small world 2001January/February 2001
Yet again, greetings to you all, my friends, for the New Year and the mathematically rather than politically correct New Millennium! This past year was variously known as Y2K (Bug apparently swatted), year 2000 (not, however, in Saudi Arabia), The Millennium Year (Domed to failure!), the End Time (nostalgically of a few careers, tragically of numerous lives and the hope of Peace, triumphantly of Slobo's wrecking regime), Jesus' 2000th birthday (wronnnggg!), 00 (once our financial and astrological institutiuons got their act together) and MM - a murmur of relish at the end of every new film and TV program but frequently unshared by me... ... so now we embark on MMI, and Windows on the soul of the ME generation - as if our increasing narcissism didn't have enough encouragement. This New Year the media are abuzz with literary prophecy just as they were 17 years back; for George Orwell substitute Arthur C. Clarke; for "1984", "2001"; for Big Brother, surveillance, and human slavery, instead the wakeful red eye of Hal and the final triumph of the human spirit over a threatening technology. This begs several questions - is the technology as threatening as all that? Are we puny humans up to such a triumph? And would it be one? And would it be final? On the day Pluto semisquared Sun a couple of papers reported that two scientists had succeeded in stopping light in its tracks for some nano-seconds before restarting it again. Mastery of such a process, harnessed, would usher in the age of the quantum computer. Processing so lightning fast and refined would no doubt lead quickly to such a sophistication in logging and manipulating DNA and materials down to the atomic and even sub-atomic level that everything that even now remains in the realms of science fiction would rapidly become an accepted part of everyday life. Even the display technology is racing toward the day when thanks to spray-on silicon diodes, you can wrap your favourite boy-band video round your little finger. A microphone has been developed by NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, that is so tiny and so sensitive that it can hear a single cell growing. It may be sent to other planets to listen for the sounds of bacteria swimming! Think of the changes we ourselves have seen in our relatively short lives, how the pace of change has accelerated .... and how interestingly this corresponds with the arcane prophecies that the vibrational rate of the Earth and its inhabitants is destined to rise as we approach the New Age... The Age of Aquarius ... And are we there yet? A commentator on the radio this afternoon has just observed that we are, as a global race, evolving and changing to meet the needs of the new technology. I cannot for the life of me - and despite all the calendrical theories any one of us is capable of trotting out at the drop of a hat - shake off the most powerful, the most overwhelming sensation that as from this New Year a clearly-defined chapter in all our histories has come to an irretrievable end. I'm not alone in this. A number of friends and contacts I've spoken to are feeling the same way. If we're right, then either there is a macrocosmic fiducial out there with which the start of the new century has coincided - or else the living thought-processes (begun by 6th-century Dionysius Exiguus) that coalesced into a global cultural agreement that the last two millennia started on what we know as January 1st 0001 AD, themselves created a discrete span of space-time whose boundary we have now crossed. Nearly as long as that last sentence ... ! There are supposed to be increasing natural disasters (check), 'wars and rumours of wars' (check), a rapture of God's chosen ... now do folk seriously think that 12 times 12 thousand virtuous citizens are going to achieve vertical take-off unassisted by rocket fuel or even Zebedee's springs and disappear into the stratosphere? They truly already have their heads in the clouds! 'There is a material body - and there is a spiritual body' said wise old if somewhat sexist St. Paul. The 'rapture' is surely well under way. Have you recently counted the number of dear souls propelled without warning to their heavenly reward in Turkey, Orissa, Gudjarat, Ecuador, Mozambique, the Balkans, and everywhere there is unresolved famine, drought, flood, disease or war? Their departure is often mercifully swift; the pain for those who remain protracted and punishing. In parallel with Earth's traumas, the Aquarian global society is forming and glimmering like a new crystal from a solution. Untidy fragments surround it, imperfections interrupt or cloud its beauty - but we are watching it inexorably grow. With the World Wide Web, the Internet, we have entered the Communication Age; before long the vestiges of our dependence on physical links will be gone, and only radiation and thought will connect mind to mind, 'machine' to organic, intelligent, quantum 'machine'. Spiritually, the Age of Obedience gives way to the Age of Companionship. Ethically, we are asked to use our developing intelligence, to 'engage brain', in the search for loving, considerate answers to alarming new social conundrums. Do we clone because we can? Do we genetically alter because we can? Do we change the climate because we can? Do we abolish night because we can? Do we abort because we can? Do we immortalise, because we can? Do we invade minds because we can? Do we put minds in machines because we can? Do we do, and have, and say, all we want, all the time, more and more, whatever the cost to our world and our souls, because we can? .......................................................................................................... Forensic Astrology Feeling not a little gratified at the moment, having correctly worked out a date from minimal information, and subsequently had it confirmed. Oh how such little things stroke the astrological ego!!! ... It pertained to Dr. Harold "Fred" Shipman, who has been in prison now for nearly a year of his multiple life sentence for the murder of fifteen elderly patients. The whole case has blown up again with the dawning realisation that this man has probably been bumping off people's loved parents and grandparents since the early '70s, even back in his first partnership in Todmorden in the north of England. In October 1999 there was a brief item in Small World on this case, which was just coming to trial. I was able to give you the dates when Shipman injected the fifteen victims, and their names, but could only have a stab at his possible birthdate - and got it wrong (not that it was too bad a guess in some respects.) We now know his date of birth of course; it was January 14th 1946 in Nottingham, UK. Some days ago it seemed a good idea to have a crack at rectifying his chart - this would at least provide a speculative time to play with, and now there was a lot of detailed biography to help, as well as names which would be found among the asteroids. One very important date - maybe the key date - in his life was that when his mother Vera died. But nowhere in all my cuttings, and nowhere in the book I had bought, could I track it down. The nearest I could get was June 1963 ... and then, crucially, that it had been a Friday, and she had died just after he came home from school. So we have a shortlist of four Fridays - June 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th at somewhere around 4pm ... not much later than this, was my hunch, as the broadsheets had all published a startling graph to show that the GP had killed his ladies at home almost always between 2 and 4 in the afternoon. I chose the 21st. Why? Because Shipman was born with a Sun-Saturn opposition - and in the Sidereal this swings back to align perfectly with his end Sagittarius/Gemini nodal axis. Sidereal Sun in the Tropical South Node echoes the same contact between Draconic Sun and Tropical South Node in Hitler's chart: the life is branded by the corrupt, selfish distortion and abuse of gifts that were meant to bless society. On the 21st June 1963 a New Moon fell on that very axis, on his sidereal Saturn/tropical North Node conjunction.... and conjoined by asteroid "AlmaMater", bounteous mother. Next day I found a second biography of Harold Shipman, turned the pages - and found the date of Vera's death. June 21st 1963. Excellent! By 5pm on the 21st - and this must surely be the time of death - Neptune (drugs) was rising in Scorpio as Saturn (mortality) still held the IC. Tellingly, asteroid "Vera" had just risen, with "Pax" on the Midheaven ... she was finally at peace after a long struggle with cancer. Sidereal asteroid "Fred" was home at the IC conjunct Saturn. "Paulina" - his sister Pauline - was setting and therefore present; and so was