Yin Yang XVI
Chart for Edgar Allan Poe, born January 19, 1809, Boston, time unknown
Born with Mercury in the heart of the Sun in Capricorn.
He wrote a story about a man who wanted to be hyptonized by a mesmerist right before he died. The mesmerist hyptonized him and the man died under hypnosis and communicated from the other side that he was dead. The next step was to break the hypnosis and wake him up.
The man’s body stayed intact until the spell was broken.
The facts in the case of M. Valdemar. Illustrated by Harry Clarke
The Sun progresses one degree every year, and when his progressed Sun reached Pisces, his short stories began to appear in magazines. Every story a new pattern that played with the mysteries.
He wrote a story about an artist so intent on conveying his wife’s beauty on canvas, that he sucked the life out of her.
The Oval Portrait. Illustration by Arthur Rackham
Arrangements that broke the barrier between life and death.
Imagination that unblocked the supernatural.
They say he wasn’t well known until his poem The Raven was published on January 29, 1845.
The rhythm was catchy. The ending surprising.
It wasn’t pretentious. None of his works were. He punctured them himself. Gothic with a comic slant.
It may have aroused jealousy.
They say too much attention can attract destruction, and when his poem became popular, some say a cultural phenomenon, established writers called it unreadable and vulgar.
themillions.com/2019/11/twenty-five-ways-to-roast-a-raven-all-the-ways-edgar-allan-poe.html
Chart for Edgar Allan Poe, hypothetical
Mercury, ruler of Gemini in his eighth house, is minutes away from the heart of the Sun. There are astrologers who would say that Mercury is getting burned by the Sun in some way.
He was paid 9 dollars for the poem.
He may have been burning his earnings as well. Earnings can be in the eighth house of other people’s resources, and in the eleventh house of pooled resources. Both ruled by Mercury in his chart. They say he gambled. Mercury rules games of chance.
Chiron is in the fourth house in Aquarius, minding the gap in not belonging. He was not brought up by his parents, and he had problems with his foster dad, money related.
Planets progress, and in 1845, he was being celebrated and criticized.
Chart for January 29, 1845, timed to match Edgar Allan Poe’s hypothetical chart
There is rescue in Aries, the sort that gives us a choice. Will we take it or not?
The Jupiter Uranus conjunction brought him rescue
and he took it.
The public wanted to know how he did it, and the public wished he hadn’t,
in the Moon in Libra opposition to Pluto in Aries, square to Venus Mercury in Capricorn.
A tug of war between those who thought his poem was a gem and those who didn’t.
With his progressed Sun at 5 degrees Pisces, in a square to Mars in Sag in his house of personal resources, he payed attention to those who did and wrote The Philosophy of Composition, and earnings came to take care of debt.
He received invitations to read his poem and accepted them all, the wish of belonging fulfilled.
Neptune was paving the way in Aquarius, and he would find out that his stories were appreciated in Europe. Baudelaire was translating them in France.
As for The Raven,
he lost control over it.
It had a life of its own.
youtube.com/watch?v=bLiXjaPqSyY&t=148s
Born of a Uranian Scorpio,
in a Jupiter Uranus conjunction in Aries.
It brought a new element to leadership in the United States,
the courage to be parodied.
Chart for February 7, 1845
Will got permission to copy works in the British Museum in 1844, part of his apprenticeship as a painter.
Jupiter was still in Pisces, and Uranus was making his entry into Aries,
and Pluto had been there since he was born.
He had an overpowering dad, moulding him into his image, and he was glad to get away from his dad’s studio. Here he was free to choose his subjects, free to choose his medium, and he chose watercolours. He liked it that everyone at the museum called him the watercolourist.
There was no room in watercolours to play with people’s minds. There were paintings that played with people’s minds. A smile that wasn’t straightforward but insinuated something else. Paintings that had to be read, symbols that changed the meaning of what was being presented.
A watercolour could never be a forgery, not even of another watercolour. The pulse showed, the pulse a distinguishing feature.
The Judgement of Paris by William Blake, watercolour, 1806
The colours of Eris repeated in Paris’ tunic, in the apple and in the darkness looming over Troy. This is what he liked. Clarity.
He set up in front of the Blake, but couldn’t work. There was a constant stream of people behind him heading in the same direction. He finally put his paintbrush down and followed the stream. It led to a vase that had come into the museum’s possession back in 1810. The Portland Vase. Why all the commotion now?
An article in the papers. Someone handed it to him. An ancient Roman cameo glass vase. Experiments with glass blowing techniques. Painstaking work. 24cm in height and 17.7cm in diameter. A celebrated antiquity. The meaning of the figures on the vase was unclear. There were many hypotheses, but none of them satisfactory. The museum invited people to help solve the mystery.
He looked at the vase, at one scene and then the other. If they were drawn from mythology, there weren’t enough attributes to identify the characters. If they were an exercise in symmetry, what was a snake doing there? And who was the thinker? No, he thought to himself, scratching his head. I’m not getting involved with a puzzle.
He was about to walk away when a man about his age caught his attention. He was busy sketching the figures on the vase. He went to stand behind him to take a look.
“You’re quite good.”
“Thanks. I’d like to solve this once and for all.”
“Good luck.”
“What about you?”
“Not me. I’m studying to be a watercolourist. I’m doing a copy of a Blake watercolour today. His Judgement of Paris.”
“They think this figure here is Paris, turned toward Venus, and in between is his mother Hecuba. When she was pregnant with him, she dreamt of giving birth to a torch and snakes, and her dream was interpreted to mean that her child would bring the destruction of Troy.”
“What about the other scene?”
“They could be Peleus and the sea nymph Thetis. She resisted marrying him by transforming herself into different shapes, a snake was one of them. Peleus held her through all her transformations until she gave in. Here Cupid seems to have taken care of things.”
“Who’s the thinker?”
“Nobody really knows. It could be one of us, pondering what the scene means.”
“Not me. I’m off.”
“I’ll come see you when I’m done.”
“Two rooms down.”
Jupiter and Uranus entered Aries when they became friends.
They spoke of many things, but their conversations always ended with the vase.
“What other stories do you know that have a snake?”
“Jason and Medea,” said Will. “The snake that guarded the golden fleece in the grove of Mars.”
“Cupid’s wrong for that story.”
“Why? Medea saw Jason and an arrow pierced her heart.”
“How would you explain the other scene?”
“Jason looking at Glauce, daughter of the King of Corinth, and in the centre, Medea contemplating her revenge. A book of magic potions at her feet. She sent Glauce a deadly robe that melted her skin, and a crown that burst into flames on her head. I think she torched the palace as well.”
“The thinker?”
“Jason remembering how it all began. Wishing he’d taken on the snake instead of letting her take the lead.”
“I need to go see it again.”
Jason and Medea by Gustave Moreau, Symbolist painter, 1865
“They say the tree looks like a laurel tree and the snake could be referencing Apollo. It’s driving me crazy, Will.”
“Then quit! Come paint en plein air with me. It’s what you see, nothing more, nothing less.”
“I’ll join you when my museum pass expires.”
“How many days?”
“Three.”
Three days passed, and he went to the room with the vase, and there was his friend, mesmerized.
Movement caught the corner of his eye.
A woman standing in the shadows.
She too was watching his friend.
He felt something rise in her, the need to act.
She ran across the room, picked up something heavy and smashed the glass case of the Portland Vase. The glass broke and the vase shattered.
Alarms.
“Oh, Joyce! What have you done!”
“Oh, Jeffrey!”
The museum attendant had witnessed it.
“Who will take responsibility?” he asked.
“Me,” said Jeffrey. “Will, please take her.”
They went to see his dad.
Things had improved between him and his dad ever since the day he’d forgotten to hide his portfolio. He’d gone to the kitchen to get something to eat, and when he returned, he found his dad looking at his watercolours.
He froze in fear, then mustered the courage to speak up for himself, but when his dad turned to look at him, he knew he wouldn’t have to.
“You’ve found your pulse, son.”
It was his dad who suggested he leave the museum and go paint outdoors.
“Paint the surrounding landscape before the industrial age ruins it.”
He’d brought Jeffrey to the house and his dad already knew about his obsession with the Portland Vase. It was now a matter of updating him with what had just happened.
Joyce cried all the way.
“What have I done? I wanted to save him from that vase, and now he’s locked up.”
“How did you manage to lift that block of limestone?”
“What block of limestone?”
“The one with the relief sculpture of a Lamassu. Guardian of the gates. That’s what you broke the vase with.”
“I was possessed, Will. I don’t remember.”
“Don’t ever say that to anyone or they’ll lock you up as well. Okay?”
“Okay. But you understand, don’t you?”
“Yes. I think you saved him from insanity.”
The museum attendant had taken a liking to Jeffrey and coached him.
“Keep it simple. You were trying to solve the mystery. You got drunk. You went binge drinking and look what happened. You’re sorry. That’s all you say until your friend gets you a lawyer. Understood?”
Jeffrey nodded.
“Good. Now, I’m going to knock you out so they find you sprawled on the ground. Ready?”
He knocked him out.
Will’s dad hired a lawyer.
The Portland Vase was on loan at the museum. The owner was the 4th Duke of Portland, and it was up to him to press charges or not.
The day the lawyer was to meet with the duke, Joyce gave him Jeffrey’s sketchbooks. She had brought them earlier to Will’s house, and the family had leafed through them.
“He takes after Leonardo.”
“He could publish them. Studies of the Portland Vase conducted at the British Museum. The broken vase on the front cover.”
“Would people buy them?”
“Like hotcakes. There’s nothing people like more than an enfant terrible. That’s what the papers are calling him.”
“You may have done him a service, Joyce.”
“How long have you known him?”
“Over a year. The 7th was the day he asked me to marry him a year ago, our anniversary, but he forgot.”
“A long engagement.”
“My parents don’t approve.”
“Do you know they’re putting the pieces of the vase back together again?”
“Wedgwood’s made a faithful copy, but there’s nothing like the luminescence of the original one.”
“It’s more than that, dad,” said Will. “There was nothing before the original one.”
Joyce started crying.
The doorbell rang.
Chart for William Henry Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck, 4th Duke of Portland, born June 24, 1768, time unknown
He was of the generation that paved the way for universal manhood suffrage. Before there was woman’s suffrage, there was manhood suffrage. Not all men could vote in England, and the Reform Bill of 1832 began to change that, and he supported it.
By then he had left the political life his father wanted him to have, but he still voiced what he considered right and wrong for the country. He considered buying grains from other lands wrong. He felt the country should live within its limits and protect agriculture.
They say he inherited a debt ridden estate and made improvements to reverse the situation.
He also inherited the costly art collection of Margaret Cavendish Bentinck, wife of the 2nd Duke of Portland.
He knew why the British Museum wanted him to become a trustee. The Portland Vase and its mystique.
He’d gathered the family around to debate whether they should loan it or not, and the majority voted in favour.
He hadn’t. He wanted it buried with him when he died. They’d found it in a sarcophagus, hadn’t they? Why not bury it with him and put things to rest?
Dad!
He always thought the key to the scenes was in the horned and bearded heads below the handles. Some said it was Pan, others Jupiter Ammon. But those weren’t the horns of a ram, so most likely Pan. Either way, they were sex scenes. A woman remembering her first time and a man remembering his. Sacred time or an escapade.
As he grew older, he could put meaning aside to appreciate the craftsmanship. Opaque white glass over cobalt blue, carved to give volume, polished to recede. The finesse of a gem cutter who lived in the first century.
He let the vase go reluctantly, but went to see it on the first working day of every month, before the museum doors opened to the public. The vase was brought out of the case for his private viewing.
The last time, he’d noticed a dishevelled man waiting outside and asked the museum attendant about him. He was told the man was intent on solving the mystery of the Portland Vase.
Then came the news that he had smashed it.
He sat with the man’s lawyer and looked at the sketches and read the notes. They demonstrated serious dedication.
“Was it a moment of madness or has he gone mad?”
“He’s rational, sir. Ridden with guilt and shame.”
“Tell him I’m giving him a second chance.”
Jeffrey took it and bought passage on a ship.
He saw Will before he left.
“Thank your family for me, Will.”
“What about Joyce?”
“We couldn’t be together, not with this thing between us.”
“I’ve grown fond of her, Jeffrey.”
“Then I leave her in good hands.”
They embraced.
“Send us word.”
He sent back paintings with the pseudonym Henry Stanier.
Alhambra from San Nicolas by Henry Stanier
“We heard you didn’t press charges, dad.”
“The last time I went to the museum, I saw him waiting outside. I could have invited him to see the vase with me. Steered him to see the beauty of the vase, the skill of the artist, but I didn’t. I feel partly responsible for what happened.”
“Have you seen it since?”
“I saw it whole. Why would I want to see it in pieces? I’d much rather study Jeffrey’s sketchbooks.”
“You kept them?”
“I paid him handsomely for them.”
“You’re a softie, dad,” she said with affection.
He saw the picture in the papers. The vase restored. It would be restored again in 1948, and again in 1988.
youtube.com/watch?v=RgBjAUhmYgQ
Gem encrusted cover of the Codex Aureus of St. Emmeram, 870
The Middle Ages. Charlemagne. King of the Franks. King of the Lombards. Crowned as Emperor of the Carolingian Empire by Pope Leo III in 800.
He died in 814, and there were parts of the empire that held up, and there were parts that didn’t, where the nobility engaged in violence.
Carolingian Empire in 843
Otto I worked on unifying it again, and he was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope John XII in 962.
He also tried improving relations with the eastern side of Christendom, the Byzantine Empire.
Still, there was fighting in the Holy Roman Empire, and the Catholic Church took action. They came up with decrees called the Peace of God at the Council of Charroux on June 1, 989.
It was anathema to violate churches and church property.
It was anathema to pillage from farmers and the poor.
It was anathema to strike unarmed clerics.
The work was in Taurus, and Mercury in Taurus asked, “That’s it? You’ve got all the power in Libra, where the goddess Themis resides, and all you can come up with are 3 canons?”
People asked for more and the Church granted more. The Peace of God would grow. Jupiter in Aquarius, at the bending of the nodes, allowed for growth. Women and children would come under its protection. Monasteries, pilgrims, merchants on a journey, and their goods too.
The Sun in Gemini brought out the oath. Nobles and heads of households took the oath to protect from violence, to uphold the common peace.
Some say it was the first peace movement.
Neptune was paving the way in Sag, and the peace movement spread from clan to clan.
People wanted to be near a church, live near a church, and public spaces and villages rose in the vicinity of churches.
The Church was breaking a barrier in Capricorn, using its authority to limit the warfare of the nobility.
In 1027, the Peace of God was followed by the Truce of God at the Council of Toulouges. It prohibited fighting from Saturday evening to Monday morning. It would be extended from Wednesday evening to Monday morning and holy days.
In January 1027, Saturn was at 14° Aries and Jupiter at 2° Aries. They formed an exact conjunction between April 19 and 20 of that year.
Chart for April 19, 1027
It was not the emperor but the Church that offered protection and united people as Christian brothers and sisters.
It began to offer deliverance from the punishment of sin in the afterlife in the form of indulgences.
It is in the 11th century that indulgences emerged. Sacred trade. Prayers, pilgrimages, good works, and in the future, battles for redemption.
