The
dramatic chart for Black Friday in Paris, discussed here over the weekend and
displayed below, featured not only Saturn square Neptune, but Jupiter-Chiron
t-squaring the Moon. The Saturn-Neptune square has been discussed at length
(more could be said, but one thing at a time), but this post focuses on Jupiter
and Chiron in collaboration—a topic I believe deserves more attention when it
comes to the extremist impulse and the
path to healing that impulse.
The
media is buzzing, of course, with journalists and scholars picking apart every
aspect of the Paris attacks. One such scholar who describes himself as a
“thinktanker” is William McCants of Johns Hopkins University. McCants directs
the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World at the Brookings
Institution, and his new, very well-timed study titled The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy and Doomsday Vision of the
Islamic State had just come out online. In both the author’s interview and the
Amazon.com introduction to the book, one question was key:
How did the Islamic State attract so many followers and
conquer so much land? By being more ruthless, more apocalyptic, and more
devoted to state-building than its competitors. The shrewd leaders of the
Islamic State combined two of the most powerful yet contradictory ideas in
Islam-the return of the Islamic Empire and the end of the world-into a mission
and a message that shapes its strategy and inspires its army of zealous
fighters.
In mundane astrology, this lethal
conflation of ideological extremism, empire building and apocalyptic thinking certainly implicates the outer
planets—Uranus, Neptune and Pluto—but we ignore the contributions of Jupiter,
Saturn and Chiron at our peril.
As the so-called “social” planets,
Jupiter and Saturn channel the energies of the outer planets into our everyday
lives as citizens, affecting our social/governmental structures, legal systems,
higher education, business practices, relations between groups divided by
class, religion and ethnicity, and so on. The enduring “security v. privacy”
debate—not to mention the current xenophobia regarding immigrants—is certainly fueled
by these social dynamics and, of course, personal experiences and biases. The
personal planets and luminaries—Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars—impact the
means by which individual/local events unfold, often implementing the priorities
of other levels. On Black Friday, Mars (violent means) conjoined the North Node
and opposed a belligerent Aries MC. The Mars-influenced Node sextiled the
Cancer AS—together these aspects remind us that the angles of a chart create
opportunities for events in time and space.
Chiron occupies a unique position in our
solar system, bridging the social and collective levels as it orbits between
Saturn and Uranus. Chiron expert Martin Lass
describes Chiron and all that its 1977 discovery has meant for humanity as a
“paradigm” that answers one fundamental question: “What if both mind and body
were mirror reflections of one another and both were reflections of a
consciousness that lies beyond both?” As with most Chiron scholars, he concurs
that with Chiron, the path to Healing a wound (capitalization always indicates
the broadest possible application) lies in returning mindfully to that wound,
opening to and acting upon the solutions carried within the wound itself. There
seems to be general agreement that Chiron’s paradigm thus underlies the
physical, mental, spiritual and metaphysical healing disciplines, whether
oriented towards individuals, families, societies or the world at large.
So, what can this tell us about the
dynamics of terrorism? One gruesome, but
real consideration would be to examine why an individual would offer
him/herself up as a suicide bomber. As reflections of ideological leanings and
psychospiritual wounding, respectively, Jupiter and Chiron could certainly be
involved in such a decision. This duo would likely be reinforced by Sun/Moon
placement and perhaps by Mars, implicated in the choice of violent means. Personal
planet connections to Neptune (martyrdom/victimization) may also be key. Those
who make such fateful choices become tools for the ideological masterminds of
the attack—strategic players who leverage the personal pathologies of their
agents and embody the megalomania of toxic leadership—Jupiter-Pluto at its
darkest. Jupiter and Pluto were trine on Black Friday.
Long story short, while the collusion of
social and outer planets probably drives the manifestation of these horrific
events, history seems to show that the desire to satisfy one perceived wound by
inflicting another—the dark side of Chiron—underlies the entire terrorist
enterprise. Let’s consider an historical example that’s still quite pertinent:
World Trade Center attacks on 9/11/2001
- In December 1999,
Chiron conjoined Pluto at 11°+
Sagittarius, laying the groundwork, I would argue, for the massive attacks of
September 11, 2001. By the time of the event, Chiron had
separated from Pluto to oppose the Gemini Moon, sextile Uranus, powerful in
Aquarius, and trine Venus in Leo, denoting wounds inflicted on the finance
industry that day. Chiron’s connectedness allowed the attackers a prime
opportunity (Uranus sextile) for major destruction and maximum terrorizing
(primal wounding) effect (Moon opposition).