asteroid "Tea". Shipman habitually sent his patients to their eternal rest with their tea at their elbow. If you look now at Shipman's own birthchart as a Quotidian, a 'Q' chart, set for the same time of day and same zone, 17h00 BST there is startling confirmation - for at this time (interestingly 4pm GMT!) the most powerful and lethal configuration in the GP's chart appears: exactly on the horizon lies the Mars/Saturn conjunction in Cancer, rising, with the Capricorn Sun and Venus setting ( killing of the mother by injection by the loving son) ; all square a conjunction of Chiron and Jupiter (the identity he claimed for himself, "the great doctor".) Now, I don't think this remarkable 'Q' pattern was also his natal chart. A day's unremitting hard labour with Solar Arcs, progressions back and forth, synastry, transits, interdimensional patterning, books and cuttings, and by no means least the asteroids, ultimately suggested 08h40 am - because at this time all the jigsaw pieces finally clicked together and I felt I had a good working speculative nativity. The resulting Dwad patterns support it well: tropically, a Neptune MC conjunction lines up with that Sun,Venus / Mars,Saturn, bringing his most sensitive axis into full prominence .. and adding that curious mystique and glamour that comes of notoriety and a saturnine refusal to speak about his case any further. The dwad Moon near radix Neptune adds to this sense that much remains to be known; and the radix Moon in turn, at 10 Gemini in the 4th, is close-knit with dwad Chiron/Pluto accurately picturing his profound inner pain from the early trauma, his mother's cancer and death. The dwad Libran Sun is also near the 8th-house radix Neptune, and Chiron; a dwad Aquarius Ascendant tightly opposite dwad Jupiter and radix Pluto completes an image of himself in his mind as the benign medical magician who can make all things well, bound only by his own rules. Remarkably, we find the same geometry in the Draconic dwad (though involving different signs); but it is in the Sidereal - where we map our place in society and in history - that the full force of this man's ambition and perversity hit home. The dwad Sun and Moon are found in Scorpio in the radix 10th, opposite dwad Mars at their midpoint - which in turn conjoins intimately radix Uranus and Moon in 4th. The dwad Descendant ties in tightly to radix Chiron in sidereal Virgo; and dwad Uranus from 0 Capricorn hits the 29 Sag/Gemini sidereal Sun/Mars,Saturn to double the likelihood that this man, whose relationships will revolve memorably around pain, is one who will also be remembered for writing his own rule-book on the control and sudden ending of others' lives. Lives which his skewed vision interprets as intolerable; endings which his arrogance perceives as merciful release. If further evidence were needed, look at the Contrascia (which I prefer to the Antiscia, as they are the natural reciprocals, in the 360 degree wheel, of the radix positions.) Here the Moon,Uranus,IC/MC alignment joins closely and unambiguously with the axis of Sun,Venus / Mars, Saturn; every time one of these axes is triggered by transit, progression or direction, so simultaneously is the invisibly connected other, that occupies the other two corners of their shared rectangle on the Ecliptic. Here is perhaps the most graphic pattern yet for the career bringing sudden death to loved elderly women and men at the point of a needle. You may also like to look at his Sun/Moon arc transform chart, at his sense of completion. Do asteroids also support this possible 08h40 time? It would appear so. Those of you who are still new to the idea of using tiny fragments of orbiting rock and ice, of which thousands have now been tracked, numbered and named, may like to see them as an ever-growing encyclopaedia of names and ideas, of which a small selection is relevant to each one of us. In an age when the obsession with personal data is almost fanatical, the object of greatest desire the tiny and elegant PDA in which we effectively carry around the details of our entire private and public life, our work and our dreams, our contacts and our calendar, is it any wonder that the heavens have as usual provided astrologers with a celestial counterpart? A stranger knocks on the door; we are presented with a speculative chart; we say, "Show me some I.D." The angles and the Lights in every chart (often including the nodal axis) act as an I.D. wallet, a lapel badge, a filofax, a PDA. If you have the right time, and the right angles, the names of asteroids clustering on these axes should describe the people, places, ideas and attachments central to that individual's life. Conversely (and this is the only practicable way to approach asteroid work) when names of these all-important elements in a life are sought in the asteroid database and their positions mapped, you should find them aligned in virtual 'phrases' on the main chart axes. If not, despite adding the radix draconic, sidereal, helio and especially the tropical dwad positions, then the time is certainly wrong. At 08h40 on January 14th 1946, asteroid 'Doctorwatson' was rising with sidereal 'Hygeia', helio 'Paracelsus' and 'Goddard' (his best friend at school) setting. 'Paulina' - his sister - was at the IC, at home (with 'Nemesis'). Opposite, on the MC, the career-point, were 'Scientia' and 'Shipka' (the closest match to 'Shipman'). 'Counselman' is with the Sun... and so, for this "Dr. Death", is draconic 'Atropos' Draconic 'Christophe' (his son) and 'D'Arrest' are on the tropical Desc. Draconic 'Pillmore' / 'Darwin' / sidereal 'Hybris' and 'Hygeia' / 'VeraLynn' (his mother Vera) oppose close to the tropical MC / IC and Moon. With that Gemini Moon are helio 'Probitas', 'Silentium' and 'Requiem' with sidereal 'Pax'. Upright citizens deserve to rest in peace. Helio 'Tea' and 'Justitia' conjoin helio Mercury close to his IC where we also find sidereal 'Samuele' and 'Sara' his other children, and 'Signe' - Shipman did a lot of signing, of the many death certificates which eventually led to his conviction... tropical 'Signe', with draconic 'Autonoma' and 'Mercedes' - the maverick act of mercy - is in his fateful South Node. The same key asteroids recur in other interdimensional alignments. We have some I.D. Finally, we even have the inceptional chart for Hyde, where Dr. Shipman killed so many of his patients. This was on February 18th, 1881, set for 0h00 UT, data courtesy of the late Harold Wigglesworth in The Astrology of Towns and Cities. Coordinates are 53N27, 2W04. Placing the composite of Hyde and the doctor between the two radix charts in a tri-wheel, we find (using 08h40 again) a highly significant conjunction of Chiron/Uranus straddling his Desc, Saturn between his angular Moon and IC, the Moon right on his Pluto, and an opposition of Jupiter/Neptune bringing inflated self-confidence and narcotic relief to his Sun/Mars/Saturn. The C. MC touches Hyde's Moon; its Mars opposes Shipman's, and their nodal axes lie inverted to each other. The pattern is at its most dramatic when we look at the Q chart - Hyde set up for Shipman's speculative time. The Moon is exactly setting opposite a rising Venus/Jupiter/Saturn conjunction ... now then! Here is something new for you. What I have recently found is the crucial importance of the Dwads of 'Q' charts - the accuracy becomes stunning. And here we find a tight conjunction of Capricorn Sun/Saturn/Uranus (conjunct Shipman's own Sun) all exactly square the Moon in Aries. For Hyde, Shipman means the sudden separation of elderly husbands and wives in aggessively accelerated death. Q.E.D. ......................................................................................................... WET WET WET ... No technology has so far been able to prevent an awful lot of British square miles (not kilometres please!!!) super-saturating into deep and persistent floods. Many major towns and cities have had the insurance companies wringing their hands along with the carpets and curtains. A triple confluence of the rivers Medway, Teise and Beult not many miles from where I live has drowned the little village of Yalding seven times since the Autumn equinox of 2000. I've kept a weather eye on the lunar and seasonal charts since I started astrology, even though I cannot pretend to the experience and expertise of my much-loved teacher, the late Jeff Mayo, who had an office crammed with research files on meteorological astrology. And it has been most helpful at times - notably in 1976, when I packed my home on my back and trundled off to explore Penzance from a campsite. A drought had parched our land for over two years with no sign of breaking; even huge deep-rooted trees were dying. I looked at the Summer solstice, and the next lunar phase, and decided