Castor and Pollux fighting at the Battle of Lake Regillus by John Reinhard Weguelin, engraving, 1880
The Church began to change as an institution. Jupiter Saturn in Aries in a sextile to Gemini and Aquarius. It promised salvation through actions that allowed entrance, not to the galactic centre, but to the ideal place that is heaven.
Plaque with St. Peter, Byzantine, 600
This is the church Pope Urban II grew up in.
He is the pope who introduced the crusade indulgence.
The Byzantine Empire was crumbling, losing land to the Seljuk Turks. Urban’s predecessor, Gregory VII, had spoken of sending help, he’d spoken of a holy war, but he’d been too busy fighting for supremacy over Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV.
youtube.com/watch?v=rvY5MErtDAY
He had excommunicated Henry and made him bow to him. But Henry found his footing and Gregory died in exile.
The fighting had initiated him into his role as emperor, and things were as they had been before.
Someone cleared their throat and he looked up. The clergy was waiting for him to speak. They were at the Council of Piacenza. March 1095. The Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos had sent ambassadors to the Council.
They discussed matters that were pending, and when it was the ambassadors’ turn, they unrolled a map.
Chart for November 27, 1095
On this day, at the Council of Clermont, Urban II broached the subject of war.
The Church had tried to eliminate war between brethren. He now proposed encouraging them to go fight infidels and protect the eastern churches, not for power and glory, but for the remission of sins. An initiation into purity.
Neptune had been paving the way in Cancer, and the Church had been considering how to protect its borders without training an army and without an imperial declaration of war.
With Mercury in that place between two signs, Sag and Capricorn, he spoke of an indulgence that took the Church where it had not been before. Sanctifying the killing of infidels.
The Moon in Scorpio was in a sextile to Saturn in Virgo and Venus Jupiter in Capricorn. Not everyone present was in agreement. War was a cultural practice that involved holding the mes, and not everyone was ready to hold them. It could be dangerous. It could tarnish the image of the Church.
“It will make men out of men,” said the Pope. “This may be our last chance to bring Eastern Christianity into the fold. To unite once and for all around the same hearthfire. They have lost the ability to protect our churches. They have lost the ability to protect pilgrims to the Holy Land. Are we to sit back and do nothing?”
Chart for November 29, 1095
Two days later, the Pope gave his first public sermon calling for a crusade. There is no transcript of the sermon, but many varied accounts of what he said.
sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/urban2-5vers.asp
They say he spoke of saving Christendom and the eastern churches in general, but the public wanted a final destination.
The Sun and the Moon in Sag asked for a galactic centre
Saturn in Virgo and Venus Jupiter in Capricorn wanted a place of cultural and historical significance
Neptune said it had to be in the lake of memories, worth killing for and dying for
A gem
The place where purity would be attained.
Jupiter in Capricorn was in a square to Uranus in Aries, Creating
and Jupiter was in a quincunx to Mars in Leo, Hearthfire for all crusades
An Olympic arena for the soldiers of god.
The point of Rahu was between Aquarius and Pisces, universal and across time and space.
Peter the Hermit shows the crusaders the way to Jerusalem, French illumination, ca 1270
Chart for February 1, 1099
Jupiter Uranus conjoined at 3° Taurus.
The conjunction was in a square to Neptune in Leo, paving the way.
The crusaders reached Jerusalem in July. The work was in Gemini Cancer, and there would be a siege and a battle, some say a massacre, followed by prayer at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
usu.edu/markdamen/1320hist&civ/chapters/15crusad.htm#:~:text=Spanning%20most%20of%20the%20High,any%20real%20or%20lasting%20success.
If there was an attempt at diplomacy, nobody heard it, nobody saw the fingers of god pointing at Saturn in Libra.
But the potential was there. Gemini rules negotiations and Libra rules arrangements, and there is a place of refuge in Pisces, a place of creativity and peace.
To negotiate a peaceful arrangement would have also taken the Church to a place it had never been.
Christians, Muslims and Jews had been paving the way, living together in the Holy Land.
The hoi polloi in Pisces where boundaries are thin.
A pyxis with Christian and Islamic themes by al-Mawsili, Seljuk era
There is something moveable about Pluto in Aries and Saturn in Libra, a moveable feast.
An initiation with a set of principles that require movement.
Saturn is in a trine to the Sun in Aquarius, and there is danger here, real or perceived, and the need for courage.
To carry something out that has been woven into the fabric of society, and is both accepted and criticized.
The Sun is in a square to the Moon in Taurus, a Moon of nurture.
The Moon, ruler of Cancer.
In Cancer we come from a mother that comes from a mother that comes from a mother, all the way to the beginning of time, and in Taurus are her roots and heritage.
The journey to Crete by Jean Cousin the elder, 1550
The Moon touches Pisces, and in Pisces there is war and there is peace. Mars and Venus can plant a seed, and Mars is stronger at a lower degree. Mercury is strongest, when seen.
Jupiter Uranus end a cycle and begin a new one, and in the process, they compel us to do the work of the sign.
Taurus can unleash the power of the body and the earth.
A long time ago, a bull rose from the sea in Taurus, a bull that King Minos did not sacrifice back to the gods. The Cretan Bull that became one of Hercules’ Labours.
Hercules and the Cretan Bull by B. Picart, 1731
Taurus can ask that we return what has been given to us by the gods with honesty.
ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/how-an-acknowledgment-of-unceded-algonquin-territory-became-ubiquitous
Chart for October 5, 1853
The Crimean War.
The Seljuk line of the Seljuk Empire ended and was replaced by the Ottoman line, and the Ottoman Turks took Constantinople. Under Suleiman I, the Ottoman Empire grew to surround the Black Sea.
Then it grew old, and in a series of wars with Russia, was left with only the southern coast.
Now Russia spoke of expanding into the Balkans to protect Orthodox Christians, and it occupied Moldavia and Wallachia.
“C’est faux!” cried France. “Orthodox Christians aren’t in peril! Not under our watch!”
“We need the Ottomans as buffer against Russian expansionism,” said Britain. “They provide a good balance of power, plus they’re good trading partners.”
They sent naval ships to protect passage in the Black Sea, and when Russia destroyed the Ottoman fleet, they joined the war, and together they won. Moldavia and Wallachia were returned to the Ottomans, and the borders remained as they were before, for some time.
Nothing seemed to change on the surface, but this war was different.
It was a war that was widely reported and a war the public got to see. The square between Neptune in Pisces and Jupiter in Sag opened a window to a terrain foreign and far away.
life.com/history/crimea-where-war-photography-was-born/
They got to read about the battles, one in particular, immortalized by the British Poet Laureate Lord Tennyson. They say that up to today the Battle of Balaclava is still analyzed to understand what went wrong.
poetryfoundation.org/poems/45319/the-charge-of-the-light-brigade
The public also got to read about the deplorable conditions of wounded soldiers, and the work that women like Florence Nightingale were doing to make things better.
Just like there are patron saints for ailments, illnesses and dangers,
there is an Ereshkigal that awakes in people in difficult situations, and in this war, Ereshkigal of the battlefield soldier awoke, Ereshkigal of the wounded soldier.
When Russia occupied Moldavia and Wallachia, Britain sensed an imbalance in power. It sensed Russia’s ambition to control the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles.
There is in Taurus an unobstructed passage from east to west. To secure it, Britain and France sent naval ships to the Black Sea in September, a month before the Ottoman Empire declared war on Russia.
With the Sun Mercury in Libra, they were prepared to back the Ottomans and restore balance.
There was an unintended consequence to the war, the beginning of a different kind of balance, not yet visible to everyone.
Neptune was paving the way, in that place behind the scenes, place of refuge, exile, healing.
Women came to fill the gap in authority in the care of soldiers. The body, the soul. They addressed this kind of balance too, in their care.
A door was opening. A new pelt being sewn. The possibility of a new calling, with a woman leading the way in Sag.
She gave us the first principles of nursing.
digital.library.upenn.edu/women/nightingale/nursing/nursing.html
Chart for October 15, 70 BC
Chart for Julius Caesar, June 20, 100 BC, time unknown, Rome, Italy
He was 30 in 70 BC, having his Saturn return.
Pluto Uranus were beginning their transit through Gemini. They would be together in Gemini for seven years. Neptune had been paving the way for their entry.
There is freedom in the sign, untied to the fabric of society, unafraid to confront death. The kind of freedom that allows for mobility and participation. In light, the Dioscuri involved in every quest, every battle, every rescue mission.
In shadow, pirates. Pirates had been forming alliances with Rome’s enemies and their power had been growing.
With Pluto Uranus in Gemini, they saw a change to their fortunes. Pompey, consul of the Roman Republic in 70 BC, organized a campaign against them throughout the Mediterranean. Pirates had no chance of escaping the Roman fleets, and Pompey promised clemency if they agreed to settle down in lands devastated by war, lands that needed tending.
Caesar had once been kidnapped by pirates and had to pay a ransom for his release. He supported Pompey’s campaign.
His religio-political career began early.
There is immortality and mortality in Gemini.
He must have been 14 or 15 when he was appointed Flamen to Jupiter, a priest of Jupiter. Only people from prominent families could hold such a position and he came from such a family. Like other religious appointments, Flamens participated in government, but religious restrictions limited what they could do. Flamens could not see dead bodies, they could not travel outside of Rome, and they could not see a table without food.
His chart allowed him to be Flamen to Jupiter until his Sun progressed a degree or two beyond his Venus Mercury conjunction in Cancer, and then the Saturn Uranus opposition in Capricorn kicked in and broke him free. The consul Cinna who had overseen his appointment died, and the new consul Sully took it away.
He left Rome to begin his military service in the east, and began to get acquainted with his natal Mars during the Siege of Mytilene in 81 BC.
He spent almost a decade earning the reputation he has as the best in the field of battle. Warrior. Fighting for purity.
In 73 BC a family member who had been a Pontiff died, and the position was passed on to him in absentia. A Pontiff was a high priest, member of the College of Pontiffs headed by the Pontifex Maximus. They oversaw religious laws and public morality. Pontiffs did not have the religious restrictions Flamans had, and could be elected to any political office.
The planets were curbing his freedom. He was back in Rome by 71 BC.
His work was in Scorpio, with the ruler in Gemini.
Jupiter’s transit through Scorpio in 70 BC brought him a gift. His first political campaign, to be elected Quaestor. Jupiter’s transit was in opposition to his natal Jupiter in Taurus, bringing him the responsibility of clan.
His next political campaign would be in 65 BC, to be elected Aedile.
Elections.
Roman citizens could vote.
In his chart, Neptune paves the way in Aries, and the Moon in Aries is in a sextile to Mars.
There is disenfranchisement in Aries. Phrixos and Helle deprived of a right, Jason deprived of a right.
Caesar supported restoring the Tribune of the Plebs, abolished by Sulla.
He is said to have readily extended Roman citizenship to the people of the lands he conquered, later on, when Uranus transited Cancer.
His Sun in Cancer, sign of home and homeland. With Venus Mercury R in Cancer, he may have done something considered before but not agreed upon, something he felt needed to be done. And here lay the beginning of an empire. By personally extending Roman citizenship, he broke the barrier between a republic led by a senate and an empire led by a king.
But first he had to climb the ladder some more, and in 63 BC, when Uranus was ending his transit in Gemini-
youtube.com/watch?v=NcCtiX-VuWA
He not only ran for Pontifex Maximus, but also for Praetor and won both elections.
There can be art when Venus and Mercury come together, and he worked hard on the art of oration. Cicero said that he stripped it of embellishment and was frank and convincing.
He won the heart of people with wordplay and performance. Results.
There he is in the Roman Senate. Listening to Cicero who served as consul in 63 BC. Cicero was accusing his running mate Catiline of conspiracy and unethical behaviour, and wanted him and his collaborators executed. Caesar disagreed. He said exile sufficed as punishment.
Cicero denounces Catiline by Cesare Maccari, 1888
His work was in Scorpio, with Pluto in Taurus. Digging in grassroots to create something new in Capricorn. Unintended.
He had spent lavishly on games as Aedile, and more on the elections, and the containers of his resources were depleted.
In a crisis, he reached for Mars.
Arete in Gemini.
Chart for January 1, 63 BC
He asked Pompey, powerful in the Senate, to help him secure funds, and he asked Crassus, richest in the Senate, to be the guarantor of his debts. They were rivals, Pompey and Crassus, blocking each other’s way.
A pity, he thought.
A challenge, he thought. Were I to build a bridge between them- Were I to be the bridge between them, we could have each other’s back.
With this thought he would unblock a new form of leadership, never seen before in the Senate. It wasn’t an alliance, nothing official. 18th century scholars called it a triumvirate, but they say modern scholars avoid using the term because it doesn’t describe their friendship accurately.
At their best, they respected each other’s vision and helped advance it.
When others realized what was going on, they tried doing the same to balance the power, the resources and the influence of the three.
Assignment of Roman provinces to Caesar, Pompey and Crassus
Chart for January 1, 1196
Chart for Richard I, born September 8, 1157, Beaumont Palace, Oxford, England, time unknown
Henry II was his father, and these were the lands his father ruled, loosely called the Angevin Empire.
Aquitaine came with his mother Eleanor. It was his mother’s inheritance and the place he grew up in.
He was the third son, not meant to be king, and the duchy of Aquitaine was given to him. He became duke when he was 15.
There are people who accuse him of never having spent time in England, without realizing that this was England too. But not the seat of power. It was the land his mother had entrusted him to protect.
His mother had been married to Louis VII, King of France. An unhappy marriage with no sons to hold them together, and the marriage had been annulled. They say that on her way back to Aquitaine, they tried to kidnap her twice and force her into marriage to claim her inheritance. She realized the danger she faced as an unmarried woman.
This was in 1152, when Pluto began his transit in Gemini and Neptune began his transit in Sag.
She knew that the only form of rescue available to a woman in her position was to remarry, but this time she would choose her husband, she would be the one to propose.
Uranus was transiting Capricorn and Jupiter was transiting Scorpio. They were in a sextile when she asked Henry, who was not yet king, to marry her. And even though she was at least 10 years older, he said yes. She would enrich his kingdom and he would give her the protection she needed. They were married in May 1152.
In early 1154, Jupiter and Uranus conjoined in Capricorn, and in December, Henry ascended to the throne and she was crowned Queen.
Richard was born in 1157, when Uranus in Capricorn was in a t-square with Jupiter in Aries and the Moon in Libra. Always checking in on him to see if something new had come out of the conjunction.
When his mother first held him, she didn’t feel the tension of the t-square. She felt the vulnerability of his Mars in Cancer, Mars in a soft shell.
Mars sextile to Venus in Virgo and Mars square to Mercury in Libra.
“You’ll be a poet,” she whispered to him.
When he was little and the troubadours came to court to sing their compositions, she would sit him on her lap to hear stories of courtly love and acts of chivalry.
When he grew older, she encouraged him to write poetry of his own, and he would write not a poem but a one liner that simply said what he had to say.
When he grew older, she would ask where he was, and her ladies in waiting would bring back word that he was training in the fields, or with soldiers patrolling the borders, or in a joust.
“Mercy me!”
He grew tall and strong and the people of the land admired his martial skills.
The shell was getting harder.
In 1173, his brother Henry the Young King rebelled against his father. Pluto was in Gemini and Uranus was in Pisces. He wanted more independence and more resources. To feel the title he was carrying.