- Between December 1999 and September 11, 2001,
Saturn (10°+ Taurus) moved from its waxing
inconjunct phase with Pluto to just past exact opposition (14°+ Gemini) , a
culmination point for the tense agenda seeded in this duo’s 1982 conjunction in
late Libra. Chiron and Jupiter were widely opposed in that 1982 chart (see
below), with Chiron forming the focal point of a tense yod with Neptune and
Saturn-Pluto. As we’ve seen, these are the “usual suspects” with terrorist
events and a yod fits the “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” dynamics
we’ve seen with the terrorist threat. With the 1982 chart set for Washington,
D.C., Saturn and Pluto were beginning their new cycle in the 7th
house of enemies.
Amazingly, the tense configurations of
that pre-9/11 period set the stage for the ensuing years of war, in which the
“enemy” has continued to be global terrorism, more than the specific nations of
Iraq and Afghanistan. This stubborn challenge was reinforced by the 2009 Jupiter-Chiron-Neptune
conjunction in late Aquarius (chart below), a seminal astrological moment
coinciding with the shift of control from the Bush to the Obama administration,
and the disappointing “end games” that followed for both the Iraq and
Afghanistan conflicts.
In Aquarius, the stunning Jupiter-Chiron-Neptune
gathering was disposed by Uranus in Pisces, which—in mutual reception with
Neptune—explains why our involvement in the Middle East is incoherent and
scattered, often playing both sides against the middle. The horns of this
dilemma are identified nicely in today’s New
York Times Op-ed article, entitled “Saudi Arabia, an ISIS that has made it.”
Author Kamel
Daoud writes:
“Black Daesh,
white Daesh. The former slits throats, kills, stones, cuts off hands, destroys
humanity’s common heritage and despises archaeology, women and non-Muslims. The
latter is better dressed and neater but does the same things. The Islamic
State; Saudi Arabia. In its struggle against terrorism, the West wages war on
one, but shakes hands with the other. This is a mechanism of denial, and denial
has a price: preserving the famous strategic alliance with Saudi Arabia at the
risk of forgetting that the kingdom also relies on an alliance with a religious
clergy that produces, legitimizes, spreads, preaches and defends Wahhabism, the
ultra-puritanical form of Islam that Daesh feeds on.”
Of Chiron conjunct Jupiter, Lass says,
“Sensing the underlying plan and feeling innately that we are all destined to
be free to shine, this aspect can confer a call to champion the cause of
freedom in the world…on the other side, this aspect can confer issues and
Wounds around justice, fairness, equality, morals and ethics.” Clearly,
justice, fairness, morals and ethics are seen through the lens of cultural
perspective and historical experience, but everyone
responds on some level to these dynamics: the idealism that motivates U.S. soldiers to fight
these wars also motivates those who consider
themselves oppressed by Western ideals and practices.
Even though nearly a millennium has past since those dark days, the Crusades waged by Christianity against Islam in the "Holy Land" is a deep cultural memory in the Middle East, a Wound that has been ripped open time and again, with no
healing in sight. It’s worth noting that just after Easter, 1096 A.D., when the first Crusaders left Europe for the Holy Land,
Uranus and Neptune were tightly square (Aries-Cancer), with Chiron sandwiched
in between Uranus and Pluto (both in Aries) and Jupiter sextile Uranus (and
possibly Chiron) from Aquarius. Perhaps
today’s heavy focus on cardinal signs is a red flag that it’s time to resolve
this “Us v. Them” Wound once and for all.
Chiron conjunct Neptune elevates this gnawing
spiritual Wound, which fuels terrorism, to the level of a “Holy Grail”-type
quest. According to Lass, “Depending on our level of Healing and evolution of
consciousness, this can…disassociate us from reality and make it virtually
impossible for us to touch the ground, so to speak…we would expect to see all
manner of escapist behavior, from drugs to organized religion.” The “quest” of extremism is to recast
reality in its own apocalyptic image, the most lethal form of escapism.
Taken together, the
ideologically-charged Jupiter-Chiron-Neptune stellium, super-charged by Uranus,
speaks to the chaos extremism is capable of producing in the name of God. But in
Aquarius, it also speaks to the possibilities for a lighter, less fear-driven
vision. It says we can do this, if our “better angels” prevail.
© Raye Robertson 2015. All rights reserved.