maybe a thick woolly and waterproofs wouldn't be a bad idea, unlikely as it seemed in the blistering heat and tropical breezes! As soon as I'd won the struggle with my tiny blue tent in a bare Cornish field the heavens opened. Home seemed suddenly much more attractive! Back to autumn 2000 and the Libra ingress for the UK: as a temperature chart, I suppose the intimate trine between Sun amd Saturn is a part-indicator of the uninspiring season to follow - but do look at that afflicted Moon in her own node, in her own sign - if you add the sidereal chart she swings onto the Gemini IC, and the Ascendant breathes on Draconic Jupiter and Tropical Uranus in windy Aquarius. Did we ever have storms! The quantities of rain exceeded any on record since the 18th century. Maybe here is a point worth making in favour of the "Siderealists": yes, always set up weather charts in the Sidereal ... but not instead of the Tropical, as well as! This is not all. If you take a look at the asteroids we find something remarkable - asteroid "Flood" is precisely opposed to this malign Equinocial Sun, at 00 Aries 00! Just look - Libra Ingress of The Sun 2000 - Asteroids * Aeolia 396 14°Vi48 Opp Asc 1°35' A (wind) * Flood 4220 00°Ar00 R Opp Sun 0°00' A * Hundertwasser 6231 16°Vi43 Opp Asc 0°19' S * Lake Placid 10379 27°Vi29 Cnj Sun 2°31' S * Riverside 4871 03°Vi07 Cnj Mars 0°29' S (and the sidereal Sun) * Waterfield 1645 24°Vi06 Sqr MC 0°34' A * Waterman 1822 24°Vi18 Sqr MC 0°23' A * West 2022 00°Li12 Cnj Sun 0°12' A (the West country had a particularly bad time) The Aries ingress for the 1976 drought year (it was hot and dry in the Spring ) has Sun on the MC, Saturn rising in late Cancer... and the only weather asteroids configuring the Lights are "Secchi" (dry) conjunct Sun by less than 1 degree, and "Sunshine" opposite the Moon! The Solstice asteroids are unremarkable, it has to be said; but the chart had Saturn rising again (in hot Leo), with Pluto at the IC, suggesting further extreme and unpleasant conditions. It is with interest therefore that one observes a rising Saturn for this latest Winter solstice, sidereal Pluto on the Desc, sidereal Uranus/Venus on the MC, sidereal MC with tropical Sun/Mercury, draconic Asc with tropical Neptune, and the draconic Cancer Moon at the IC. The tropical Moon is in Scorpio. There are many echoes of the patterns for the astonishing winters of 1946/47 and 1962/63 - the first, unsurprisingly, finds a Moon/Uranus opposition straddling the Meridian, while the Sidereal Moon/MC hits a Scorpio Venus/Jupiter. The sidereal Asc is opposite draconic Neptune. The second has Sun rising, Moon culminating (in tropical Scorpio) again, this time opposite a draconic Uranus, draconic Asc also with tropical Uranus, and draconic Saturn near the sidereal MC. In both, Chiron also contacts an angle. Both those historic winters are remembered for abiding extreme cold, and deep snows. This year has begun with far more good dry frosts than last winter (which was dank, tepid and miserable), and the delight of sweet blue skies and robins singing to the sun. There are fogs, too. And we have had the first proper snow for several years. In 1963 in London the first flakes of the Great Blizzard began on my birthday, January 19th. Well, it is now February, and in the South-East of the UK there has been no lasting snow - but there have been serious blizzards over Scotland and parts of the North, and so much more torrential rain has fallen that this is turning out to be the wettest winter since heaven knows when; it isn't the cold so much as the amount of wet! From Mike Burns: I'm still happily exploring and experimenting with your wonderful approach to astrology, and I continue to use it mainly as a tool towards gaining a clearer perspective of the spiritual dimension behind my own simple experiences. You may be interested in one curious occurrence that happened this summer, which I find significant on a personal level. The background to what happened was that on the 30th July this year, our little dog died. He was 14, so he'd had a good innings, and a happy one... but his kidneys had given up. But of course with modern medicines and so on, it was possible to prolong his life a little. But it reached the point where he was suffering... and I was landed with the job of having to agree with the vet that the kindest thing to do was to let him go. Even now, I am grieved and upset when I think of my having to make that decision, even though I know that I would be equally grieved and upset if I had let him suffer unnecessarily by not giving the vet permission to deal with the matter as he considered best for doggy. Agonising. Next day Eila and I went out for our first walk without doggy, both of us bursting into tears now and then. I wouldn't have believed how soft we could be over a pet - and he wasn't even technically our dog, but my Mum's. We had been landed with looking after him in his 3 last years of life. On our way back from our walk, on the 31st July, at 20-54 BST (give or take just 1 minute), I saw on the ground in the lane a white rosary! In a country lane in Wales!... I hadn't seen it when we had walked in the opposite direction; nor did Eila even notice me picking it up when I saw it coming back. A white rosary on the ground, quite near to our home... (A sign to comfort me?) I've never ever ever come across a lost rosary before, I don't know anyone who has! Nor can I imagine who would carry one around in this area, nor lose it at that time, nor in that place... The odds must be millions to one against that happening. The stunning feature of the rosary - which is not an expensive one, nor new - was that in the centre of it, there figures an image of the mother of God, wearing her crown as Queen of Heaven, and holding baby Jesus. The wearing of the crown is significant. I don't know - maybe too it's an image of the Our Lady of Carmel? Possibly. The chart of the moment is fantastic, in my view - Caernarfon, 20-54BST, 31-7-2000. My natal Moon position at 3.5 degrees of Leo was descending right then. Neptune is rising at 5 degrees Aquarius, conjunct with PREZIOSA & DOLORES, and opposite SOR (=sister). The Sun was at 8, nearly 9 degrees of Leo, setting. But look at the asteroids REGINA and PORTA COELI bang on the Sun... "The Queen of Heaven". And at that degree.... surely the position of the Sun at Mary's birthday? The rosary is very much a Catholic rosary... with ROMANSKAYA ( = Roman Lady?) on the Descendant at 5 degrees of Leo. For whom was this sign meant?... Maybe MICHEL at 10 degrees of Aquarius (9.5 degrees Helio)? An inter-cosmic message... draco-INTERKOSMOS was at 9 degrees of Aquarius; surely sent with love: draco-AMOR at 9 degrees of Aquarius. The message was sent by way of a rosary: draco-BUDROSA at 8 degrees of Leo. All of this was a religous message: draco-Jupiter at 11 degrees of Aquarius too. Venus was at 22 degrees of Leo, opposite my natal Venus, and at the degree of the Sun at the feast of the Assumption (and square to the Sun at Fatima)...REGINITA is close to Venus, as is ADOREA, and BIANCA (= white in Italian); draco-ANGELINA is opposite as is helio-DONNA. The Moon is at 19 degrees of Leo directly opposite Uranus with draco-LA PAZ (= peace) at the same degree. There's a large cluster of relevant planets near the mean/true node positions: ROMA, ROSEMARY, YESHUHUA, FLORENTINA, DE SANCTIS, ROSER, helio-DEVINE, helio-KASAN (the Mother of Kazan is an important icon for me... within a few weeks I was in the Cathedral of the Mother of Kazan, in St Petersburg, lighting candles before that very icon), helio-VERITAS. There is another small but significant cluster near my MC/IC natal axis, and nodal axis at ca. 10-12 degrees of Pisces and Virgo... ROSAMUNDE, ROSALIA, MICHELANGELO; and similarly CARMELMARIA close to my ascendant, as adjusted to my location at Caernarfon. DEVOTA and FIDUCIA and more widely AMATA are all opposite my natal Sun.... I'll spare you any more... it just goes on and on... Oh, except to say that by the time the Sun reached Venus' degree in that chart, I was in a Carmelite Convent at Vespers - in Finland, on our way to St Petersburg, the only day we could revisit that Convent after many years, totally by chance (as regards my planning), and it turned out to be the day of the Assumption - And to my shame, it was not until the short Vespers service started that I remembered what day it was!!! (And since our previous visit, they had also put into their chapel one of the most beautiful images of Mary that I have ever seen). By the way, yesterday I had to attend a court in the Midlands as a witness; the precise moment I was called to give evidence, you have MICHELA rising exactly opposite MICHELLE at 29 degrees Aries/Libra - with the draco positions of these asteroids