“You’re trying to usurp the throne,” his father said.
The Young King wasn’t. He wasn’t even prepared to run the kingdom. None of the brothers were. But something in the air made the brothers join the Young King’s rebellion. Something in the air made them take counsel from Louis VII, neighbour and rival of their father Henry II.
Henry II prepared an army 20,000 strong.
And barons in Britain rose to the Young King’s aid, and barons in Aquitaine rose to Richard’s aid.
They fought and they lost, and the father took Eleanor prisoner and threatened to cut off funds from Britain and Aquitaine, unless-
Richard prostrated himself on the floor, ready to carry out his father’s wishes, ready for the kiss of peace.
“Unless you can get your barons to bring down their fortifications in 15 days.”
Barons in the region had fortified their castles to face the rebellion. Walls of stone had been raised, and there was nothing more threatening to a king than walls standing against him.
Richard felt the tension. The urgency. His father had blamed his mother for the rebellion, unjustly, and taken her away from Aquitaine. He had to find a way to bring her back, but first he had to bring down the fortifications.
He reached for Mars and the squares to Libra gave him wartime options.
“I’m not at war anymore,” he said. “What I need is a magic wand.”
He felt a tug and looked in the direction of the tug, and there was Neptune in Sag, hiding in a quincunx.
There was no escaping reality. He chose a wartime option, siege engines to batter down the walls, and put his army to work. The people of the land came to watch, and they began to call him Quor de Lion, Richard the Lionheart.
They were done in less than 15 days.
“Release my mother,” he asked his father.
“No,” his father replied.
The rebellion and Eleanor’s absence destabilized the region and there were mutinies against English rule. There are some who say he was cruel putting them down, and there are some who say he was noble and brave and a fierce leader.
But he grew terse with his father and answered any form of communication with a yes or a no.
When his father asked him to pay homage to the Young King, he answered no.
A battle to subdue Richard ensued, and the Young King died, and Richard became heir to the throne.
When his father asked him to give the duchy of Aquitaine to his youngest brother John and to come to Britain, he answered no and allied himself with the new King of France, Philip II.
A battle to subdue Richard ensued, and his father died, and Richard became king.
All the infighting turned the shell into a shell of steel.
The first thing he did as king was to escort Eleanor back to Aquitaine. He put things in order, not the way his father wanted, but the way he wanted, Richard, son of Eleanor.
The second thing he did was to make the necessary arrangements to join the Third Crusade. Pluto was transiting Cancer, conjoining his natal Mars, asking for an initiation already in the lake of memories. Uranus was transiting Gemini, conjoining his natal Pluto, asking for a new kind of freedom.
He led his army east in 1190.
His reputation preceded him and he did not let it down. He knew when to stop, sign a truce and turn back home. He had recaptured Acre and Jaffa, and there was exhaustion in the ranks, on both sides. Why continue to Jerusalem when the Muslim ruler Saladin was ready to guarantee pilgrimage rights to Christians?
It was on his way back home that his initiation began. He was captured and taken prisoner by Duke Leopold V of Austria, allied to the King of Germany and Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI. They held him for 14 months, until the ransom they demanded was paid.
14 months of no fighting. His destiny in the hands of the mother and the 3 regents he had left behind in England.
He had time to write poetry, the one liners of his youth.
He had time to design a castle.
In 1194 the ransom was paid and he returned to England. They crowned him king again to erase his period in captivity, and then he crossed the channel.
During his absence, Philip II had taken parts of Normandy and Anjou, through invasion or negotiation with his brother, and he prepared to take them back.
And the fighting began.
When Uranus joined Pluto in Cancer, he thought of the castle he had designed. He would perfect it and make it a castle with an impenetrable shell, a castle without an Achilles’ heel. To build it right on the border between Normandy and France, towering over the Seine, so that Philip could see it from Paris and shiver at the sight of it.
A castle that roared like a lion.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXY3cirfzLI
They say it took 2 years to build when it should have taken 10.
His masterpiece broke patterns of the past,
it broke the boundaries of time.
It consolidated all his knowledge and knowhow, and put to the test his ability to command.
He was a great military commander.
They say there was a shower of blood. Who says? Not Robin Hood the outlaw, not Robin Hood who made him a legend.
Robin Hood and Richard the Lionheart by John Millar Watt, British (1895-1975)
Chart for Ferdinand de Lesseps, born November 19, 1805, Versailles, data from birth record
Before he learned how to handle big money, he learned how to handle crises as a diplomat in Tunis and Algiers.
He next posting was in Alexandria, and while his ship was in the required quarantine, the consul general sent him some books. One of them was by the civil engineer Jacques-Marie Le Père, a description of the traces left behind by attempts to connect the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea.
Transiting Mercury was retrograding in Capricorn in his ninth house, and it may not have been the first time he came across the book.
He read it.
When Mercury bumped into his natal Venus, ruler of his first house, the idea of a sea passage felt within reach, like something he was meant to do.
When Mercury bumped into his natal Venus, ruler of his sixth house, he reread the parts that explained why a permanent passage had never been successful. What exactly were the impediments.
“Mud and sand,” said Said Pasha.
Lesseps was in Egypt in the 1830s, when Muhammad Ali was viceroy, and he became good friends with Ali’s son, Said Pasha. They spoke about the ancient canal of the pharaohs and visited the terrain.
Later on, when Said Pasha became viceroy, he authorized Lesseps to build a canal.
Chart for Ferdinand Lesseps, with AS and MC aspects
Engineers assured him that it could be done. They could pierce through the Isthmus of Suez. The level of the Red Sea was the same as the Mediterranean Sea and no locks would be needed. It could be done.
There was opposition on all fronts, especially from the British who feared losing commercial hegemony in India, but nothing could deter Lesseps. France and Egypt bought enough shares of his Universal Company of the Maritime Canal of Suez, and work began in 1859.
It took 10 years to build.
Chart for the inauguration of the Suez Canal, November 17, 1869
Inaugurated on a Venus return and a Mars return. Accomplishment. A sea passage of influence and a lucrative enterprise.
By then he had managed to get the British involved and it gave the company more clout.
The company would operate the canal for 99 years and then hand it over to the Egyptian government. November 1968.
Jupiter Pluto were digging in Taurus, and Uranus was creating something new in Cancer, with the Moon in Taurus.
Egypt’s identity and personality were now tied to a sea passage open to the world.
Fingers of god pointing at Saturn Mars in Sag.
There is expression and exploration in Sag, escape. But Saturn Mars can discipline. They can keep in check the direction things are going.
Neptune was paving the way in Aries, and Neptune in Aries can bring out the Sirens and Cyclopes. He can bring out the fight for independence.
He is in a wide t-square with Venus in Capricorn and Uranus in Cancer. Venus in Capricorn can hold the mes, and Uranus in Cancer can shake her foundation. But their opposition has an orb of more than 10 degrees, and their focus is on Neptune, abiding by the mes, loyal to the sea passage, keeping the way clear of obstructions.
The Uranus transit in Taurus has shown where improvements are needed.
A branch of ancient astrology says that a person’s creation is in the tenth house, and that the sign in the tenth becomes the creation’s Ascendant sign. If we follow this line of thought, the Ascendant sign for Lesseps’ Canal would be Aquarius.
They say that Pluto in the fourth house can cause disruption in the chart holder’s place of living. He can make the chart holder move, not to a foreign place, but somewhere in the vicinity.
It played out differently for the Canal in 1875, when Saturn transited Aquarius and Uranus transited Leo, the planets in a square to the natal stellium in Taurus.
Ismail Pasha who succeeded Said Pasha sold Egypt’s shares of the Canal to the British. To cover the country’s debt, he said. But he was having his Uranus opposition Uranus with Saturn involved, and there may have been personal reasons beneath the surface, personal debts.
He sold them the pelt, and it came with a club that can get rooted.
Hercules by Adamo Scultori
Tewfik Pasha succeeded Ismail Pasha. He faced an army rebellion in 1881 and asked for aid, and the British sent troops and the troops stayed.
Egypt was now not only under Ottoman rule, but became a protectorate of Great Britain.
During the time of Muhammad Ali Pasha, Egypt made ties with France, invited the French to train their army and modernize it, a powerful army that would expand Egyptian territory into Sudan. Muhammad Ali would try to expand north as well and take Syria from the Ottomans. He sought independence, but the French helped the Ottomans push him back, and Egypt remained part of the Sultanate. There were some concessions made. The Ottoman Sultan gave the Egyptian Viceroy the right to pass the title from father to son. It was no longer an appointed position based on arete, but an inherited position.
The French and the English.
When Egyptians looked at the Canal, they saw partners who used their expertise to dredge out debris from the Canal. They saw partners willing to protect the Canal from enemies. They could direct traffic and they could restrict traffic. Two flags of the same mind.
The generation born during the Saturn in Aquarius and Uranus in Leo opposition grew up and asked to be included.
Ismail Pasha had excluded Egypt during the transit, and people like Mustafa Kamil tried to repair the damage.
Chart for Mustafa Kamil, born August 14, 1874, Cairo, time unknown
He turned 22 in August 1896, when transiting Saturn and transiting Uranus were in Scorpio.
From October 1896 until the end of 1897, the two planets travelled with an orb of less than 5 degrees in Scorpio, conjoining 3 times in direct and retrograde motion in the last degrees of the sign.
Breaking a barrier in Scorpio where there were 2 flags.
What about our flag? he asked.
He stood with his natal Pluto in Taurus. Archaeological excavations were uncovering proof that Egyptians had lived all along the Nile from time immemorial. This land is Egyptian, he said. Our flag should be up there.
A nationalism was emerging based on territoriality and the uniqueness of being Egyptian.
The transit in Scorpio squared his natal Saturn and Uranus opposition in Aquarius and Leo, and he spoke on behalf of his people, the group he belonged to in the protectorate. He said that Orientals had as much reason as Europeans. Given the chance of an education, they were just as capable.
Like himself. He had studied law in Egypt and in France and taken up journalism, and his writings sent ripples. He wrote about lack of opportunity and injustice. He wrote to repair and he wrote to uproot.
He went to France to stir the pot, Mars Uranus can stir the pot, and he would go to Britain as well.
He created a poster with him handing a petition to France, personified by Marianne, asking her to help Egyptians, standing behind him, gain independence from Britain. Like other countries had gained independence.
In the foreground is a British soldier holding a sword and Egypt in chains. Between them is a lion. Some say it’s a British lion. Others would say that if it’s a British lion, it’s posing like an Egyptian.
In World War I, the Ottoman Empire sided with enemies. Egypt helped Britain fight enemies and protect the Suez Canal from enemies, cut ties. The Viceroy of Egypt would became Sultan of Egypt. A step away from becoming King.
Between July 31 and August 1, 1917, Saturn and Neptune conjoined in Leo, unblocking something in Leo, ruled by the Sun.
In Egypt the movement for independence grew, and in 1922 Britain terminated the protectorate and recognized Egypt as an independent state, without leaving.
Egypt would help Britain fight enemies again in World War II, this time not in labour camps but in the battlefield.
During the war, the generation born with Neptune Saturn in Leo and Uranus in Aquarius had their first Uranus square, from Taurus. Fourth house of the Suez Canal.
When the war ended, Egypt asked Britain to withdraw all troops, and Britain withdrew all troops to the Suez Canal Zone in 1947.
It gave the Egyptian army room to act. A group of officers formed the Free Officers Movement and led a coup in 1952. They abolished the monarchy and established the Republic of Egypt. Mohamed Naguib was the first president and Gamal Abdel Nasser became president in 1956.
Chart for Gamal Abdel Nasser, born January 15, 1918, Cairo, time unknown
Chart for July 26, 1956
The beginning of his Uranus opposition Uranus.
He couldn’t just go off into the forest with so many planets involved. He had to do something dramatic, something heroic, something that caused a panic.
He dug into Leo and brought back-
the club.
He nationalized the Suez Canal. British troops had already left the Canal Zone a month back, and they say nationalization was in the air. The Canal was meant to be nationalized anyway in 1968. But he did it in a way that marked the country’s independence, the Arab world’s independence with a bang.
There was something ad hoc about Nasser. He did what he had to do, and dealt with the consequences when they appeared.
The Suez Crisis by Graham Coton
Israel, France and Britain attacked to remove the man who defied them with self determination, the man who could control access to the Suez Canal not in their favour, the man who had dreams of a Pan Arabia.
The Canal’s Sun drew somebody to help.
Chart for Lester B. Pearson, born April 23, 1897, Toronto, time unknown
He was born when Uranus Saturn conjoined in Scorpio, breaking a barrier in Scorpio.
Nasser had put the Egyptian flag up in the Suez Canal when the British troops left, and now Egypt owned it.
Completion.
This time nobody had to prove that the territory was Egyptian, that Egypt had reason, and that Egypt had given back. Forced labour and labour camps, from the treasury and with their lives.
Pearson’s natal Mars touched the Canal’s natal Uranus, and he said, Give them back their identity.
He also said, Why don’t we put a peacekeeping force between Leo and Virgo. So they can run the Canal without another military crisis.
Zion.
Zionism.
Theodor Herzl gave it shape. He said assimilation wasn’t enough to protect Jews from persecution. They needed a state. The same level of protection accorded to other religions.
Chart for Theodor Herzl, born May 2, 1860, Pest, Hungary, Austrian Empire, time unknown
His work was in Leo. He took on the mantle of securing a state for his people through negotiation.
He managed to arrange a meeting with the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and made him an offer. The Jewish people would pay his empire’s foreign debt, he said, in exchange for a homeland in Palestine. The Sultan declined the offer.
He got an audience with the Pope and asked for his support, but the Pope said he couldn’t give his support because Jews did not accept the divinity of Christ.
He spoke with the German Emperor and the Prime Minister of the Russian Empire, and with the British Government.
The British Government offered him a portion of British East Africa and Herzl took the offer to the Zionist Congress, and the offer was declined.
He died without achieving his goal, but he brought attention to the plight of the Jews, the antisemitism and the pogroms, and gave legitimacy to their quest.
Zion by Ephraim Moses Lilien, 1903
Chart for the Balfour Declaration, November 2, 1917, London
It was printed in the papers and made public.
Venus was in Sag where ideas can be knitted into the social fabric. In Sag she can attract supporters. Over time.
The First World War wasn’t over yet. The Ottoman Empire had not lost yet. The League of Nations had not been created or formally adopted a British mandate for Palestine yet.
These things would happen between 1918 and 1922, but the national home for the Jewish people in Palestine would be left pending.
Unofficially, it was developing. Neptune Saturn had unblocked auto emancipation, the possibility of implementing self rule and creating a national consciousness.
Mars was in that place between two signs, Leo and Virgo, buffering, slowing things down, keeping them unofficial and preventing a military crisis, the kind that utopias can bring.
Britain had promised independence to the indigenous people living in Mandatory Palestine. The mandate was a transition toward independence.
Britain had promised independence to European Jews, to the Zionist leaders who claimed Palestine as the land of their ancestors, the historical land they occupied two thousand years earlier, before the Diaspora.
Zionism would turn into an underground movement in Palestine in the 1920s, attracting and recruiting Jews living in Palestine, Sephardic, and Jews coming from abroad, Ashkenazi. Paramilitary groups would form in that place between unofficial and official, between Leo where a reflection can change and Virgo where culture begins.
