart of the world's financial and banking operations. Deprived of our prerogative to get revenge, we may actually have to pay attention.

News channels are reporting a state of urban warfare, and troops have consent to shoot and kill American citizens. Police officers are turning in their badges. Scanning the news reports reveals that people are still trapped in the city, on rooftops and in high-rises, and thousands are starving. The condition is deteriorating to the point where vigilante sniper fire at recovery personnel has been reported. Is this even vaguely possible? Who, stranded in their own city, would shoot at rescue workers just for the hell of it? There is no drinking water. Bodies are everywhere. Widespread disease will be inevitable. Tens of thousands of refugees are still left behind at the Superdome and the Convention Center as people die before the eyes of onlookers. The city remains completely flooded because breached levees and overwhelmed pumping stations have made it impossible to remove the water. Due to a breached levee, water from Lake Pontchartrain is still flowing into the city. The stories of cuts to budgets for maintaining these structures only makes one feel sick, in hindsight.It's starting to make the tsunami look good. CNN reported Thursday that a police officer working in downtown New Orleans said police were siphoning gas from abandoned vehicles in an effort to keep their squad cars running, like a detail straight from the mind of Stephen King. Incredibly, no organized relief program appears visible. Indeed, police have received federal orders to privilege stopping looters against delivering aid and searching for survivors. In other words: the priority (as we have so often come to expect) is to protect property, though it would seem there is little property left to even bother with. The effect: poor blacks can die. What we are witnessing is beyond incompetence at this stage, and is approaching the level of genocide.It is important to remember that cities are highly toxic environments, and floods release everything that is usually contained, or held at the bottom or rivers and lakes, into the general environment. Containers and pipes burst. Fires cannot be controlled. In addition, the Mississippi Delta, thanks to generations of contamination by Monsanto, is one of the most dioxin-tainted areas in the world. Though it may not be acknowledged, there is likely to be a serious dioxin problem in New Orleans and nearby areas right now, and for generations to come.

In my mind's eye, I am seeing this unfold along another strand of time. A fully financed, well prepared Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) would be on the job years before the hurricane made landfall, as this was a predictable event, contrary to recent assertions. (Indeed, FEMA is being absorbed into Homeland Security and damaged by budget cuts.) Hundreds of Coast Guard helicopters from coastal states and many others would be bringing supplies, and getting those most in need to medical help. Old Army bases, so recently closed by budget cuts, would be used as massive relief centers, complete with airstrips, bathrooms and mess halls. Sports facilities, with all their problems, would not have to be used as refugee camps. America's standing Army and National Guard units, themselves not trapped in the disasters of Iraq and Afghanistan, would be widely available to assist, with all their equipment, rations, supplies and other resources. There would be enough manpower. There would be plenty of money for the operation; America is the richest country in the world. Which may be the problem. But this is not happening in a different time, under different national leadership: it is happening now. And due to the damaged oil-refining infrastructure along the Gulf Coast, the effects of this storm will be rippling, or ripping, into the world economy. The price of gasoline has suddenly risen well beyond $3.00 per gallon many places in the U.S., and has exceeded $6.00 per gallon at some retail outlets in the south. Apparently, many places in the southeast have no gas at all. We are hearing the first calls for fuel conservation since the mid-1970s.

Generally, this is the one thing that can key people into the fact that something is wrong; America's real religion is practiced at the filling station, and nearly all of its transportation energy comes from petroleum.

But it's becoming obvious many more ways that something else is wrong. Imagine if this were a multiple city emergency -- that is, if the damage were to more than one city. Imagine if the casualty toll were higher. Are we now to understand that the federal government is incapable of responding to an emergency? It would seem so. The AstrologyAs I've reported elsewhere [please see cainer.com], a dominant image of Saturn in Leo (which began six weeks ago, on July 16) is that of dams bursting. For some reason, when Saturn changes from water sign Cancer to fire sign Leo, structures that hold back bodies of water (and in one famous instance, hundreds of tons of molasses) tend to give way, often with catastrophic effects. While we are seeing the results of a huge cyclone, we're also seeing those of failed levees -- many of them. You might call this a watershed event. In looking for Saturn imagery, we find plenty working in the chart of the City of New Orleans, but it's difficult to miss the fact that Saturn is now crossing the so-called president's ascendant. As I've also said elsewhere, this would be the big turning point for the non-president's career, with a wave of awareness really coalescing about nine months to the day after the inauguration. In addition, I proposed a couple of months ago that "something is up with the price of gold" -- in this case, black gold, petroleum, the blood of our society. But let's come back to that later. Libra is the astonishing connection that three key charts, the City of New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina, and Mr. Bush, have in common. Also looking at a fourth chart, the progressed horoscope for the city, we find the same effect -- Libra is the dominant energy, with its quest for justice, balance, rebalancing and sensitivity. Between these four charts, there are 17 major planets and points in Libra. And a solar eclipse in Libra is coming in just one month, nestled nicely into the action. This is followed by a lunar eclipse in Aries two weeks later, precisely aligned with many critical factors in Aries, Libra, Cancer and Capricorn. We are in a situation that's going to develop rapidly, in large, significant ways and, as all eclipses do, come with events that do their work on a global scale. Most of the effects of this will be in October -- when the chart for the presidential inauguration comes thundering to life and the media begins to put the many pieces of this rather large, surreal puzzle together.