matching my natal Asc/Desc axis. (And my Desc on the midheaven within a degree or so). I never cease to be surprised that more astrologers have not taken on board this extensive cosmic vocabulary provided by all these 8000+ asteroids. ......................................................................................................... And of course it was George W. Bush... After taking his and Gore's charts to pieces in the last issue, I for one was not chewing my nails as Florida and the Supreme Court tried to resolve the Presidential stalemate. It was going to be Bush all along. And if you try my other Useful Tip for this month and make a composite of Bush with his 2000 solar return (which of his special bells is this crucial day ringing?), unlike Gore's fairly tame result, Bush has a Sun/Node conjunction square Pluto, with Venus, Jupiter andMars all conjoined on his natal Mercury/Pluto/Asc. Sound powerful? Another surefire way of checking out a potential President is to look at his composite with the USA July 4th 17h14 chart. I studied a dozen or so incumbents and found that every one has a direct alignment of MC and Node either radix to composite, within the composite, or radix to radix. This often includes the Sun - which is more often than not angular by the same rules. (And it validates this USA chart!) G. W. Bush has an exact conjunction of Sun/MC/Node in his C. with the USA, as well as the USA's Node on his own Asc. On that axis we also find a Leo coupling of Mercury and Mars. Fighting talk!... alas, it has started. Tecumseh's Curse... In "The Other Dimension" - NCGR's Declination SIG newsletter - Leigh Westin has warned that like other Presidents elected in a Zero year in the epoch of Great Conjunctions in Earth, this one may be endangered. There is certainly a date to watch - toward the end of his term in late October 2003, when Bush's explosive line-up of sidereal Sun, draconic Mars and tropical Uranus/Node are hit by t. Pluto, draconic Neptune, and the sidereal Saturn/Chiron opposition. At the same time, Saturn is right on his and the USA's Sun with his sidereal Asc, and sidereal Mars is going over his Desc. Sidereal Uranus is on his draconic MC. We can only wait and see. And pray. Leigh Westin's highly recommended book "Beyond the Solstice By Declination" is $25 + $4 shipping from Gheminee, PO Box 3874, Brookhaven, MS 39603-3874. In closing, may I make a special request? I beg those of you who have been passing on Small World - even with the very best of intentions - not to forward the bulletin (or anything at all!) to anyone without forewarning and full consent. a) They are irritated and go off you and me, both - b) they mail it to all their contacts, and our once-unabused email addresses end up in some very unwelcome places. Then I, too, have to deal with a pile of unsolicited and sometimes dodgy mail. I do try my best to respect the privacy and the wishes of subscribers. Instead of grouping all your addresses in one huge list which would swamp the Small World headers and publish them all over the globe, I list them in groups of twelve, one address going in "send" and the eleven others in "copy", specifying blind copies. Occasionally I send out trial issues; but as soon as a request comes back to cancel, the name is removed from the mailing list - just as it is if the bulletin is for some reason undeliverable. This is essential house-keeping. Thank you for your help - and for your continued interest and encouragement! God bless you all, Pam ......................................................................................................... March 2001 STARLET TREK Was it deliberate, or the happiest of coincidences, or the Macrocosm's usual sense of humour, that sent probe 'Near Shoemaker' into orbit around asteroid Eros on Valentine's day last year, and actually landed the craft on its surface only two days short of Feb 14th 2001? The time the probe bounced and rolled amazingly gently into the love-rock's saddle was 20h07 UT, courtesy both of The Times and friend Stephen Watt who kindly forwarded the requisite information, gleaned from Carol Willis' article in ASTROLIST. She made a chart with coordinates for Johns Hopkins University nr. Baltimore; better by a small margin is one set for the probe's launch site at Cape Canaveral, which gives an MC in orbs of conjunction of both lovely an apt Venus in Aries, and Eros itself (himself?) in 29 Pisces 34. "Photographica" rises triumphantly in Cancer in the Dragon's Head to ensure a set of excellent pictures of Eros' surface to make it famous - "Fama" setting. The entertaining extra in the asteroids for an asteroid First Contact, is the legendary pairing of recently-named "Jean-Luc" on the Desc with "Pickard" on the MC at 3 Aries along with Gondola (the landing capsule?) and Phaethon! Will all our Star Treks from now on carry the signature of the charismatic Patrick Stewart's alter ego? On Reflection... Over and over again, as dramas hit the Cranes' nearest and dearest it is drummed into me how much crucial astrology rarely gets into astrology books. A couple we know have to appear in court to sort out a business problem. Their marriage has been under strain for years, and is currently very vulnerable. Both have Saturn on their Desc - but you would never see it; it is invisible to conventional practice. You only see it when you make a composite chart of each partner with the current transits. I cannot stress enough the importance of this technique; a composite chart is in fact only a graphical way of displaying a little-considered phenomenon which occurs just once in every planetary transit cycle - the Mirror effect. If you take the above example, the two partners' horizons are like the reflecting surface of a mirror. Saturn on one side of it 'reflects' at an equal distance on the opposite side. If it were mine, for example, the arc between Saturn at 5GE52 and Desc at 20PI14 is 75.38. Subtract this from the Desc and you get a 'mirror' position of 4CP36. Whenever a transit or direction hits this degree it echoes the natal Saturn-horizon arc - 'strikes the same chord' or 'rings a bell' - and the first time this happened to me was in March, June and November of 1959 when I was uprooted from home, friends and school in the North to start a whole new life in Buckinghamshire (Gerrards Cross, as it happens ... and I end up marrying a devoutly Christian northerner called Gerard! prog. 'Gerarda' was still close to my natal IC - and smack on it when relocated to 'GX' as we all called it! Also the asteroid was setting on my 1959 solar return) I was 16, and suddenly dreadfully, desperately lonely, and longing for a boyfriend - understandable when you also have a p.New Moon on your 5th house Venus!!! The mirror Saturn had to clear before things cheered up and I made my new friends and found a lovely bloke to go out with. The next time was in December 1988; I had spent that year planning deliberately to cut myself off from all things familiar to do a speaking tour of the USA for 7 weeks in October/November. After 4 days I had to cut my losses and come home, because my Dad had got bowel cancer and as it turned out I was also far from well. I spent that December fighting doctors and insurance companies for compensation for the aborted trip. Even Capricorns can be miserable with Saturn on the horizon! I may have mentioned that it was with t. Uranus in its Desc. mirror position that I had the shock and upheaval of my Mum dying. Of course, there is the complementary mirror, too, of horizon reflected over Saturn or Uranus, or whatever. But this will happen once a day, unless you concentrate on the slower angular movements of the Daily Progressions and Q-charts, or the angles' tertiary, annually progressed, or return positions. *In the longer term it is the mutual reflecting of planets that is most useful, this re-striking of their natal chords. *A composite chart of native with event, placed in a tri-wheel between the two radix charts, will show up the crucial axial contacts immediately. In 1959 I had p.Asc conjunct Neptune, and wrote reams of cathartic poetry. In 1974, fifteen years later, the p. Asc had come to its own mirror, at 12 Libra, reflected over that Neptune. A thriving little poetry circle I'd had going for three years at last resulted in radio work - Neptunian media exposure! And if you completely relocate the progressed pattern, that same 12 Libra Asc. arrived precisely three years earlier when the poetry circle started in my front room. How about that? My Desc flipped over Saturn, mirrors at 21LE30. I've checked my Q-charts for 13th July last year and 1999 (which is the day every year when this happens ... think on!!!) and in 1999 we had a power failure, while last year the diary entry is, "Bleak". The day before it says, "Wept". Why? because the day before that, with t. Uranus on the Q. Asc at my birth-time, this lovely new laptop went completely screwy and had to be sent back to be loved better after hours of vain effort on phone-lines. My Daily Progressed Asc/Desc hits the same axis on May 19th this year; each year before this, it will have happened a day or two later - a 'moveable feast'! Checking, now, the tertiary patterns, it amuses me to find that today specifically, Saturn is exactly setting!!! If ever a technique picks up daily themes, this must be amongst the best. ENGLAND IN THE MIRROR Well, I have just used Solar Fire's flexible Returns tool to log some of the key mirror transits for out sceptr'd isle. I opened the England 1066 chart and that for the UK, placed them side by side - and was dumbfounded to observe something I for one had completely missed: the UK was 'born' on England's Pluto Return! 