Haganah. Irgun. Lehi.
They became the Israel Defence Forces under Ben Gurion.
Chart for David Ben Gurion, born October 16, 1886, Płońsk, Poland, time unknown
Entanglement.
It begins in Gemini, this twinning. It can become a lobbying force in Libra, and an ideology in Aquarius, the lens through which we see the world and judge events.
In its purest form, an ideology can be utopian.
When he went to Palestine, he knew that Zionism would remain utopian if someone didn’t do some organizing. He became a labour organizer and helped establish the Histadrut in December 1920. He was secretary general of the Histadrut from 1921 to 1935. An organization that would look out for the interests of Jewish workers in Palestine. An organization that would see to their settlement, housing, education, health and welfare, and defense.
A base above ground.
Chart for December 1, 1920
Jupiter and Saturn conjoined in Virgo in September 1921, and they travelled together in Libra in 1922.
He transformed Zionism into Labour Zionism. The base above ground encouraged immigration, aliyah, with the promise of work, agricultural work in kibbutzim and moshavim.
There is agriculture in Virgo, and the rituals and festivals of every season, the foundation of culture.
There are margins in Virgo.
A conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn can be favourable for the creation of institutions. In Virgo they can be institutions that have to do with the margins. A marginalized people.
He lobbied wealthy Jewish communities in Europe and in the United States to finance the Histadrut. The aliyahs, the purchase of land, and the maintenance of the new communities until they became self sufficient.
He was building a state. The base above ground protected by the underground. It needed protection because the indigenous population, as some call it, or the Arab majority, as others call it, noticed and began to revolt.
Revolt destabilized the region to such an extent in the 1930s that Britain had to confront the two contradictory promises it had made.
avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/brwh1939.asp
The national home for Jews wasn’t pending anymore. Jews were now one third of the population in Palestine. To stabilize the region, further immigration would be curbed and land transfers restricted.
When the mandate ended in 10 years, they wished for one government for two peoples.
Chart for November 9, 1938
The wish to knit harmony between two peoples came with praise for what the Jewish people had achieved within the mandate.
Venus Mercury conjoined Ben Gurion’s natal Mars in Sag and it must have heartened him to hear the praise. He would disregard the White Paper as much as was possible and carry on restoring the Diaspora.
He could see that restoring the Diaspora would cause another, but he felt that Muslim Arabs had other lands to go to, whereas Jews had none.
There are children in Leo, the offspring of Abraham,
and there is heritage in Taurus, the promised land.
Hitler used these energies to uproot Jews from Germany. They were excluded from German citizenship. Only Germans of Germanic origin could be German citizens.
They were concentrated in the margins, in crowded ghettos, a prelude to deportation and genocide. The cleansing of the German race.
World War II was beginning, a time of making weapons, to protect clan, to protect an ideology, to win.
encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/film/protest-in-bergen-belsen-displaced-persons-camp-over-return-of-exodus-1947-passengers
After the war, the British would not remove the White Paper policy because of resistance from Muslim Arabs and Sephardic Jews. There were hundreds of thousands of displaced persons, Holocaust survivors, and they feared what would happen if they were all allowed in.
In response, the Zionist paramilitary groups revolted. They began to attack British infrastructure in Palestine. Railways, bridges and police stations were targeted.
King David Hotel bombing, July 22, 1946, Jerusalem
Ben Gurion was having his second Saturn return which coincides with a Jupiter return. In his chart Saturn and Jupiter are in a square, with Uranus and Venus. The creation of a state in an ingenious way. The defence of a state.
He had encouraged Jews to join the war and fight with the British, to get the training needed to build an army.
He could foresee that the independence of a Jewish state in Palestine would not be won without a fight.
He measured the ripples that the King David Hotel bombing created. It was time to stop the terrorism and begin training the IDF above the surface, in preparation for Britain’s departure.
Pluto was digging in Leo when Britain prepared to leave India and Palestine.
Britain handed the question of Palestine to the United Nations, and the United Nations came up with a partition plan. Two peoples with economic unity.
Uranus was in Gemini, where there can be unity between brothers.
Because so much of the land is desert, they could not cut Palestine in half fairly. The partition plan respected where the majority of Muslim Arabs lived and where the majority of Jews lived. It avoided displacement and encouraged unity.
The Muslim Arabs of the mandate, and the Muslim Arab states that had once been part of the Ottoman Empire rejected it. Zionist leaders accepted it.
Uranus was in Gemini, where there can be disunity between brothers until there is unity.
Chart for August 9, 1946
Venus and Mars conjoined at 29 degrees Virgo and travelled together in Libra for a month.
Virgo separates. Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy.
The All India Muslim League wanted a separate Muslim homeland when Britain left India.
Zionist leaders wanted a separate Jewish homeland when Britain left Palestine. Ben Gurion sought to legitimize a separate homeland.
Mercury, ruler of Virgo and Gemini, was in Leo. Hearthfire for a people united by religious culture. Religion defining them, and in the case of Zionism, historical land.
And now the Holocaust, the culmination of antisemitism and the pogroms.
Ben Gurion’s work was in Pisces, where there is raw material to form culture, where there is a war in the heavens and a place of refuge. Place of the unremembered dead.
In Virgo, Metanira built a temple to the goddess Demeter.
There would be a shrine for the unremembered dead in the promised land, Yad Vashem.
Israel would be the shrine.
Ben Gurion declared the new state of Israel on May 14, 1948 at 4 pm, before the Sabbath, and Britain’s mandate of Palestine ended at midnight.
Chart for May 15, 1948, Tel Aviv
Uranus in Gemini and Jupiter in Sag were in opposition, checking to see if something had come out of their previous conjunction.
They had been conjunct on May 8, 1941 in Taurus.
There is a labyrinth in the sign, to hide arms, plan a revolt, blow up infrastructure.
There is a labyrinth in the sign, places where people can hide, secret passageways to get them to safety.
There is rescue in Gemini and in Sag there is Pabilsag leading the way.
When Ben Gurion announced the establishment of Israel, he opened the doors to all Jews.
archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0514.html
War came. War defined the borders of the new country and triggered the Palestinian Diaspora.
Chart for May 14, 1948, 4 pm, Tel Aviv
A branch of ancient astrology says that a person’s creation is in the tenth house, and that the sign in the tenth becomes the creation’s Ascendant sign. If we follow this line of thought, and credit Ben Gurion with the creation of Israel, Capricorn would be his Ascendant.
At 4 pm, Capricorn was in Israel’s fourth house and Cancer in the tenth, and the rulers Saturn and the Moon in Leo in the eleventh house.
The laws that protect a people and their statehood tied to Leo where there are moral crossroads.
What is right and what is wrong is something the people of Israel have grappled with in their quest for statehood and its implementation.
What is right and what is wrong is something anyone studying the history of Zionism and the creation of Israel grapples with. So do partners of the country and open enemies.
youtube.com/watch?v=NnkOi7q4uI0
youtube.com/watch?v=dDpQLKQkbkY
He doesn’t tell the American people that Muslim Arabs and the Arab states would not accept the partition plan, that Israel had to fight a war after the declaration of independence, that lives were lost, and that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were driven away and not allowed to return.
It would add to the moral dilemma. The guilt of prejudice. The guilt of colonialism.
If religion is a set of morals, then religion may begin in Leo where there are moral crossroads.
There is fury in the sign, the madness Hera brought upon Hercules.
In a crisis, Mars in Leo can protect the rights of every child, every individual with fury. In the chart, he is in a stellium with the Moon at the lowest degree, tying him to Cancer and to every child, every individual in the land of Israel.
In 1967 Jupiter transited Leo.
Chart for June 5, 1967, timed to match Israel’s rising sign
The eleventh house is the house of pooled resources, and the biggest resource are the people. Ben Gurion once said he wanted pioneers to come to the land, to make the desert fertile and desalinate the water. But they would first have to do compulsory military service. During the Six Day War, they proved to be masters in warfare.
They didn’t wait for it. They struck first. Preemptive warfare.
They did what they could not do in Eastern and Western Europe. Defend themselves and their land. They changed their image from victims to players.
Pluto and Uranus were transiting Virgo, digging and creating something new in the twelfth house, house of secrets, house behind the scenes. Across from Virgo is Pisces in the sixth house, and there is war in Pisces. They prepared for war.
Pluto Uranus were in a square to the Sun and the natal planets in Gemini, Uranus and Mercury, in the ninth house, house of higher learning, house of going farther than we’ve been before.
Wherever Uranus is in the chart, we can invent something new. Wherever Mercury is, we can
The theft of Apollo’s cattle by John Rocco
They envisioned Operation Focus, planned it and trained for it.
Virgo in a square to Gemini, touching Mars and Saturn in the Libra Aries polarity, carried it out successfully.
An Operation to be analyzed and to learn from. Set as an example.
A war that changed the culture.
ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/olj/sa/sa_00naf01.html
When Jupiter transited Leo in 1967, the country asserted its right to exist. Jupiter’s transit trined the third house in Sag, tying Israel to its neighbours.
Jupiter would join natal Pluto and Saturn at the bending of the nodes, and there came structural change.
The nodes are in the Scorpio Taurus polarity. There is responsibility of clan and nation building in this polarity, in the second and eighth house, house of the country’s resources and other people’s resources.
Nation building relies on resources pooled for the group, and a new industry arose to provide for the group.
Nation building relies on resolving crises.
In a crisis we reach for Mars and the eighth house. The eighth house can tell us the nature of the crisis we may attract, and offer solutions to resolve it.
Taurus in the eighth house. There is heritage in Taurus, the body and the earth, a sea passage and Talos forged by Hephaestus. There is King Minos and the sacred bull, the Minotaur and Daedalus and Ariadne.
Taurus in the eighth house, with Venus, ruler of Taurus and Libra, in Cancer.
The Sun joining Taurus with Leo.
The Six Day War did not bring peace, and the country would give land back in return for peace, and there would be assassinations on both sides.
The country kept East Jerusalem, and occupied the West Bank and Gaza, what was left of Palestine.
Because it was historical land. Because of the Balfour Declaration. Because of security concerns.
The military occupation brought cultural change and it created a new marginality.
A marginality that came to support a crusading culture.
Chart for May 15, 1948, Tel Aviv, 12 am
The British mandate of Palestine ended at midnight on May 14, 1948, and it left Palestinians stateless.
The contract in Leo in the seventh house ended. Tied to the Sun in Taurus, to structural change that would give them a homeland. Left unrealized. Given up to atone for the sins of others.
But the Sun with Rahu doesn’t dissolve easily.
Today, Jupiter and Uranus are transiting Taurus. They will conjoin at 21 degrees Taurus in April, and touch the natal Sun in the chart.
Perhaps they will dissolve it.
Perhaps not.
Hopefully for the children in Palestine, and the children of the Diaspora, there will be a country called Palestine, even if it’s small, that controls its own resources and justice system, to stop supporting the crusading culture and their own marginality. In the Pisces Virgo polarity.
Because the children have been handed this chart, the memories of a lake, and they have been twinning and lobbying for Palestine, like the Jewish people did for Zion.
cbc.ca/news/world/israeli-reservists-1.7003046
Chart for the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, December 23, 2016
Jupiter and Uranus conjoined in the place between Pisces and Aries, the last degrees of Pisces, the beginning of Aries, in 2010. The place where Helle fell back into the waters and Phrixos carried on.
In 2010 Palestinians asked Israel to define its borders so they could define their own. Israel said that it wouldn’t define its borders or stop Jewish settlements in the West Bank until Palestinians recognized Israel.
We’ve recognized Israel, answered the Palestinians.
Israel as a Jewish state, said Israel.
Not when 20 percent are Arabs, said the Palestinians. It would compromise their rights.
Israel’s need to be recognized as a Jewish state by its neighbours.
In Israel’s chart, Libra is in the first house and Aries in the seventh. Statehood and Phrixos. Partners that recognize Israel’s right to exist. Partners that will defend Israel in a crisis.
Mars, ruler of Aries, is in Leo,
in a trine to Jupiter in Sag in the third house, house of neighbours, every neighbour a Pabilsag, and Israel seen as one as well.
Trines get along like family members get along. Sometimes they fight, and when they fight, Mars and Jupiter can enflame.
But there is a trining bond between them, an understanding.
In Israel’s chart, Libra in the first and Aries in the seventh.
In 2016, transiting Jupiter and Uranus asked
Are you done building your state?
Have they recognized you yet?
You are done, said Saturn, transiting over Israel’s natal Jupiter. He brought restriction and advised that the energy of the house be used to do something groundbreaking, like the establishment of a new neighbour and a new partner.
The restriction came in the form of UN resolution 2334. Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank are illegal. Stop the transfer of Israeli settlers, the confiscation of land, the demolition of homes, the displacement of Palestinians. Stop construction.
nytimes.com/2016/12/23/world/middleeast/israel-settlements-un-vote.html
Neptune was paving the way in Pisces, and Mars was transiting Pisces. Poetry. The United Nations found the right words for the resolution, and Israel found the right words to respond.
It responded with the Basic Law proposal in 2011. Israel is the nation state of Jewish people. The bill passed into law in 2018.
timesofisrael.com/knesset-votes-contentious-jewish-nation-state-bill-into-law/
Changing the culture without defining borders, and continuing construction.
Jewish settlements aren’t on neighbouring land, said Israel. They’re in the fourth house, on historical land.
The United States proceeded to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
That left Gaza.
The day Notre Dame burned, April 15, 2019
They say the fire revealed so much about ancient carpentry and the use of iron staples in Gothic architecture. Even about medieval climate by analyzing the burnt wood.
They are using the same techniques to rebuild her, the same material, but with upgrades and modern tools. She will look the way she did before. The spirit of the times in Taurus. Preserving heritage.
cbsnews.com/news/notre-dame-fire-exposes-long-hidden-iron-inside-paris-landmark/
Chart for May 1, 2021
In May 2021, archaeologists detected unmarked graves in an old school, and brought new attention to Canada’s history of residential schools.
The country came together to listen to the stories of survivors, and their stories entered the lake of memories and changed the lake.
Chart for October 7, 2023
The war on Hamas has made the world pay new attention to the Palestinian Israeli problem. The history of how it all began, and how Gaza became an open air prison.
There are prisons in Taurus. There is a labyrinth where a Minotaur is fed the youth of Athens. There is Daedalus held captive in Crete by King Minos. He could not escape by land or by sea, so he would escape by air. He studied birds and made wings, a pair for himself and a pair for his son Icarus.
Temporary escape by Sliman Mansour, 2019
Gaza is the size of Las Vegas with a population of 2.2 million. Surrounded by prohibited waters and a high tech fortified fence with entries that are directly or indirectly controlled by Israel.
Hamas breached the wall, killing and kidnapping Israelis, and bragged about it. One up on Israel.
youtube.com/watch?v=4iCsh1vLyns
In this war there is no moral compass guiding either side.
soundcloud.com/user-987348032/the-labors-of-herculesmadness-and-penance
There is the formation of personality and identity in Leo, and Venus in Leo can form it with Libra, putting up barriers and breaking barriers, and with Taurus, imprisoning and freeing prisoners.
Identities formed in a culture of prisons. Walls. Preventive arrests. Violence in exchange for prisoners.