Cosmic Trigger One: Venus conjunct JupiterBetween this past Monday, when Katrina made landfall, and today, Venus in Libra crossed the Moon's South Node and formed a conjunction to Jupiter. This was one important cosmic trigger of what happened in New Orleans, a kind of collective ignition point that released the considerable energy of Venus, Libra and what you might call the Goddess. This conjunction actually affects everything both in Libra and on the entire cardinal cross (Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn), which is heavily loaded in these charts. Venus is now on course for a conjunction to Pallas Athene early next week, the planet of protection, politics and strategy. We may see a shift in the political climate with this activity, which occurs over the weekend -- a rising expectation that something reasonable or strategic has to happen. Neptune has been involved in this setup: the Venus-Jupiter conjunction is trine the most watery planet, in the sign Aquarius. Chiron in Capricorn is a prominent factor in this configuration. The city's chart has this placement, showing up in many square aspects to the Libra planets all of the charts. Chiron in Capricorn is the "post 9/11 factor," a consistent element between late 2001 and today (though the transition to Aquarius began earlier this year, Chiron is now back in Capricorn). Chiron in Capricorn has shaped up to be an extremely painful lesson in government, its conduct and its power. Chiron has a way of shining the light in the dark places, exposing what is in the shadows -- and in Capricorn on the collective scale, there is plenty. What we have here is a lot of action in the cardinal signs, including two of the most important global factors, lunar nodes (in cardinal signs) and eclipses. The cardinal signs are the initiation points, and they are the points of public contact. The nodes, as do eclipses and cardinal signs, tend to bring in large numbers of people and events that act like "attractors" or points of contact.

And Two: Uranus and Pluto -- and PrometheusOne of the most remarkable events of these charts occurs in the sign Pisces, and it is outstanding both for its symbolism and precision. In the City of New Orleans chart, Pluto is located at 8 degrees Pisces and 53 arc minutes. In the chart for landfall, transiting Uranus is located exactly in this degree and arc minute. An arc minute is 1/60th of a degree. This is an exact, to the minute, transit involving two outer planets that, together, are associated with upheavals, revolutions, breakthroughs and social movements. Indeed, many of the great revolutionary movements of the past few centuries have happened under Uranus-Pluto aspects, and the word "revolution" itself was invented under this astrology. When you think Uranus and Pluto, think uranium and plutonium. To convey the feeling of this on the social level, there was recently a long conjunction of transiting Uranus to transiting Pluto that we think of in its entirety as "the Sixties." The revolutionary quality of this conjunction is related beautifully, using many cycles of history, in the book Prometheus the Awakener by Richard Tarnas, which title is the subject of an accidental discovery made by Lise LePage, who has been handing research on this article. In his book, Tarnas argues that the planet Uranus should really have been named Prometheus, after one of the Greek gods of creation. The energy of Prometheus, who gave the fire of the gods to mankind, is precisely the kind of sudden awakening energy that is associated with Uranus. Under the influence of this idea, many astrologers who have gone over the author's historical research and mythological theory are content to think of Uranus as Promethean energy (most say uranian, meaning the same thing -- high voltage and rebellious). And this, I suggested in an email to Lise, referencing the title of the book. Lise misunderstood, and thinking I was referencing the asteroid Prometheus, promptly put that into the city's natal chart -- and discovered that it's in the same degree as Pluto in the natal chart for New Orleans. So, in its basic, inherent makeup, New Orleans has the asteroid Prometheus conjunct evolutionary mover Pluto in Pisces, to the degree. And the city was destroyed, setting off a chain of events that will seem quite nuclear in hindsight, as Uranus made a to-the-minute conjunction to Pluto (something that happens with this precision for a total of three times for just 12 hours every 84 years). Checking the Sabian symbol for this degree (9 Pisces), Dane Rudhyar gives the keywords "self-quickening," a rather energetic image considering the astrology that degree contains in these charts. In all, we're looking at an enormous release of energy. Saturn in LeoNow we come to Saturn in Leo, a critical era-defining astrological factor for the next three years, and probably well into the future. What happens under Saturn in Leo tends to be extraordinarily stable and have lasting effects, often for many decades or longer. The city's chart has numerous placements in early Leo and Aquarius, including the Part of Fortune (calculated for noon), a rather precise opposition of Mars in Leo and Mercury in Aquarius, and Venus in Aquarius. This is a grand opposition, which (thank the gods) is trined by Jupiter in Sagittarius. That trine from Jupiter is what I'll call the "it could be worse" aspect. Jupiter in Sagittarius, trine the personal planets and trine transiting Saturn, is acting as a protective influence. Note also that the Chiron-Nessus conjunction in early Aquarius that has been in effect for much of this year. Another era-defining event, this conjunction But Saturn in Leo is rather personal event for Mr. Bush, as it is for anyone whose ascendant it crosses. Under this combination of factors, when it's angular (that is, in the ascendant), Saturn can act exactly like Uranus, propelling sudden and unexpected movement, change, progress or something like that. Saturn has not quite made it to the Bush ascendant, which is 7 degrees and 7 arc minutes of Leo, but it does so the morning of Sept. 12, 2005 (Washington, DC time). New Orleans is very much his responsibility -- and the world is watching. One thing that's clear is that Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent devastation will not be a path of escape for those who have hijacked the government and are holding it hostage. To the contrary, we all may be looking at the one event that finally gets our attention, and tips the scales.

-- Additional research & reporting by Lise LePage in the US and Dan Miller in the UK.Please check the cover or subscriber blogs later in the weekend for information about the involvement of new outer planets, including Sedna, Varuna and Deucalion -- all of which bear poignant water and flood imagery.Witch Hunt Against Climate Change Scientistshttp://www.truthout.org/issues_05/083005EA.shtmlBrace for More Katrinas, Scientists Sayhttp://www.truthout.org/issues_05/083105EA.shtmlFEMA Phased Out as Disasters Keep Cominghttp://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090105J.shtml--------------------------Planet Waves by Eric FrancisSept. 2, 2005 - Weekly Horoscope 574Note to Virgos