1066 Pluto, 3PI50; UK Pluto, 2PI42. No wonder the England chart is still alive and kicking - it generated its 1801 makeover! But with one Noon and one Midnight 'birth', hence diverging horizon axes, their respective Planet/angle mirror degrees usefully scatter. Now, over the lifetime of a nation, patterns that are rare in a human incarnation repeat quite frequently. To find the exceptional years when the radix and mirror degrees midpoint the angles (and Sun, of course, here) we need to concentrate on something really slow and dramatic - like the afore-mentioned Pluto ... what else? Kicking off with England, Pluto/MC mirrors at 4AQ52, and Pluto/Asc at 18TA05. Interspersed we also have the Pluto returns to 3PI50. What do we get? Pluto returns: in 1310, 1311 - Edward II is so weak a king that he appoints Piers Galveston as Regent in his absence and is deposed and murdered by his barons. in 1555, 1556 - 'Bloody Mary' Tudor has recently succeeded her father HenryVIII ... and promptly restores Catholicism to England, burning unrepentant Protestants. in 1800, 1801 - The Act of Union creates the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. London is the largest, most populous capital in the world. Richard Trevithick develops the steam engine and runs the world's first steam vehicle! Pisces! in 2045-47 - I wonder? Pluto/Asc mirror: in 1138, 1139 - Civil war in England, Matilda, the rightful heir, vs. Stephen, whom she captures and imprisons during her own brief reign. David I of Scotland supports her and gains some control in the North of England. (Good Lord. Stephen was buried at Faversham Abbey!!! Just down the road!) in 1382, 1383 - Richard II, only 14 years old, is challenged in 1381 by Wat Tyler's rebellion and accedes to the serfs' demands. But Tyler is betrayed and murdered; in 1382 the reforms are all repealed, and the people of England are at odds with the Crown. Academic freedom is abolished by the archbishop of Canterbury - and the city of Canterbury is rocked by an earthquake. (My local city - help! Is nowhere safe???) - and the Black Death sweeps Europe. in 1626, 1627 - and the Black Death sweeps England! 41,000 die in London in 1625 at the start of Charles I's fateful reign. His obsessive insistence on the Divine Right of Kings leads eventually to rebellion, his own beheading, and the institution of a Republic. in 1870 - 1872 - oddly, nothing of sufficient note to get a mention in my Chronology! But the account of the Great Flood was found in the newly-translated Epic Of Gilgamesh at the British Museum; and negotiations were finalised to abolish the African slave trade. Pluto/MC mirror: in 1289, 1290 - Edward I exiles the country's Jews to please the Italians, who want to take over England's finances. in 1535 - only the previous year Henry VIII breaks with the Church of Rome and establishes the Reformation by the Act of Supremacy. He is destroying the monasteries and putting to death those who oppose him, including Sir Thomas More. The Act of Union joins the principality of Wales to England. in 1780, 1781 - Furiously at war with both America and the Dutch, as the American Revolution draws to an end. Herschel discovers Uranus! The Severn Bridge - the first iron bridge - is opened for traffic. In 2026, 2027 - wait and see! Of course, these are only a select few of the possible patterns we can study - but it is notable how often they centre on major constitutional and eccleciastical changes, rebellions, purges, war, inadequate monarchs. ......................................................................................................... On Spiritual Matters ... Specifically the matter of women priests: The issue has arisen in the context of our own small ( but beautifully formed!) Liberal Catholic Celtic Mission. We already ordain women to Deacon, but one has requested that she be priested, so that she can extend her valuable ministry to the sick and dying to the full Requiem Mass for those who have passed to the Higher Life. Accordingly we are seeking guidance from our clergy and congregations ... and I am revisiting the charts of the first ordinations of women to deacon and priest in the Anglican Communion. When asking during meditation for higher guidance, it was conveyed to me unambiguously that we should not introduce priestesses into our particular church, but that we most certainly should go ahead and ordain our women clergy to the Priesthood according to our established rites. Not only this, but that it was God's will that the priesthood in all churches should be open to women; that human interference was preventing this important step forward on our collective spiritual path. Archetypally, there are good symbolic reasons for sacrificial priesthood hitherto remaining a male role - it is Solar in its essence, and to use a female, Lunar body as a vehicle has not been appropriate. However, you can see for yourselves the heavenly harmony in these two precisely-timed charts (for the priesting I was glued to the TV with a stopwatch!!!) The first Anglican women deacons: 27th February 1987, 19h30 GMT, Canterbury, England. The first Anglican women priests: 12th March 1994, 17h46 GMT, Bristol, England. The setting Pisces New Moon was conjunct 'Priestley' as 'Osterbrock' (Easter Bread - the Communion) rose and all the words for wisdom were angular. It is a New Age. It is time. .......................................................................................................... HELP NEEDED! Peter in Oz is investigating hypothetical planet Ov/Melodia, clairvoyantly perceived by Charubel in the 1890's. He wants to know its current position and motion ... do any of you have this information? If so, do please email me at this Small World address so that I can pass it on to him and put him in touch with you. IT NEVER RAINS BUT IT POURS. I've been watching with trepidation the ever-closer approach of the Dragon's Tail to the Sun of the UK, and England 1066, and the EEC - and the start of every current year including the Millennium. Because the modern Western Calendar starts on January 1st with the Sun in 9 or 10 of Capricorn, this degree-area is peculiarly sensitive, along with the Suns of the myriad institutions that get 'born' under its rays. Britain Drowning That extreme weather we've been watching out for this winter? It's back again - this time paralysing Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Borders. Driving snow on high winds has blocked roads and railways, and brough down so many power lines that over 40,000 households and businesses are shivering. Here, it's very very wet. So wet that for the first time since 1966 the Nailbourne stream, that once made of our Ospringe Village a famous 'Little Venice' and fed our watercress beds until culverted to construct the M2, has surfaced triumphantly in at least three places. There are of course local legends about the drying and running of this stream, and it is curious that the same interval of time has separated two devastating episodes in our rural life ... Britain Burning ... For amidst this considerable discomfort, we now have an unfolding tragedy, a catastrophe rapidly affecting our entire way of life here in Britain and threatening to spill over into Europe - over 30 years since the last serious outbreak we are in the midst of an epidemic of Foot and Mouth Disease that has brought funeral pyres to the countryside as thousands of cattle, sheep and pigs are slaughtered and burned in hay-pits to try to stem the tide of the lethal virus. It has given a poignant new meaning to Ash Wednesday, and a terrible sacrifice for Lent. In Water Lane just round the corner is Queen's Court Farm, with its royal history, its cattle herd .. and the risen Nailbourne. Here and throughout the country all rambling is now forbidden. Zoos and parks are closing to protect irreplaceable breeds. All horse-racing is on hold