Absent presence by Sliman Mansour, 2018
Like Chiron, Venus in Leo can ask that we mind who we blame. Do the work of Taurus, she says,
and Jupiter and Uranus compel us to do the work. To provide food and shelter and security.
Do the work of Libra, she says. Libra, the solar sign. Where morality plays a part in the chart. The Sun, carrier of the moral compass.
There is statehood in Libra, and Mars joins Libra with Aries, where there is the right to exist.
Pluto in Capricorn and the Moon in Cancer are at the bending of nodes, in Libra and Aries.
To study the history of a people. The flood story of Jews of the Diaspora. The flood story of Palestinian Christians, Muslims and Jews.
They say that if we make it though a crisis, we enter the ninth house of wisdom.
In the unsettled chart, Virgo is in the eighth and Libra is in the ninth. From the margins to statehood, with Aries in the third house. Neighbours given the right to exist, and neighbours that give the right to exist.
In Israel’s chart, Taurus is in the eighth and Gemini is in the ninth, with neighbours that can advocate for themselves and each other.
Gemini rules youth, youthful sign. In the ninth house, Gemini rules university students and professors, think tanks and people who offer solutions to old problems, pragmatic sign.
It is a connecting sign, building bridges between people.
Mercury in Gemini joins Gemini with Virgo in the twelfth house, working behind the scenes, building bridges between cultures behind the scenes.
Uranus will make his first entry into Gemini in July 2025, and settle down in May 2026.
archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/world/042898israel-mural.html
Pluto made his first entry into Aquarius in 2023. He was at 0 degrees, in that place between two signs that Mercury rules, from March 24 till June 11. He stood under the lintel before retrograding back into Capricorn.
There are the bones that hold us up in Capricorn, and the ideals that form a society in Aquarius.
Earlier that year, in January, the government had proposed judicial reforms.
They would change her society. They would reduce the power of the judiciary and increase the power of a government allied with Orthodox parties. She didn’t want religious laws replacing democracy and governing her.
Chart for August 13, 1982
She was born on this day.
Something woke in her when Uranus began his transit in Taurus, a sense of responsibility toward the women of her society, the laws that protect them against violence, biased laws. She became an activist. She brought women together and founded Bonot Alternativa, Women Building an Alternative.
There is faithfulness in her chart, faithfulness to the women who came before her, women who fought for equal rights and raised consciousness.
When she read about the judicial reforms, she felt fear. There is prophecy in Libra. She could envision what kind of society the reforms could create.
The moral obligation to stop them rose in her, and she reached across her solar sign for medicine.
Aquarius offered her an archetype that women would recognize, and she wove the archetype into her activism.
youtube.com/watch?v=BwGcb7aMmvI
A visual representation that made people put two and two together. If the Supreme Court’s power to declare government decisions unreasonable was taken away, the government would have no checks and balances, no way.
There were protests and strikes and people blocking the roads, and the handmaids holding her chart.
On March 24, Transiting Pluto stood under the lintel and history seemed to stop. Nothing other than the judicial reforms mattered. Under the lintel, Pluto lets Mercury handle what matters, and Mercury in her chart is in Virgo. There is judgement in Virgo. This is right, this needs correcting, and this is wrong.
There is the people’s court in Gemini, the other sign he rules. Let the people decide, and the people said, Scrap the reforms.
A hundred thousand people.
Two hundred thousand.
For heaven’s sake, cried the defense minister. These reforms are causing a rift in our society! They are a tangible threat to the nation’s security! Put an end to it!
You’re fired, said the prime minister.
More people joined the protests, tech people and doctors.
I resign, said the country’s consul general in New York. In the name of democracy.
For the sake of unity, for the sake of responsibility, stop the legislation, the president told the prime minister.
Members of the prime minister’s coalition threatened to resign if he stopped the legislation.
Diplomats joined the protests.
I’ll shelve it for a month, the prime minister said in June.
youtube.com/watch?v=vLI_qi_0bxo
The protests continued until October 7, when all non emergency legislature was frozen.
On January 22, Pluto will be under the lintel again.
The painter at work, fresco, Pompeii, 1st century AD
The last time Pluto transited Aquarius was between 1778 and 1798,
with Uranus in Gemini, Cancer, Leo, and Virgo.
Chart for March 13, 1781, Bath, UK
On this day, Herschel waited until the stars were out to look at the sky with his homemade telescope.
He observed Uranus. It couldn’t be a star because it travelled. A comet, then. But it had no coma and no tail. He would need consensus before he could classify it as a planet, so he took his findings to the astronomical society.
They studied Uranus and found him tilted on one side. A troublemaker.
A boundary breaker. Twice as far as Saturn is from the Sun. He expanded the solar system.
You think there are more?
Things come in threes. Three deaths. Why not three discoveries?
We’ll need better telescopes.
The public’s going to want them too. Have a share in the mysteries.
What will we name him?
After the king, of course.
They’re all named after Olympians and Titans. Can’t have Jupiter, Saturn and George.
Uranus.
Uranus didn’t mind the gap in Taurus.
Look what came of it. Maybe that’s his destiny, not to mind the gap. A risk taker. A freedom fighter.
I feel lighter, like he’s released us from stagnation. The stagnation of antiquity!
He’s opened up the sky.
Uranus or the telescope?
silence
Both. The gods made us, didn’t they? Stole the fire to make us.
The last time Uranus transited Aquarius was between 1996 and 2003.
Chart for February 22, 1997
On this day, Dolly was announced to the world. The first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell, a mammary gland cell, and not an embryonic cell.
An experiment that raised ethical concerns.
The scientific community had to explain why cloning Dolly was of benefit to people, and not people’s worst nightmare materializing.
Well, we wanted to see if an adult cell with a specific task could de-differentiate and do what embryonic cells do, which is to create a Dolly.
And now that we know that it can, we will focus our attention on stem cell research, you know, growing cells in the lab, and figuring out how we can help patients with, let’s say, organ damage. Could we introduce some of these de-differentiated cells, reprogram them, so to speak, to help repair the damage.
We’re a long way from growing livers and lungs in the lab, but wouldn’t it be wonderful for transplant patients? Chances of the body rejecting the organ would be minimized.
No, no, we wouldn’t clone people for organs. We’re in this business to extend life, not to create a dystopia. Dolly has brought to light the ethical implications of this field of study, and we will abide by the principles and guidelines that I’m sure are being put into place as we speak.
isscr.org/guidelines
Pluto and Uranus have danced together in Aquarius once since the birth of Christ. In the Current Era. Between the years 70 and 77.
The siege of Jerusalem was in the year 70, during the First Jewish Roman War.
Josephus was taken captive during the war and became a translator and guide for the Romans.
He was granted his freedom and settled in Rome under the name of Flavius Josephus.
Chart for January 1, 71, the year Flavius Josephus began to write The Jewish War (Judean War)
He completed his work in 75 and left us a primary source of history.
Chart for January 1, 75
youtube.com/watch?v=u2M3IeQLEjs
There are conventions in Aquarius, most socialized sign in the zodiac.
The conventional way of writing a eulogy.
The conventional way of writing history, in the third person.
Josephus was a priest, aristocratic and educated, and of value to the Roman Emperor during the war.
He wrote an account of the war for a Roman audience of his class, accurate and true, he said, and he abided by the conventions of his time and place. But he made it entertaining. Entertaining at the expense of the Romans, and entertaining at the expense of the Jews.
He tells of the orderliness of the Roman army unable to deal with the disorderliness of the Jews. How it distressed them. In brackets he adds that it made the Romans feel ashamed to be made to run away by the Jews, and when at any time they made the Jews run away, their heavy armour would not let them pursue them very far, whereas the Jews managed to get away without getting hurt.
He tells of the siege. How the Romans cast great stones over the walls, stones that were white and easily seen by their brightness. So when the watchmen on the towers heard the engine go and a stone launched, they’d cry, The Stone Cometh! and the Jews would get out of harm’s way. The Romans then contrived how to prevent this, by painting the stones black.
Pluto and Uranus were in Aquarius, breaking down old conventions and creating new ones, an overhaul of societal conventions. Josephus introduced the element of entertainment to tell of a war that he participated in and witnessed.
Enemies outwitting each other. They both had flaws and great courage. They suffered. The Jews fought without sparing either body or soul.
He did it with an agenda in mind. To elevate the ones that lost.
They say he was born in the year 37.
Without a specific date, we can only consider the slower moving planets, and in 37,
Pluto was in Sag, Uranus and Saturn were in Virgo, Jupiter was in Libra until October and in Scorpio in November and December, and Neptune was paving the way in Aquarius.
Digging in Sag and breaking barriers in Virgo.
In his autobiographical text Vita, written in the 90s, he tells that when he was 26, he took a voyage to Rome to plead for the release of priests sent there in bonds by the procurator of Judea. He knew the priests and could vouch for them.
He tells that the ship he travelled in was shipwrecked in the Adriatic Sea, and out of 600 passengers, 80 survived the night and were rescued by another ship. He resumed his journey by land and met Aliturius, an actor of plays, but a Jew by birth, beloved by the Caesar Nero and his wife Poppea. It was through Aliturius that he succeeded in his mission. Poppea not only had the priests set free, but also sent him back with presents.
After introducing his family in Vita, this is the one event he speaks of before telling of the Jewish War and clarifying his position in it.
He was part of a generation attracted to what was foreign, a generation involved in cultural exchange and cultural assimilation, in peace and in war.
They say that given the choice to live or die, he chose to live, and here came his detractors. He not only chose to live, but went to live in the other camp. They may or may not have seen what he did in Aquarius, that he included them in history and counterbalanced the triumph of Titus. It wasn’t a war easily won.
Titus had his book kept in the imperial library where it was copied and disseminated.
He went on to write the Antiquities of the Jews, the story of their origins from the time of god’s creation up until the twelfth year of Nero’s reign. It is a compilation and selection of what is written in the sacred books of the Jews and other accounts, as well as what happened in Josephus’ present time.
A survey.
An encyclopedic survey.
They say that the gospel writers, Luke in particular, may have borrowed the format of the Antiquities to write the gospels.
He went from the puncturing humour that can be Scorpio’s, to the more serious tone in the Antiquities, to the defensive tone in Vita, where he responded to accusations of being a traitor and defended his reputation.
The Sun progresses.
Ideally,
the Jupiter Saturn conjunction in Sag touched him in some way, touched his progressed sun, let’s say, and then transited over his natal Pluto, marking his work as a work of influence, a work written for foreigners of his time, and foreigners to the First Century.
The Jupiter Saturn conjunction was at 10 degrees Sag on October 29 of the year 74.
In the year 74, he was 37 years old.
37 degrees from his natal Sun.
Conjectural chart for Josephus, born October 28 of the year 37, Judea
Jupiter was transiting Virgo when he began writing The Jewish War, the sign that can make corrections. In his preface he says that his intention was to correct the inaccuracies being told about the war and about Jews.
Jupiter was transiting Sag when he finished, the sign that can search for truth. He ended the book saying that he had been faithful to truth.
Writing activated the sextile to the grand stellium in Scorpio, brought him to life. Transiting Saturn gave him courage, but warned him to keep his audience in mind.
Words began to flow, to pour out, an endless stream of words about his clan.
It can happen when Jupiter and Mercury touch. It can happen when they are together like they are in this stellium. Like they were in the house of Baucis and Philemon, where Baucis saw that no matter how many times she poured wine from the pitcher, the pitcher was always full.
‘I am afraid there will not be half enough supper’ by Walter Crane
There is betrayal in Scorpio. A sense of betrayal when someone moves away from the clan, like Artemis was moving away, hunting with Orion. A sense of betrayal when Apollo saw that Orion wronged his sister. A sense of betrayal when Artemis heard from her brother that Orion had wronged her.
Initiations moved him away from the clan, a shipwreck, captivity, and he became an outsider.
In charge of the narrative.
Mercury Mars can entertain the public.
They can rescue,
and he tells that he repeatedly warned those who wanted to revolt that the force of the Romans and their martial skills were too powerful to beat. Not all of Judea wanted to revolt, only a group, and because of this group of zealots, calamity fell upon them all. He tells of strategy and how many Roman legions were needed to put down the revolt. Of the sallies of Jews and of the siege. How Titus sent Josephus (in the third person) to ask them to give in, but they wouldn’t give in. Of the famine that ensued, a gory story of a mother roasting her child for food. He tells of the pillaging and the burning of the temple and the taking of slaves.
An authority on the war,
from a province of the Roman Empire.
During his time, provinces of the Empire had their own gods and temples. The worship of local gods did not interfere with Empire.
They say that the word religion as we understand it today did not exist in those days. Worship went hand in hand with rituals and customs and locality.
Provinces were separate in this sense, but bound together by Roman administration and Roman laws.
Chart for October 30 of the year 63
The priests he went to rescue, the time that he was in a shipwreck, did not agree with some of the laws.
Freed Priest #1 Revolt, I say, to be ruled by the laws of Moses.
Freed Priest #2 Hear, hear! Money to the Temple!
Priest Josephus Are you blind? They are learned in the art of war. They will crush us.
Freed Priest #2 Have you no faith, Josephus? You’ve sold your soul to the devil. Drop those presents!
Priest Josephus No! Let go! (pause) There must be another way of going about this. When has a revolt got anyone anywhere? We must break that pattern. (pause) I know. I’ll write a book. Tell our story. Explain our rituals, our clothing, our food-
Freed Priest #1 What will your book do that the sacred writings haven’t done?
Priest Josephus To begin with, it won’t be in Aramaic. My book will be in Greek, language of the learned in Rome, and it won’t be obtuse and hard to decipher.
Freed Priest #1 A popular book!
Priest Josephus Why not? It will work- It will work-
Mercury Psychologically.
Priest Josephus It will work in quiet ways, in the back of the mind, to be seen as a separate lake with its own laws.
Freed Priest #1 And how long will that take! Revolt, I say! War!
Freed Priest #2 Hear, hear!
Chart for September 8 of the year 69
So Josephus wrote about the Jewish War first, doing the work in Cancer, and added the war to the Empire’s lake of memories.
He began in 71 and finished in 75, and then went on to write the Antiquities of the Jews.
Chart for February 11 of the year 77
Aquarius rules the peripheries and an empire can stretch to the peripheries. It can stretch from Capricorn to Aquarius, where provinces can be separate, but bound together by the same laws.
This was a time when Rome was rethinking how to administer the peripheries, how to pool resources from the peripheries and how to police them.
Should they have the same gods must have come up.
Hadrian born in 76 would pick this up and try to Hellenize the Empire.
Meanwhile in 77, Josephus gathered material about his clan, and figured out how to tell its story, the format it should take, a linear story that progressed through time, cohesive. The linear story of a clan that got its laws from a mountaintop.
Some call them moral laws.
A code of conduct.
Moses on Mount Sinai by Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1895
And instructions on how to build the Tabernacle. The conventional way.
He gave a clan history, like an island growing roots. He turned cultural practices into conventions. A clan becoming a social group. Aliturius, an actor of plays and a Jew.
The word religion came later.
There’s magic in religion.
There’s magic in every sign.
Josephus tells of magic. He tells that when people were hungry, Moses spoke to god, and manna rained from the heavens.
The gathering of manna by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, 1770
Pluto and Uranus have not danced in Scorpio in the current era. We will discover more about the sign when they do, in the 2200s.