for at least a fortnight, with the Cheltenham Festival in doubt and certainly no Irish contingent. Crufts Dog Show has been cancelled. Animal hauliers along with small butchers, specialist food-shops, and farmers already threatened by five years of BSE, risk going to the wall. Food prices will rise. Freedom of movement is curtailed. Disinfection is compulsory. Both the local and General Elections may have to be postponed because of the infection risks of campaign travel. Last time, it took eight months to run its course. February 19th 2001, Brentwood, Essex, UK, 11h36 am GMT. The date, place and time of the first official notification paints a dramatic picture of the suffering that has only just begun, and the upheaval that has to take place before we adopt radical new policies for our future - Chiron exactly sets as Uranus culminates. . . a planetary connection that repeats itself over all the charts I've been able to look at for this year and November 1967. England (1066) currently still has the miasma of t. sidereal Neptune close to its Sun, while tropical Chiron is on its sidereal Sun at 28 Sagittarius. Helio Chiron is on England's tropical dwad Ascendant (22 Sagittarius) and the transiting sidereal dwad Chiron rapidly approaches 10 Capricorn. Back in 1967 as the infection took hold it was the tropical dwad transit of Chiron that was on the England & UK Sun. The midpoint of Uranus/Chiron transited England's sidereal Sun, while its tropical dwad Desc was burdened by both the transiting trop. dwad Saturn and the square from transiting Pluto in Virgo. Uranus had progressed to the precise conjunction with the England MC. Progressing the dwad brought Pluto to England's dwad Desc, Neptune to Sun, Mars to N.Node, and Sun/Uranus to Pluto/MC. We were tried then, and are still found wanting! We cannot go on abusing the creatures upon whom we depend, by treating them (like almost everything these cold-blooded days) as a global industrial 'product', as 'agribusiness', feeding them recycled death, and hurling them along motorways, airways and sea-lanes as casually as junk mail. We must slow down. We have to stop wanting the world without paying the bill. We must re-start urgently the dying heart of our local economies. Corrupt Capricorn is ambitious, and mercenary, greedy, heartless, patronising and power-hungry, coarse and unfeeling; it will trample all kindness, all beauty, all gentleness, all peace into the dust to get what it wants. Its eyes are so fixed on a grandiose and profitable goal that everything and everyone else is ignored. The price of this hybris is high - it is utter destruction. Witness Hitler. His natal Draconic Sun in Capricorn fell in his Tropical Dragon's Tail. How were the mighty fallen! The coming Summer Solstice sees a total solar eclipse culminating over London, as England's chart wheels toward its date with Destiny - p.Sun and MC now almost within a degree of the radix nodal axis and the dwad progressions showing a quartet of Sun, Pluto, Moon and Neptune all conjoined in the radix 8th and p.12th houses opposite t. Pluto in coelo. This lot is about to collide with England's radix dwad Descendant in Gemini, helped again next year by Pluto as it reaches 22 Sag. Adding the converse sidereal dwad to the England sidereal radix reveals Pluto conjunct and Saturn opposite Sun/MC with Uranus setting. The converse patterns are full of angular nodes and Saturn. God help us. Britain Grieves And today, February 28th 2001, in a blizzard at Great Heck just south of Selby in Yorkshire, a Land-Rover towing a low trailer with a car on top slid off the M62 by a bridge (before reaching the safety barrier) and down the railway embankment below. It was now on the main Edinburgh-Kings Cross line. The driver got out, saw a train coming, phoned 999 at 06h12 am on his mobile - and then at 06h16 had to watch, traumatised, as the 04h45 Newcastle-on-Tyne to London commuter express slammed into the vehicles at 125 mph, derailed half a mile down the track - and was immediately crushed by a 70 mph fully loaded, 1000-ton local coal train coming north from Immingham, which it had left at 05h00 for Ferrybridge. A house by the line miraculously escaped damage, only the occupants' touring caravan was demolished. It was the very same locomotive that derailed in last year's pivotal Hatfield train crash! So far, 13 are known to have died, 31 seriously injured, 40 'walking wounded'. But more than one badly-smashed carriage has yet to be cut apart. Pluto was in the Midheaven as Mercury in Aquarius exactly rose - and the Pluto/MC conjunction was within a degree in the Helio chart, opposite H. Jupiter. The Dwad chart is, as usual, powerful in its added description of the situation - Neptune conj. MC opposite Uranus at the IC evoke the shock and confusion and material disintegration, the prayers of passengers trapped and suffering in a moment when the dwad nodes aligned fatefully with the radix MC/Pluto, and dwad Sun opposed radix Chiron. At the departure of the express from Newcastle, this was exactly joned by the dwad Moon, and in the dwad wheel Uranus precisely set. A pattern once again spelling "too fast"? Or "Act of God"? Probably both. In the media's eyes, this is seen as a freak accident... but consider the presence on the four angles of asteroids 'Godart' (MC), 'Hekate' (IC), 'Siva' (Asc) and 'Lucifer' (Desc.) And then there's poor Mozambique ... and Seattle ... Now it's March 2nd, and yesterday after the I.T.-rich northwestern Indian state of Gujarat, the I.T.-rich northwestern US state of Washington was rocked by a magnitude 7 deep earthquake that caused billions of dollars of damage in Seattle and disrupted - but failed to spoil - Bill Gates' day. The US Geological Survey timed it at 10h54m33s, coordinates close to the state capital Olympia, 47n12, 122W42 (their data are decimal.) Mozambique is suffering the consequences of the upriver Zambezi dam, which emptied the flood-plains of water and attracted all the farming families and communities whose world is now drowning . Where was all this rain-water supposed to go??? We interfere with nature's order at our peril. This poor suffering country has - unsurprisingly - progressed Asc. conjunct Chiron, whom we are getting to know rather well, and opposite Uranus. The prog. Sun is still closing its square to them both. Converse MC is with Neptune, having aligned with the conv. Sun a couple of years back.. Neptune rose at the 1999 solar return, and both last June and this June 25th the return charts have the nodes tightly, fatefully angular. Will Governments learn??? On A Lighter Note...! You may remember in an earlier issue we had a peek at a few Beanie Baby birthdays, as these are helpfully TYed to their ears. I bought a couple more the other day ... I can't resist rabbits, or amazingly crazy colours (guess who has an overplus of Virgo and Aquarius!) so home came Hopper, born 7th August 2000, and Kaleidoscope Cat, born June 24th Y2K. The thing that works with Beanies, so far, as a multi-cultural phenomenon, is to put up the sidereal sunrise chart for the local TY HQ (which for Europe is Gosport in Hampshire); this is delightfully apt, and cross-contacts to the other zodiacs suitably enhance it. Plus asteroids, of course.... Thus, Hopper, with silvery fur, white tummy and cotton-tail, has sidereal rising Sun in Cancer, smiled on by the Draconic Cancer Moon - and tropical 'Hopmann'. A sidereal conjunction of 'Babel ' and 'Hoppe' conjoins the tropical Asc and Sun. As befits a Beanie Baby, the Moon is strong - we also find the sidereal Moon on the draconic Desc... and asteroid 'Beny' sets! There is nothing closer to 'Beanie'. Kaleidoscope the cat is a sidereal Gemini, attractive, fierce, weird and wonderful with a Mars/Venus conjunction to the rising Sun, and Tropical Pluto and Neptune on the sidereal angles. Another angular baby Moon, appropriately in sidereal Aquarius on the tropical MC. Blissfully, 'CheshireCat' is setting in coelo with 'Iris' -the rainbow - at the IC. Which ain't bad for a rainbow-coloured cat! When I paid for them in Faversham at 11h27 on February 26th, the Asc and MC were the Cat's own sunrise angles; it was having its Saturn return already! ... and the Sun was on its draconic Sun in Pisces. 'TYr' was setting, and 'Hopmann' was on the IC (with a 3rd, secret Beanie asteroid - conjunct 'Granule'! - on the Midheaven. Which I may disclose later.) Well, I had hoped to end on a lighter note - but today's news had me in tears. There is surely enough misery in the world without others in our islands adding further to it. At 00h30 today, 4th March 2001, the 'Real IRA' (we assume) detonated a car bomb in a taxi parked ouside the BBC Television Centre at White City in London. Thank God only one person was injured. Twelve hours later at 12h33 there was a second alert at London's Victoria Station and a controlled explosion took place before the station was re-opened at 14h00. The following text was copied from AOL News: 04/03 (13:16) COUNTDOWN TO BOMB BLAST By Laura Elston, PA News This is the timetable for the car bomb attack on the BBC Television Centre. 