Chart for January 1, 2231
The last time Pluto was in Scorpio. He began his entry in 1983 and settled in 1985, and began his exit in 1995.
Chart for October 31, 1984, the day Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of India was assassinated
The state of Punjab in India.
Sikh militants seeking an independent Punjab took refuge in their Temple, fortified it. They had weapons and supplies, ready for a siege. But the army went in to get them. They were considered terrorists.
In retaliation, Indira Gandhi’s Sikh bodyguards assassinated her,
and anti-Sikh violence erupted in the country when people heard the news.
In retaliation for the violence against Sikhs, the bomb in Air India 182 and the bomb at a terminal in Narita International Airport, meant for Air India 301.
There is a natural inclination in Scorpio to feel beneath the surface.
There is an underworld in Scorpio. Internal.
There are things that are internal in a family, that only family members understand, about each other, living together, knowing, sensing.
There are things that are internal in a country, that only people who have lived together for centuries understand.
Pluto and the Sun in Scorpio can bring to the surface internal matters that involve the moral crossroads, to be investigated and dealt with. In privacy, hermetic.
Uranus Venus in Sagittarius want a tableau. They can fight for a cause. Take it abroad.
cbc.ca/news/politics/indian-minister-concerned-about-sikh-extremists-in-canada-1.1266184
Chart for January 2, 1979, the day Jagmeet Singh was born, leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada
He was born the last time Uranus transited Scorpio, between 1974 and 1982.
His work is in Pisces, and Pisces gave him a tabula rasa to work with, the Ontario government. He explains to the Ontario government that the anti-Sikh violence of 1984 has been written about as spontaneous riots that erupted between Hindus and Sikhs, Muslims and Sikhs. Nothing farther from the truth, he says. Hindus and Muslims helped their Sikh neighbours.
The anti-Sikh violence was a state sponsored genocide, he says. To call it a genocide would clarify that it was organized by the government of India, by elected officials in the government.
youtube.com/watch?v=4hL1iF2Nv40
The Ontario government voted down the motion, but he persevered.
facebook.com/jagmeetndp/videos/mpp-singh-on-1984-sikh-genocide/1289511557763088/
His Moon in Pisces blurs the line between homelands, and he speaks to his homeland about his other homeland in a language that his homeland is familiar with, the language of multiculturalism and the language of truth and reconciliation.
And he got the Ontario government to pass the motion.
There are reasons why this is a delicate situation for the government of India. There are reasons why India has a military presence in the region. There are reasons why Jagmeet Singh was denied a visa to India in 2013.
youtube.com/watch?v=wnU45bVDqek
youtube.com/watch?v=5WR6nZvsh-U
He digs in Libra. Libra is not a sign of trade, land for peace. There was more to land for peace. There was an oil embargo that pressured Israel to exchange land for peace. It’s a sign of alliances.
He does not disturb his alliance with the Sikh community.
He says that even though Air India happened, we have to keep in mind what Sikhs have been through, what they went through in 1984.
He says his goal is to move to a place of peace and reconciliation by understanding the realities and complexity of the situation.
He will continue going to these rallies to help people channel pain and trauma into something positive, transform it into something positive.
LIke he did.
There’s a healer in Scorpio.
Despite all that happened in 1984,
mha.gov.in/sites/default/files/2022-08/Nanavati-I_eng_3%5B1%5D.pdf
he was able to pay attention to the stories of good neighbours.
He told the Ontario government that there were good neighbours, and all that happened was the government’s fault, and should therefore be called a genocide.
A genocide can be carried out by a mob and not just a State. As a lawyer, he knows this. He read out the elements that constitute a genocide, and State sponsored isn’t one of them.
A genocide doesn’t imply there were good neighbours.
Uranus Venus in his chart conjoin the stellium in Scorpio in the chart of October 31, 1984.
Pluto and the Sun in Scorpio can bring to the surface internal matters that involve morality, to be investigated. Scorpio is a psychological sign. It wants to know about Sikh Hindu relations in 1980s. It wants to know what caused the breakup of the State when Indira Gandhi’s death was announced. Why the police joined the mob. How to prevent this in the future.
If the analysis dies down, Uranus Venus bring it back to life.
reddit.com/r/canada/comments/854f4r/jagmeet_singhs_2015_speech_at_khalistani_rally/?rdt=49184
Sikhs were targeted, but the Sikh rises from the ashes stronger than before.
He chooses to speak in a Khalistan rally. Fighting for Khalistan is where it all began. A constant re-wounding.
Uranus Venus in Scorpio sextile the Sun Mars in Capricorn, and he stirs the pot. Where were the lawmakers when the genocide happened? What will we tell our children?
Uranus Venus in Scorpio sextile Saturn in Virgo, breaking a barrier in how the anti-Sikh riots are perceived and calling it a genocide. California and Ontario already have. How many more before India does.
To have a day of mourning.
Maybe India has done this in a way that is foreign to him. There is terrible shame for what happened on October 31, 1984, and for the country to move forward together, India points the arrow at the future and calls it Unity Day.
Today, Jupiter and Uranus are transiting Taurus, and Jagmeet Singh is going through his Uranus opposition Uranus with Jupiter involved. He has punctured India and specifically the current prime minister of India during his Uranus opposition Uranus. He blurred the line between a potential allegation and factual truth because Artemis heard from Apollo that Orion had wronged her.
He did not speak in the official languages of Canada which are English and French, at least not in this video clip.
youtube.com/watch?v=u44GDCuPJ0I
He spoke in the languages of the Khalistan rallies, English and Punjabi. He was addressing his clan.
There is the responsibility of clan in the Taurus Scorpio polarity.
Taking responsibility.
There is a war in the heavens in Pisces, a war in the soul between homelands. He’s taken the war from a provincial level to a federal level.
There is Dike’s judgement in Virgo.
There is the possibility of dissolving judgement to do the work of the square between Saturn in Virgo and Neptune Mercury in Sagittarius.
A conversation about introducing a moment of silence for the fallen on the day of unity.
In the natural zodiac, Sagittarius carries the energy of the ninth house, the house that comes after a crisis, the release of the scorpion.
To have a conversation would require a change of mindset and a visa.
Pluto can help with that.
He is beginning his transit through Aquarius, and will oppose Jagmeet Singh’s natal Jupiter in Leo in the years to come. To help him rise above his personal story and look at the whole picture, all the children hurt by the violence in this story.
Planet of initiations. Shaman of the zodiac. Come to prepare him for the next stage of his life.
He has forged his identity as a Sikh in Canada, painstakingly. A Sikh of the highest standard, hearthfire for other Sikhs. He says that someone once asked him if he was wearing a bandage for a head injury. He was a victim, but not anymore. Now he’s the leader who wears a turban.
Sign of friendship, Leo. He cannot see it yet, that he may one day repair the broken friendship between two homelands.
The phoenix by Cornelis Troost, 1720
Constantine I was born on February 27, as early as 272 CE.
Chart for February 27, 272 CE, Naissus, Roman Empire
We can only be sure of the Sun in Pisces and Pluto in Sag, and that the Pisces Virgo and Sag Gemini polarities played a part in his life.
Gordon Doherty doesn’t question the year Constantine was born. He questions who the man was.
gordondoherty.co.uk/writeblog/constantine-the-man
Chart for February 20, 1978, the day Gordon was born
He mentions the scars Constantine’s father must have left on the young Constantine when he divorced his mom,
and we see that the Black Moon in the 272 chart conjoins his natal Saturn in Leo in opposition to Mercury in Aquarius.
There is discipline here, discipline in getting at the truth.
The morality involved in scholarship.
Saturn and Mercury trine and sextile his natal Jupiter in Gemini conjunct the Black Moon.
A professor may have once shamed him for poor scholarship, not checking the facts, and it must have activated discipline in him, and woken up his Sun at a lower degree than Venus,
to strip the myths and legends surrounding historical figures.
Venus in Pisces at a lower degree than the Sun in the 272 chart can envelop the chart holder in myths and legends,
and the Black Moon in Leo draws Gordon to carefully strip, to consider the wounded child.
Truth ends in Aquarius. Reason and truth.
In Pisces everything globs together, fact and fiction, the real and the imagined. All is one in Pisces. Of equal value.
Gordon was shamed into getting at the facts before embarking on fictional journeys, flights of the imagination.
Constantine lied. Not maliciously. But Valeria didn’t smell right, and it was improper to say that she didn’t, so he picked up his father’s story and said that he couldn’t marry her because he was in love with a woman of low birth and a Christian to top it off.
He thought this would get him off the hook, that Galerius would drop him as a potential suitor for his daughter or anyone else.
He didn’t realize that he had attracted danger to himself, until his mother told him.
Chart for February 27, 303, the year Constantine refused the hand of Valeria
The Moon at the bending of the nodes.
A mother who understood power play in the Roman Empire.
“Son, you shouldn’t lie.”
“I wasn’t lying, mother. I was saving myself.”
“I have sent word to your father that you’ve been excluded here and are in need of refuge.” She reached for the woman standing behind her, “This is Minervina, the woman you love. She will back your story.”
Constantine took Minervina’s hand and brought it to his nose, and kissed it.
“Pack your things. You leave tonight.”
He was usually more intelligent about the stories he told, entertaining. His natal Saturn R in Virgo would pinch him before he could tell a story that would change the order of things.
But Neptune was transiting Virgo, clouding his brain and dissolving the power of Saturn, dissolving the order of things and paving the way for a new order, and he was involved, whether he liked it or not.
He was a solar Pisces, and may have been a Pisces rising, because Jupiter’s transit brought him a gift of danger to his person, and a gift that returned him to the Sun, his father.
In time before his father died.
He died in 306. They say that by then Constantine had proven his prowess in the military. In the Pisces Virgo t-square with Gemini there is mobility, shapeshifting flexibility, quick thinking and endurance. The rulers are in the Aquarius Leo polarity. Mercury gathering information in Aquarius, terrain, layout, organization, and Jupiter in Leo can take the information gathered and be decisive, like his mother was when she held his chart. The army hailed him as the one to replace his father, the next Caesar, and the army had a say in the Roman Empire.
Maxentius came to acknowledge him, Maxentius who married Valeria.
“Tolerance,” said Constantine. “The key to unity.”
His natal Pluto was in that place between two signs, Scorpio and Sag, and this was the beginning of him tying Christianity, a religion he was familiar with and a religion that was taboo, to the fabric of society.
Pluto digging in that place that Mercury rules, to create something new with Uranus in Gemini, unity between brothers.
His natal Mars in Gemini too, freedom loving in the sign. Freedom of worship.
“I will co-sign an edict of tolerance,” said Maxentius, “if you prove your brotherhood to me.”
“How?”
“Fausta!” Maxentius called.
Fausta entered the hall.
“Will you take my sister’s hand?”
Chart for March 31, 307, the day Constantine married Fausta
He did to his son what his father had done to him, the son he had with Minervina, Crispus.
“You’re no better than your father. Self serving-“
“I wouldn’t be where I am if my father hadn’t served himself!”
“You betray your son!”
“He will be raised here. I will keep you close.”
“Fausta won’t allow it. She will cast me aside.”
“A sacrifice meant to help your kind.”
“Has he signed?”
“Yes. The Caesars of the west will set an example of tolerance.”
“Not as long as Rome is the capital of the Empire.”
“Why not?”
“It’s the seat of the Olympian gods.”
“Are you suggesting I move the capital-“
“Constantine, do you believe in Christ?”
“Minervina, stop trying to convert me!”
“I’m not! I’m trying to understand you.”
“I’ve told you before. It’s all interesting to me, to explore, as an intellectual pursuit. These beliefs, they are constructs. Look at Christianity! It’s being constructed as we speak! To be sure, they give us structure to live good lives and do the right thing. But a Caesar can’t always live a good life. Matters of survival. (pause) What you said, about moving the capital. I’d like to have the power one day to do that, see what happens. What an experiment it would be!”
A knock on the door.
“It’s time.”
The marriages of Constantine and Fausta and of Constantia and Licinius by Peter Paul Rubens, 1622
Chart for October 28, 312, the day of the Battle of the Milvian Bridge
There is a cross in the 272 chart.
Venus and the Sun in Pisces in opposition to Saturn R in Virgo hold still, create a still environment, unchanging.
Neither Minervina nor Fausta could influence him. He would not allow it. He remained steadfast in his personal beliefs, a worshiper in his own temple.
There is a natural inclination for the mysteries in Scorpio, the undercurrents.
There is a natural inclination for the world of dreams in Cancer.
There is a natural inclination for messages of the unremembered dead in Pisces.
More primitive than religion, the omens and oracles of the earth and of the dead, ancient guides. Their meaning, personal.
There is a cross in the 272 chart.
A stillness crossed by Pluto stepping into Sag in the tenth house. The first Emperor to tie Christianity, a new mystery, to the fabric of society.
A stillness crossed by Mars Uranus in Gemini in the fourth house. He awakened the hoi polloi to the new mystery. A saviour.
He didn’t get the reputation for either of these things until his Uranus opposition Uranus.
Before that, he was busy saving himself, moving from mother to father and reinventing himself. He had lately been considering how moving the capital could potentially increase tolerance for the new mystery, the new belief in the Empire, so that people could live together in peace,
when Maxentius began to goad him.
“It’s going to be you or him ruling the west,” said Fausta, “The Senate consulted the Sibylline Books and said the enemy of Rome will perish-“
“Most likely him, then,” said Constantine.
He stepped outside and knelt down to Helios, lifegiver.
“Caesar.”
He looked at his second-in-command kneeling beside him and pointed at the Sun, “The rays. A good omen.”
“Caesar, why do you fight?”
“An experiment of sorts.”
“People say you favour the new religion.”
“I favour an empire ruled by laws that treat people of the old religion and the new religion equally.”
“It’s not a bad thing what people say, that you bring a change of age, that you open the doors to this monotheistic religion. Some put you on a pedestal for it.”
“I will clarify-“
“I would play with the pattern of the rays. See how Helios forms the Chi Rho.”
“Am I raw material for your cause?”
“No, Caesar.”
Constantine thought of his mother, “We’ll let storytellers play with patterns. The troops can mark their shields with a symbol of their choice. A thunderbolt, eagle wings, the Sun, the Chi Rho.”
“Yes, Caesar.”
“They tell me Rome is in a panic.”
“The people of Rome fear a siege. To avoid unrest, Maxentius is leading his troops north of Rome, across the Tiber.”
“We’ll meet them on Milvian Bridge.”
augustuscoins.com/ed/Christian/ChristianSymbols.html
Constantine enters Rome in triumph by Peter Paul Rubens, 1621
He entered Rome at the time of the Jupiter Saturn conjunction, exact at 12 degrees Capricorn, in opposition to his natal Neptune.
He would free the laws that legalized Christianity and create a solid base of support.
He became sole ruler of the west, and worked with Licinius until he couldn’t work with Licinius anymore, and became Emperor of the Roman Empire in 324.
Chart for January 1, 320, the time that Lactantius wrote On the death of the persecutors
“I read your account of my dream, the one before the battle. The dream that instructed me to mark the shields of the soldiers with the Chi Rho. It wasn’t quite like that.”
“It was visionary on your part to allow it.”