1100 Saturday - A taxi is bought for £00 by a man speaking in a Northern Irish accent from a dealer in the Pickett's Lock area of Edmonton, north London. 2300 Saturday - The taxi is left in Wood Lane, parked outside the BBC Television Centre main entrance on the wrong side of the road with its headlights on. 2322 Saturday - A London hospital receives a coded warning reporting that a maroon hackney cab-style taxi containing a bomb is parked near the BBC Television Centre. 2324 Saturday - A second coded warning is issued to an unnamed charity. Neither warnings state how long it will be before the bomb goes off. BBC newsroom workers are evacuated and the BBC's Laurie Margolis and a cameraman go to a nearby car park to film the scene. 2340 Saturday - Bomb disposal officers arrive and locate the red taxi - registration D902 GYH - parked near to a bus stop outside the main entrance to the BBC Television Centre. 0030 Sunday - As a bomb disposal officer attempts to carry out a controlled explosion, the device, containing between 10-20lbs of high explosives, detonates due to a timing device. A huge yellow fireball erupts sending debris soaring over a wide area, smashing the windows of the glass-fronted BBC Television Centre and destroying the taxi. One London Underground worker suffers cuts around his eyes in the attack and is treated at the scene. Windows in nearby houses and flats on the Wood Lane Estate are blown out by the blast. Nearby residents hear counter blasts after the main explosion, which knocks pictures off walls in homes up to a quarter of a mile away. 1120 Sunday - Deputy Assistant Commissioner Alan Fry tells a Scotland Yard press conference that the prompt action of the emergency services prevented the bomb from having more serious consequences. The historic, social/political nature of such events requires the Sidereal to be the focal zodiac, and as usual this approach proves correct. In both charts the Sidereal Meridian carries tropical and helio Uranus, with draconic Mars opposite. At the later alert, tropical and helio Chiron are on the sidereal Desc; at the first detonation Saturn is setting in coelo opposite a sidereal Scorpio Ascendant which also carries draconic Mercury and helio Mars. Rising opposite Saturn is a nasty conjunction of asteroids 'Loke' (the Norse mischief-maker), 'Taguacipa' (who turns good people bad)... and tropical IRAS is on the sidereal Desc, its dwad in 13 gemini aligned with the closing Mars-Pluto conjunction. This bellicose horizon is squared by 'Ireland'. Till next time, then: May God bless you all - pray for our embattled world and the healing of human ignorance. Love, Pam ..................................................................................................... April 2001 Dear Friends - Welcome to total melt-down. In last year's Neptune Special we peered through the fog at increasing confusion in the UK - which is still going on, since Sidereal Neptune hasn't quite finished with our 1st January-cum-1066 Sun. In the meantime it has begun catching up with the USA's beloved 4th July Sun ... and don't forget George Dubbaya Bush shares this axis!! On July 5th, while the Master of Oceans is on his Descendant, between their two birthdays comes a Lunar Eclipse in the 4th at the White House, with that nasty Saturn-Pluto polarity strung up and down the MC. In New York, Saturn makes way for Mars to join Pluto on the 4th cusp. All these delights, and Sidereal Neptune set for a long and glamorous run on and off Broadway well into 2002. SILENT SPRING Already England's horrendous plague, silencing our fields and byres, has caught the wind to Europe, and the whole world is worrying. Markets wobble and crash. Silicon Valley is running out of power. Tempers are flaring in the Balkans again. A TB epidemic is also an alarming possibility in the complacent, vaccination-shy UK ( and I find myself wondering why Whitehall hasn't ordered an immediate cull of all potential human carriers over a two-mile radius around Leicester, to bring this disabling and potentially lethal disease to a halt?) This is what happened at the last outbreak of foot-and-mouth in the UK in 1967: 1967 CATASTROPHE AFFECTED 2,300 FARMS AS 442,000 ANIMALS DIED By Sara Nuwar, PA News The last major outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Britain swept across farms in the winter of 1967. By June the next year more than 2,300 farms had been caught up in the infection. In excess of 442,000 animals were slaughtered and thousands of farmers watched their livelihoods literally going up in smoke. October 25 1967 - Norman Ellis, a farmer based outside Oswestry in Shropshire, reported two lame pigs. Earlier that morning he had taken two cows to market. A vet raised the alarm and authorities reacted quickly, intercepting one cow before it reached its new farm and detaining all animals at Oswestry market, including the second animal. October 26 - Mr Ellis's 71 cattle, 67 pigs and 47 sheep were shot and burned. October 29 - Second outbreak found. October 30 - Eleven outbreaks were by now reported, including one at Carnforth, Lancs. Within a week - Twenty-three farms, mostly in the same region, were caught up in the crisis. Within two weeks - 104 farms were infected. November 15 - A £124,600 contract for British beef was cancelled by Russia. November 15 - 45 fresh cases in one day. November 16 - More than 73,000 cattle, sheep and pigs killed after virus spread to 394 farms. Worst hit were Shropshire, Cheshire and Wales. National Parks Commission asked people to stay away from the Peak District. November 17 - Lakedale's Mardale sheep meeting was cancelled, the Burton Hunt was postponed and the Conservative Conference due to be held at Lancaster University was called off. November 23 - Twelve disinfectant points were set up on routes into Devon to fight spread. November 24 - By now, almost 1,000 outbreaks had been recorded and a total of 134,000 animals slaughtered. Army training was halted in Somerset, Devon and Cornwall. Canoeing events were cancelled and many canal towpaths were closed. Angling was also restricted. Parents visiting pupils at Appley Park secondary school in Shropshire were banned and the Christmas party was cancelled. November 24 - Disease peaked with 81 cases in one day. December - No livestock was allowed at the Royal Smithfield Show, Earls Court, London. By now, pyres had been burning across the country for weeks as farms with the disease were immediately sealed off. Footpaths were closed and horse racing, rallying, football, gliding and mountaineering were all hit. January 11 1968 - Queen offered cattle from royal farms to help farmers whose stock had been affected by the disease. January 12 - All the New Forest was declared a controlled area after a case was confirmed at a farm near Romsey. March 23 - Hundreds of square miles of farmland were sprayed with disinfectants. June 4 1968 - All clear was given. Argentinian meat was blamed for the crisis. In total, there were 2,364 outbreaks and more than 442,000 animals destroyed. The epidemic cost the country an estimated £150 million and £27 million was paid out to farmers in compensation. Thousands of people lost their jobs and farmers accused the "men from the ministry" of taking over their lives. After slaughter, farms had to be scrubbed twice a day with special disinfectant and animals were not allowed on to the land for at least six months. Contractors were paid to dispose of the carcasses and extra vets were flown in from abroad. ......................................................................................................... BUSH-FIRES IN DC... Bush swings more and more to the hard right as he pumps up his reactionary12th house fantasies, dives in and out of its cover - the anxious, inept squares between Sun, Draconic Neptune, Sidereal Mercury (13 -15 Cancer) and Tropical Chiron, Moon, Jupiter (15, 16, 18 Libra) homing in on the most seductive theromonal tide of popular opinion and approval. George Walker Bush ... how's that for battle camouflage?! And one of the tings he may be camouflaging is a past or present Habit. I've seen these charts before, of insecure, weak people-pleasers with one dominant parent who develop a charismatic charm to paste over emptiness that nothing ever truly fills, and is all too often filled by instant, damaging gratification. (Look at the impossibly demanding synastry between father and son and you'll see what I mean. And GWB's draconic Aries Sun is on his father's MC, so naturally he believes he must prove himself by following in his footsteps... but Dad is using this as a way to a second bite at the power cherry.) The only way out of the lie that is their 'life', is God - and then too they can get it spectracularly wrong. No sooner is this one plumping his cushions in the White House than temptation begins.... 