“Mars is still god of war, Lactantius. Where is Mars in Christianity?”
“All is one in Christianity. We fight to protect the religion, spread the word.”
“How does the new god fit into Olympus? Is he the son more powerful than Jupiter?”
“He has his own heaven, and we’re allowed in it.”
“That’s hubris! It violates the bounds set for humans, punishable by the gods.”
“This new religion is man centred. He came to earth for us, died on the cross for us, opens the heavens for us.”
“And yet the stories of the old gods teach us much more about human experience and human folly. They are as fallible as we are.”
Lactantius sighed. “It is true that the new god is a god of the margins.”
Chart for May 20, 325
By then he had chosen Byzantium as the new capital, the new Rome, and his experiment began.
Walls would protect the city to the west, the Walls of Constantine, and he chose the sites for the Forum and the Capitol, and for the Grand Palace. The Grand Palace would lie next to the existing Hippodrome which would be renovated. And repairs would begin on the old aqueduct.
The temples of the old gods would remain where they were. The temples to Neptune and Athena by the water, and the temples to Venus, Artemis and Apollo on the highest hill.
He would not commission any new artworks for the city. Instead he would have existing artworks brought from major cities in the empire to embellish Nova Roma.
“Why so impatient, son?”
He couldn’t tell her of the broken stillness in his chart.
He couldn’t tell her that what he now feared was an intolerance of the past, and that he was anchoring Nova Roma for the experiment to work.
He told her, “To preserve all that came before while we welcome the new.”
“You did the same with your Arch in old Rome,” said Crispus. “You decorated it with sculptures of past emperors, and the new ones you commissioned were done in a hurry.”
Constantine laughed, “They were done in the old symbolic style. (pause) You can’t see us out of context, Crispus. We stand on the shoulders of past emperors. I am a consolidation of all that came before, and a new beginning.”
youtube.com/watch?v=vvDcrzeBRyM
“If I may change the subject, Our Lord,” said one of Constantine’s advisors. “Christians are warring over words. It’s causing a split among them.”
“So I heard. The schism between Alexander and Arius. I sent them a letter, didn’t I? Commanded them to sort it out.”
“Yes, you did, Our Lord, but you seem to have added fuel to the fire with your use of the word homoousios.”
“Why? A good word to explain that the son of god is made of the same substance as god.”
“The Gnostics used it, and Gnostic writings have been denounced as heresy, Our Lord.”
“I know, but I found no better word.”
“They prefer to spell it out, father,” said Crispus. “They are of one essence because the son was not made but begotten of the father before all ages. One did not exist before the other.”
Constantine looked at his son and saw fervour in his eyes. His son, born with Pluto in Capricorn and Uranus in Scorpio, his natal Uranus conjoining Neptune in the sky.
“Well,” said Constantine, “the bishops should gather like we gather in the Senate, to discuss these matters and reach a consensus.”
“You should excommunicate Arius, father.”
“I am not the head of the church.”
“You could be emperor and head of the church.”
Constantine froze for a moment. “The new religion is still under construction, son. It is in the hands of people who study the texts, and texts are open to interpretation- “
“You took a stand, father. You sided with Alexander, but your choice of word provoked a greater disunity.”
The words struck like lightning. Crispus exposed something he had not openly admitted to himself, the wish to weaken the new religion. He took a hold of himself and said, “I stand by my choice of word. It is a good Greek word and the Gnostics don’t own it.”
“You mentioned a gathering of bishops, Our Lord. Should we organize it?”
“Yes. We need to find a city that will accommodate them. Nova Roma isn’t ready.”
“I suggest Nicaea.”
“Invite the bishops across the Roman Empire to the Council of Nicaea, the first ecumenical council of the Christian church.”
It lasted from May until July 325, and some say he was present when it convened, and some say he arrived in June. The icons that depict him at the council were painted after he died, not just as host, but as a central figure in Christianity and canon law.
Icon depicting the Emperor Constantine accompanied by the bishops of the First Council of Nicaea, holding the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381
Jupiter transited Pisces the following year, 326. It was the year Constantine untied his wife Fausta and his son Crispus from the fabric of society.
Libra is in his eighth house of crisis, and the ruler in Pisces. When Jupiter transited Pisces in 303, he brought danger to himself by refusing the hand of Valeria.
Did he bring danger to himself this time by refusing to convert to the new religion, by holding on to the idea that the old and the new could coexist? Had they been plotting against him?
Jupiter’s transit activated the cross in his chart, to prevent change and facilitate change, the cross he bore.
Every time he relaxed or was caught off guard, he seemed to precipitate change. He needed to stay in control.
He turned his attention to matters of state and to his experiment, selecting the artworks that would embellish the new capital.
Chart for May 11, 330, the day Nova Roma was inaugurated
This is what the new capital would become in the future, the Church of St. Sophia, and the main avenue continuing beyond the Walls of Constantine, with the forums of emperors that came after him.
Byzantine Constantinople by Rocío Espín Piñar
On the day of the inauguration, the main avenue ended at the circular Forum of Constantine.
The public’s eyes rose to see the column at the centre of the Forum, counting the seven blocks of porphyry. Eyes then turned to the carriage bringing the colossal statue that would stand atop.
The Tabula Peutingeriana, a map of the middle ages copied from a map of the 4th or 5th century, represents Constantinople, as Nova Roma would be called, with the Column of Constantine and the enthroned city goddess.
The statue that stood on the column is said to have been gilded and wearing a crown of seven rays, shining like the sun upon the citizens.
Some say it was Constantine as Apollo. Others say it was Constantine as Helios, the Roman Sol, guardian of oaths and god of sight.
A reused statue, not in military costume, but in the nude, defying the pudor of the new religion.
Reconstruction by Tayfun Öner
With the statue firmly in place, Constantine reminded the citizens of the Roman Empire of the freedom of conscience he professed,
and he let go of the war in his soul.
He let go trying to control the direction people would take.
There would be mass conversions, the new religion spreading its wings, and he feared that in bringing forth the new mysteries he had untied the old ones,
and he let go of his fear.
He focused on his children instead.
Chart for May 22, 337, the day he died
News of his death shocked the Empire.
Chiron in Capricorn asked to mind the gap in authority,
and his three sons rose as Augusti, dividing the empire between them. Whether this had been arranged with their father or just between them, we do not know. But on the day in 330 when Constantine let go, transiting Venus Jupiter in Cancer in his fifth house trined the planets in Pisces, his natal planets and Pluto Uranus in the sky.
They may have in fact discussed it, the best way to avoid rivalry between them. Three generations ruling together, separate but equal.
The Church rose to canonise him,
but to be canonised he had to be baptised.
Some said he baptised himself on his deathbed.
Eusebius of Caesarea said that he had wished to be baptised in the river Jordan, but seeing that his time had come, made his way to Helenopolis, and on the steps of the church of the martyrs, the prelates performed the sacred ceremonies.
Eusebius of Nicomedia said that he had baptised him himself, Eusebius, follower of Arius.
“Is that so, Eusebius? Did he ask you to first swear on the Bible that the son of god is homoousius with god?”
“He had me in his favour!”
Those present felt the power play in his claim, but this was not the time for power play. They needed to stand together if they were to maintain their position in the Empire. A matter of survival.
And so without a reliable source, the Church made Constantine a saint.
Later on the Vatican formalised his sainthood by having Pope Sylvester I baptise him at least two years before he died, because Pope Sylvester died in 335.
The baptism of Constantine by Gianfrancesco Penni, 1524, fresco, Apostolic Palace, Vatican City
Born with Venus crowning him, richest man in the Empire, rich in wealth and in the stories spun about him.
She is magnetic in his chart, so magnetic that all the early Christian buildings and objects in the Empire tend to be attributed to him.
Tapestry showing Constantine directing the building of Constantinople. Figural composition designed by Peter Paul Rubens. Woven at the Comans-La Planche tapestry factory, Paris
The last time Pluto transited Pisces was between 1799 and 1823, with Uranus in Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius and Capricorn.
Chart for December 31, 1802, the day the Treaty of Bassein was signed
India in the time of Clive, Robert Clive who laid the foundation for the East India Company in Bengal.
With the Treaty of Bassein, the East India Company prepared to annex territory west of Bengal, the territory of the Maratha Empire in yellow.
The Treaty subjugated the central administration in Poona to the EIC. The chief minister of Poona could not take any action without consulting the EIC, could not employ Europeans, had to cede territory to maintain a British force, and had to pay a portion of the district’s revenue to the EIC. Enforced hospitality.
Jupiter joined Uranus in Libra in November for the signing of the treaty, and Mars retrograded into Gemini,
and they activated an oath.
Ministers of other regions of the Empire would rise up in arms against the EIC, but would fall under the same terms as the Treaty of Bassein,
the Treaty that opened doors to a takeover.
Jupiter retrograded into Virgo in March 1803 and re entered Libra in July, conjoining Uranus at 10 degrees Libra on September 13, 1803.
They freed something in Libra. Behind the EIC’s expansion and India’s subjugation, behind the wars and the treaties, people did the work of Libra.
Chart for November 13, 1780, the day Ranjit Singh was born
An aside
Chart for February 21, 2024
On the day Venus Mars conjoined in Aquarius, the supreme court of Alabama seeded something new. Pluto was a minute away from reaching 1 degree of Aquarius, and Uranus in Taurus.
pbs.org/video/ivf-ruling-1708554017/
The seed came with a barrier, was experienced as a barrier. Religion interfering with IVF.
Another aside
Chart for February 14, 2022
On this day Mars caught up with Venus in Capricorn. Pluto was in Capricorn and Uranus in Taurus. It was the day the prime minister of Canada invoked the emergencies act. It gave law enforcement extraordinary powers to remove barriers set up by convoy protestors, and it gave banks the authority to freeze their bank accounts.
Barriers.
They say that in 1802 Ranjit Singh married a Muslim dancer, and that Akali Phula Singh, a senior general in the Sikh Khalsa Army, admonished him for it,
unknown painter, early 20th century
How could he explain love to the celibate old man? How could he explain that when Neptune touched his natal Sun, he fell madly in love and differences didn’t matter? How could he explain that when Uranus touched his natal Neptune, he felt rebellious? But he’d still been conscious of the barrier he couldn’t cross, the barrier of his nobility and religion. He hadn’t married her in the way that would make her children heirs, had he? He’d married her the lesser way. She was more concubine than wife.
“Have I no freedom?”
“Don’t be haughty, Ranjit. You can have as many wives as you want, Sikh wives. (pause) You’re already being hailed as the leader of the misls in the Punjab. You need to set an example. Leadership comes with responsibility.”
He could sense the young maharaja holding back words, the young maharaja who held nothing back on the battlefield. He had the reputation of being fearless, even reckless, his natal Sun and Jupiter playing with danger, seeking transformation. Well not with unorthodox practices!
I will transform the society we live in, the society that imprisons me, and I will begin by transforming your traditional Army, undisciplined, prejudiced and antiquated!
His mother admonished him further. “They are loyal! Not just to you but to our faith! You will not disrespect them! Build a new army if you want, in the manner of the British and the French, but without them losing their standing.”
The day Jupiter Uranus conjoined in Libra, Ranjit resolved to go south of the Sutlej River to observe British troops in action. He was having a Mars return, and this was something he’d wanted to do before but had been prevented from doing. His natal Saturn Mercury in Sagittarius seemed to always draw people who stalled him, but not this time.
This time Pluto in Pisces brought him the cap of invisibility, and Mercury let him borrow his winged sandals.
The arming of Perseus by Edward Burne-Jones, 1885
“Ranjit! This way. (pause) If something happens to you, they’ll have my head.”
“Whatever happens to me is bound to happen to you.”
“Remind me again why we’re doing this?”
“We don’t want to be thought of as an inferior race, do we? (pause) When the EIC takes over this land, they’ll come after ours, and we want to be an equal match, if not superior.”
“Shh! Stay low. Here they come. (pause) Look at all the infantry soldiers. They value what we don’t.”
“We have to change the way we think, think like they do.”
Mercury wearing his winged helmet stands holding his caduceus in his right hand. In the air above, winged Saturn approaches with an hour-glass on his head and holding his scythe. From Flammel’s Hieroglyphics
They say that it takes time for Saturn in the birth chart to grow confident.
He had been growing confident.
They headed back to the land of the five rivers.
“Who will train your new army?”
“I was just thinking about that. I could lure Indian infantrymen in the EIC army by offering them a higher salary, and maybe a piece of land. I could also hire Europeans.”
“You’ll have a hard time recruiting Sikhs to be foot soldiers. They’ll prefer the cavalry.”
“Recruitment will be open to Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims.”
“Akali Phula Singh will have a heart attack.”
“Before my mother died, she told me that the Akalis will fight to the death defending our faith. (pause) I will explain my intentions to Akali Phula Singh.”
He owned his Saturn by the time they got back.
When the Akali inspected the new recruits, he fumed, “What is this riff raff! Has the Maharaja no self value?”
Ranjit took him aside, “Akali, I value my heritage, but we need to consider-“
“Dressed like a foot soldier?”
“It’s to encourage people to join, to show them that I find it respectable. Look, it’s going to take time to change people’s minds.”
“In the meantime, you have us.”
“And I am thankful for it. But the British don’t just fight on horseback. They have infantry and artillery. The new army will reinforce you.”
“Who will sell you artillery?”
“We’ll make our own.”
Chart for April 25, 1809, the day he signed the Treaty of Amritsar
Before that,
in 1806,
a minister of the Maratha Empire fled to the Punjab hoping to get assistance. He’d been defeated by the EIC. Ranjit Singh met him at Amritsar and was joined by Fateh Singh Ahluwalia, chief of one of the misls. They say Ranjit and Fateh had exchanged turbans in 1802 as a symbol of eternal brotherhood.
“Assisting him would be declaring war on the British,” Ranjit told Fateh.
“You realize they’re coming after him, don’t you?”
“We’ll negotiate on his behalf, some form of reconciliation.”
“You mean sit at the same table, face to face?”
“Yes.”
“You’re ready for it, Ranjit?”
In 1806, Jupiter was transiting Sagittarius, crowning his natal Saturn Mercury, and freeing him of any complex he may have had. He had been brought up in the oral tradition and could not read or write. He was of short stature. But he was astute and agile, and soon to be called
the Lion of Punjab.
“Yes.”
They sat with the British and signed a treaty of friendship and amity. They agreed not to assist enemies of the British government, and the British government agreed never to invade their territory.
sikhmuseum.org.uk/portfolio/the-anglo-sikh-treaties-1806-1846/#jp-carousel-422
In 1809, he was having a Saturn return with Neptune involved, and Saturn Neptune were approaching a square with Pluto in Pisces.
The new army was taking shape with the help of deserters and renegades from the EIC and foreign mercenaries.
The new army was changing the psychology of his people.
He was the harbinger of change.
The treaty of 1806 had secured his leadership among the misls, and when Uranus in the sky touched his natal Jupiter in Scorpio, he felt a great sense of responsibility.
Earlier that year, with Jupiter transiting Pisces, he had dreamed big, dreamed of bringing the Sikh misls south of the Sutlej River into his kingdom. He had led the old army south, and found himself in confrontation with British troops. He had not allowed the old army to cross them, but he had not turned back either.
“Maharaja, the Sikh misls south of the Sutlej River are under British protection.”
“If the Sutlej River marks the border between us, I will position troops on this side of the border to guard the entrance to my kingdom.”
Discussions followed and the Treaty of Amritsar was signed on April 25, with only his signature needed for assurance.
sikhmuseum.org.uk/portfolio/the-anglo-sikh-treaties-1806-1846/#jp-carousel-423
He rode past the Harmandir Sahib before going to Lahore. The house of god had become a drab building lost in a grand setting. It needed an uplift. But for him to embark in such works he needed funds.
Conquest brought funds.
In Lahore he inspected the foundries that were manufacturing guns and artillery. He’d sent spies into EIC factories to train as engineers, and they returned with the skills needed and the latest patterns.
It was time, he thought, to join the new army with the old, the drilled and disciplined force with guerilla type warfare. Any problems integrating the two could be corrected in action.
He couldn’t expand south but he could expand north, secure the northern border. And why stop at the fifth river, why not take it to the Indus?
He fought battles against the Afghans in the years that followed, taking Multan and occupying Peshawar in 1818, and annexing Kashmir in 1819.
And with his Uranus opposition Uranus approaching,
he left the battlefield.
Chart for November 13, 1819
It was after the battle of Shopian, on July 3, 1819, that a great comet became visible in the night sky.
The commanders of his troops were waiting to hear what was on his mind, what the next campaign would be,
when he was overcome with the fear of losing it all. The old army and the new army were working well together, and they had stretched the northern border beyond the Indus River. If he pushed further, he might lose it all.
It was time to stop, he thought, and that’s when he saw the great comet.
A comet by John Everett, early 20th century
It was time to give thanks for his good fortune. He would restore the house of god, make it shine like the comet, give it splendour.
There had been Hindu and Muslim kingdoms, and now, for the first time, a Sikh Kingdom. May it have longevity. May his friendship with the British protect it, and if not, may his troops distinguish themselves protecting it. May it bring a golden age when people of different origins and different beliefs live together in peace and harmony.
“Not you,” Akali Phula Singh reminded him.
General Jean-François Allard with his family, unknown painter, 1830s
In 1822, Jean-François Allard and Jean-Baptiste Ventura came looking for work. They had served under Napoleon and now entered the service of Ranjit Singh.
“No one under 5’8”. “
“Yes, Maharaja.”
“And you must maintain an equal balance between ethnic groups. (pause) When we fought against the Afghans, there were Muslims who wouldn’t shoot at their co-religionists.”
“Yes, Maharaja.”
He had left the battlefield, but he was still a battlefield man.
Chart for Emily Eden, born March 3, 1797, Westminster
She travelled to India with her brother when he was appointed governor general in 1836.
She had once expressed the desire to be a wandering artist.
Her brother once took her to see Holland and the new kingdom of Belgium, but he was eager to get back to his shooting parties, and it was a rushed a trip,. She had filled her sketchbook, but wished that she could go back to see things properly.
She would see things properly in India. The last place she wanted to go.
She had expressed this too in her letters. Her brother’s position allowed her to mingle with the people running the country. She was a familiar and the recipient of their remarks. If someone remarked how well so and so was doing in their position as ambassador, she’d write a letter and pass it on. Her tone was seldom serious. It was light, entertaining and satirical, making it hard to know her. Maybe even she didn’t know who she was until she went to India.
On October 21, 1837, the governor general departed from Calcutta on an 18 month journey through northern India. She was part of his entourage.
She was a forty year old woman who had never married, and she was having her Uranus opposition Uranus with Jupiter involved on both sides.
Prometheus who stole fire from the gods and Jupiter’s lust for life.
The opposition squared the Gemini Sag polarity, the polarity of her nodes, natal Saturn in Gemini and Venus in Sag in the sky.
Wish fulfillment, not the way she had imagined, but the way her circumstances allowed.
Mars had opposed her natal Mars in Taurus, and Neptune dissolved a barrier in Scorpio.
Sight, smell, touch, taste, feel.
Transiting Pluto and Rahu were in Aries, initiating.
A group of 150 British men and women travelled with the assistance of at least 1000 Indian servants.
They carried her luggage, served her food. They helped her get on a boat, a camel, a horse, a palanquin, an elephant.
When she looked at them, they looked down. She asked herself, What was it that kept them from cutting her head off and being done with it?
The power relations involved, the power relations that kept her safe.
Fear triggered her root chakra where a pool of sexual energy lay unspent, and kundalini energy rose in her, opening her crown chakra.
Servants with dogs and hawks belonging to the King of Oude by Emily Eden
Neptune was beginning his transit through Aquarius, paving the way in Aquarius, where she had a stellium, Mercury, Venus and Pluto.
There is service in Aquarius, and she’d been of service to her brother back home.
He wasn’t married either, and he relied on her and took her to his social functions. She could talk books in an intellectual setting, and in the country, she exchanged gossip. She had conversations with women, and she’d learned to have conversations with men, without overstepping.
Power relations is something she came to explore.
In her book, The semi detached house, which she published in 1859, there’s a scene where an uncle rushes into his niece’s house handing her a piece of paper. She must sign it right away, he says, and they will need two witnesses. The servants will do.
His niece folds the paper and slips it into her pocket, and tells him that she won’t be signing any papers until her solicitor sees them. He is surprised to hear she’s hired a solicitor and asks her who it is, and she tells him. Well, in that case, he says, I’ll take the paper back.
She looks out the window and hesitates to give it back. He gets busy looking through a folder he’s carrying, and tells her that he’s been credited for a publication, even though he insisted there was no need. She turns from the window to give him the paper back, and he asks, What’s that? Oh, the paper. I’d forgotten all about it. I’ll exchange it for a copy of the publication. One paper for another and that’s that.
Head servant of the Government Office in Calcutta by Emily Eden
She continued to be of service to her brother in India.
The letters she wrote to her sister reveal how she steered him toward a more humane treatment of servants. Not equal or forgiving. If they did wrong, they were fired. She wasn’t looking to emancipate.
Neptune in her chart paves the way in Scorpio, where Artemis stands behind Scorpius, and Mars in Taurus ensures survival.
Saturn in Gemini can withhold questions, rely on his own impressions, and stay differentiated.
There can be great compassion in Pisces. Venus Mars in Pisces once sang ‘We are the world’ to build a barrier against famine.
When she came upon a starving child, she had him brought to her tent four times a day to feed him milk.
But there can also be a guardedness in Pisces against disorder.
Venus Mars in Pisces once seeded the first insurance company against fire and flood.
The crown chakra connected her to the more instinctual side of the planets.
When she was sick, servants carried her in a palanquin. She wanted to rest easy in situations like that.
Her letters to her sister read like a travel journal, filled with complaints about India. During her first year, she recounts the things her sister would be familiar with, the success of the balls she organized, whether she enjoyed the Church service, the plays she attended. And interspersed is the other reality. How appalled she was with the British treatment of Indians. How she brought in humanity and compassion, without disturbing the order.
Eight years before she was born, in 1789, Jupiter Uranus conjoined in Leo.
Leo can ask, Who are you?
Two months before she was born, Jupiter and Uranus formed an exact opposition in the Pisces Virgo polarity, and they asked, “Have you found yourself yet?”
The day she was born, the Sun joined them in asking the question.
The Sun, father in the sky. The Sun Jupiter can be an influential father or father figure.
She owed her brother her independence, and her duty was to safeguard his position in the culture they belonged to.
She gradually found herself and made a contribution to her culture.
Portraits of the princes and people of India by Emily Eden, drawn on stone by L. Dickinson, 1844. The Royal Collection Trust
She gradually found herself by digging in Aquarius.
Six years before she was born, on January 25, 1791, the British parliament passed the Constitutional Act that divided the province of Quebec into Upper and Lower Canada.
The beginning of two peoples valuing each other,
and it began with a dividing line that allowed each one to flourish around their own hearthfire.
In the letters she wrote during her second year, descriptions of the other reality take a more prominent place. This was the year she crossed the Sutlej River into the Sikh Kingdom. She met Ranjit Singh and saw his troops, and her firsthand account as well as her impressions have been quoted by many scholars.
Akalis by Emily Eden
Before Napoleon’s defeat, the British feared he would take Russia and make his way to India through Afghanistan. The Sikh misls were a good buffer.
In the 1830s, they feared Russian expansionism and wanted to replace the emir of Afghanistan with someone more in their favour. To do this, Emily’s brother was asked to get the support of Ranjit Singh.
Before Ranjit agreed to receive him, he sought the advice of the Oracle in the Golden Temple.
“If I help the English, will I secure their friendship?”
“When the lion goes, the kingdom goes.”
“Why help them, then?”
“Too dangerous not to. (pause) A relation comes with the governor general. His sister, I think. She will praise your army for posterity. Superior to the British, she will say.”
“What else! What else!” Ranjit asked with delight.
“She won’t approve of your drinking. tsk! tsk! (pause) She will think that you look like a little old mouse with grey whiskers, and won’t believe all that they say about you, until she sees you on a horse.”
The favourite horse of Ranjit Singh with its groom, and emeralds and diamonds belonging to Ranjit Singh by Emily Eden
From where she sat, she watched a native artist sketch her brother. She had not thought of art as conventional until she came here. The artist gave her brother full eyes although he was in profile, and used hardly any shade.
She wondered if her drawings looked as odd to them as theirs did to her. She looked at her hands. Her hand had improved on this tour.
She moved away to get a good view of Ranjit, and began to sketch him.
Attendants drew Ranjit’s attention to her, and he said, “Let her.”
When she finished, she showed him his portrait. The native artist came to see it too and disapproved, “This is no good. The Maharaja seated on a chair looks like a common man. You should paint him on his favourite horse, with his shield on his back. It is only on a horse that he is animated by the spirit within.”
“Go away,” Ranjit told the native artist. He turned to her and gave her back the portrait, “You keep it and show it to your queen.”
Portrait of Ranjit Singh, Maharaja of the Punjab, by Emily Eden
They say that wherever Rahu is in the chart, we can skip a few steps in the ladder. His natal Uranus in Gemini touched the point of Rahu in her chart and elevated the status of her sketches and personal letters to ethnography.
Chiron was transiting Gemini at 27 degrees.
She thought she would put this whole experience away when she got home, but now she knew that she wouldn’t. She couldn’t just present the queen with a piece of paper. She’d have to have the portrait cut in stone. Might as well have all her drawings cut in stone and present her with a book of lithographs.
Mars Venus in Gemini can reinforce differentiation, or remove the barrier of differentiation. When there is an exact conjunction, they usually remove the barrier. Like the day Nixon joined protestors at the Lincoln Memorial. Or in Rosemary’s Baby, where no matter how much she tried to get away from the satanic cult, she ended up staying because of the baby and mother instincts.
Chiron can make it an unintended consequence.
Chart for this day, December, 21, 1838, Lahore
Pluto can dig for riches. He can break down what is not longer needed. He can bring up the stories in a sign before breaking down what is no longer needed.
With Pluto in Aquarius, Ranjit had not been allowed to move forward without honouring the past. He had not been allowed to move forward without honouring the gods.
It had all begun with him inheriting the most powerful misl from his father. Then his mother secured a political alliance with the second most powerful misl through his first marriage.
His mother helped him with politics when his father died, and they say his first mother-in-law helped him when his mother died.
In 1838, Pluto was bringing up the stories in Aries.
He felt that he had achieved what he wanted and that his journey was coming to an end. He had gone into the grove of Mars and confronted the dragon.
The British had come to him for help. There was always a double edged sword with the British. They now wanted Afghanistan, and soon they would want the kingdom in between.
They ate and drank, exchanged presents and let down their guards.
The maharaja asked the governor general why he wasn’t married.
“We’re only allowed one wife, you see, and if she turned out to be a really bad one, I wouldn’t be able to get rid of her easily.”
“That’s a very bad custom. Here we’re allowed twenty-three wives, and they dare not be bad or we would beat them.”
“Excellent custom. I will try to introduce it once I’m back in England.”
“Come,” said Ranjit. “I want to show you my fort.”
Emily begged off.
“Join us, please. We’ll put the banter aside.”
“No, no. You men go.”
Ranjit had never allowed foreigners into the fort, and guards barred the governor general’s entrance.
“Let him pass,” he said. (to the governor general) They think I’m mad to show you all our treasured possessions. They don’t understand why.”
“Why?”
He didn’t leave the oar planted in the sand. He handed it to the governor general, “So you take inventory of it, and when the time comes, you preserve it.”
The governor general would hear news of his death six months later.
youtube.com/watch?v=bLZpTmAtnng
Fire
In Aries a divine ram rescued two children.
In Aries there is no barrier between life and death.
When Venus and Mars once conjoined in Aries, a helicopter lost its balance and toppled over, killing people.
thisdayinaviation.com/16-may-1977/
Those who were there and were barred from death must have experienced it as a miracle.
They may have been the ones to seed something in the sign, safety measures.
Grief too can seed.
Seeds take time to come to fruition.
Chart for January 1, 1976
A new arrangement being woven into the fabric of society to reduce fatalities on the road.
A new rule that restricted individual choice.
Chiron was in Aries minding the gap in survival. Jupiter too was in Aries, with the ruler retrograding in Gemini. His gifts don’t come easy.
youtube.com/watch?v=950kIPv3f38
Chart for March 30, 1981, 2:29pm, Washington DC
Mars, warrior of the Sun.
The Sun has his joy in the ninth house, house of wisdom. The wisdom of Aries. Putting one’s life in danger to save another. Raw wisdom.
Chiron minding the gap in Taurus was conjunct the MC, and the ruler beside the Sun at a lower degree.
Saturn in Libra can have measured precision, calculated moves. Jupiter can free him to act on impulse.
The crisis came unexpectedly from the crowd. A man who wanted to impress a movie star, be seen as being worthy in her eyes.
They drove to the White House. No, no, the nearest hospital.
I hope you’re all republicans, the president said to the medical team.
Mr. President, today we’re all republicans.
They say that this experience made the president feel chosen in some way, chosen for a mission.
Venus Mars formed an exact conjunction on April 5, 1977, seeding safety measures. There was talk of bulletproof vests, crowd screening, the doors and glass of the armoured vehicle.
We know everyone’s name in this story. That’s not the case with the helicopter story.
Chart for May 16, 1977, Manhattan, 5:35pm
Pan Am and New York Airways.
Despite public protests against the noise, the city allowed them to operate freely.
It was a landmark after all.
Until the accident. The eighth house can give us a clue about the cause and Taurus rules old age, metal fatigue.
Jupiter was in Gemini in the ninth house. Jupiter in Gemini can bring out the multiplicity in the sign, differentiate and undifferentiate to gather all points of view.
In the ninth house he can seek the wisdom of Gemini, offer the wisdom of Gemini, wisdom of rescue.
Emergency services advised the mayor to shut down the heliport. There were delays reaching the rooftop, reaching the hospital, elevators were shut down and stretchers and lifesaving equipment had to be carried up and down the stairs.
The mayor shut it down.
Pilots contracted to fly the helicopters are interviewed here. One tells us about the challenge of landing on the building, especially at night and in bad weather. Probably the most challenging thing he’s done, he says, except for getting shot at in Vietnam.
youtube.com/watch?v=8nbz5VFilxY
Three times
In Leo Jupiter asked Helios not to rise for three whole days.