100 days into his office, and his rising Leo Mercury-Pluto is posturing hawkishly, grandiosely squaring up to a touchy China, and with dismaying arrogance binning the USA's commitment to the Kyoto agreement. These are only the first tremors of the Inauguration's setting Scorpio Mars square Mercury/Uranus in 10th. It is said that we get the leaders we deserve. Help! You may like to reflect on the interesting fact that every US Presidential inauguration since F.D.R.'s second in 1937, taking place as is now customary at noon on January 20th in Washington DC, has mid-Taurus/Scorpio across the horizon. Sidereally this ( besides being the Asc/Desc/Sun/Jupiter of Christ's Nativity, inverted ) is the quintessentially powerful axis of the two great royal stars Aldebaran and Antares, and it is resonated by the identical Tropical degrees. Every Presidency will therefore be endowed with, and spiritually answerable for its use of worldly power. An angular or aspecting planet will flesh out this test; Bush Sr. had Pluto setting and Aquarius Mercury square, compared with his son's setting Mars and even tighter Mercury square plus Uranus. Reagan's 2nd had Pluto setting; at his 1st a tight Mercury/Mars conjunction stirred up all the fighting talk. Enter, and re-enter, Star Wars! Clinton's first had Saturn square the axis - and then scooped the quartet of Uranus/Sun/Neptune/Jupiter at his second! Jimmy Carter had a Moon/Saturn opposition squaring his Horizon turning it into a fixed Grand Cross. Only one term for him. Nixon, interestingly, was another Mercury square setting Mars guy! We are beginning to sort the Hawks from the Doves here I fancy. LBJ had Jupiter rising twice, with Neptune setting at his 2nd; JFK's ceremony had a late kick-off and lost the power plot to Leo Uranus square a late fixed horizon. Ford's single inaugural broke the sequence with an August date - but Sun itself squaring the power axis. From George Washington's 2nd term until 1937 the usual date was March 4th, mostly at 12h30, with early to mid-Cancer rising and the Sun in 13/14 Pisces. How fascinating that the change of regular date, reflecting the USA's emergence as a World Power, occurred so soon after the discovery of Pluto!... which had been working on the March 4th Ascs and then the July 4th Sun over the 1920s. ......................................................................................................... VARUNA Those of you interested in the discovery and naming of asteroids will be heartened to learn that asteroid No.20,000 was this year named VARUNA - a deity associated with the Moon, brother of the solar deity Mitra. He 'witnesses everything' and has control of the seasons, the rains, and all waters. Philip Sedgwick, in his own bulletin, Galactic Times, expressed delight that that this may synchronise with some kind of divine intervention in our escalating ecological crisis. It is interesting that over the past couple of months we have seen two extraordinary feats of lone seamanship, in the first man to row the Pacific completely unaided, and young Ellen MacArthur's historic single-handed race to second place in the Vendee Globe Challenge. (Data from the Guardian - start in the Bay of Biscay at Les Sables d'Olonne, France 5th November 2000 at 16h11; finish at same place February 11th 2001 at 20h37.) Interesting because Varuna is pictured as a white man riding a sea monster! Varuna's discovery was on November 28th 2000, close to its own node, at 10 Cancer 29 - and opposite the Moon, which is conjunct Marina! The Sun, significantly, is conjoined with Erda, the Earth. In case it turns out to be significant, it is worth pointing out that the Moon's true N. Node conjoins the N. Node of Varuna, 7 Cancer 18, on May 8th this year with Varuna itself conjunct the twinned nodes at 9 Cancer 15! Noctua and Gaea (the Earth again) are conjunct the Sun in powerful mid-Taurus. Watch this space... ................................................................................................. The Priesting of Women - there's more! In the March issue I mentioned the chart for the first ordination of women priests in the Anglican Communion. It struck me just too late for inclusion, that transiting Pluto is already on the IC of this chart! It has just arrived, will stay there over the spring, return over the winter of 2001/2, and then spend most of the summer and autumn of 2002 around that IC before moving on (to square the chart's Ascendant! and then the Pisces New Moon itself!) It looks as if the revolution has well and truly got under way, doesn't it? ......................................................................................................... Dee Dee Ron Ron Ron, Dee Dee Ron Ron! Today, April 9th, at 09h45 BST, BBC Radio 4 began daily readings from "The Queen's Conjuror", a new biography of Dr. John Dee by Benjamin Woolley, and the venerable astrologer has his engraved face all over the media! It is gratifying to note that Returns still work after nearly 500 years; he was born on July 13th OS 1527 at 04h35 LMT in Mortlake, Surrey, now part of Greater London, and both major current returns have a triumphantly angular Sun. The Solar return for July 2000 is culminating with the Dragon's Head and Mars; his Lunar Phase Return at sunset two days ago boasts the full moon right across the Asc-Desc. ... And the late Ron Davison, who maintained that he was the reincarnation of Dee, had a noon full moon with the nodes on his Solar return on January 9th, Total Lunar Eclipse Day!!! Even his Lunar Phase Return was a day and a half before Dee's and had the Nodes along the horizon. So! What do you think? ......................................................................................................... Lunar Landscapes? Another gift from Radio 4 was the announcement on March 14th this year at 15h20 GMT (from the Manchester studios during Gardeners' Question Time) that there would be a nationwide trial of planting by the Moon!!! Keen listeners would be issued with Broccoli seed, this to be planted on the day of the next Full Moon, April 8th (yesterday as I write.) We await developments! ......................................................................................................... Easily Lead ... While we're on the material world, I learned something most intriguing that made me think afresh about my own Sun-sign Capricorn and its associations. Apparently Lead impersonates Calcium because its molecules are a similar size; however, where calcium relaxes blood vessels in the brain, lead constricts them, causing seizures. There you have benign versus malign Saturn/Capricorn. Also it seems that lead, soft and infinitely malleable as it is (easily melted, poured into a convenient mould, or bent to another's will!) is also very sweet to the taste. This fits nicely with Saturn's exaltation in Libra. Aren't we a lot of old softies! ......................................................................................................... ...And the Sweet Smell of Success "Odorant One" was first sprayed on selected gaming machines and tables in a Las Vegas casino on October 14th 1991 "at midnight", which would be at the very end of that day. So the chart should be set for 0h00 on October 15th. It had the intended, astonishing effect of drawing greatly increased custom to those tables and stimulating excessive spending. People behaving like moths on heat again! Marvellous pattern - a conjunction of Mercury/Mars in Libra squares the setting Saturn (daylight robbery?) and is turned on by seductive septiles to the fragrant, particulate coupling of Virgo Venus and Jupiter in the acquisitive 2nd house! This in turn trines Uranus and the N. Node, which links in a quartet to a subtle union of Moon and Neptune in 6th. (Data from the BBC's series on gambling, "High Stakes".) ......................................................................................................... MARS ODYSSEY Here is a brief quote from the New York Times that gives us the exact time of lift-off from Cape Canaveral: Everything appeared to go well as the Delta rocket lifted off on schedule at 11:02 a.m. carrying Mars Odyssey. The weather was perfect for a launching, with a clear aqua sky. A half-hour after liftoff, right on cue, Mars Odyssey was propelled out of Earth's orbit at more than 25,000 miles per hour. Mars Odyssey is scheduled to reach Mars in October and slip into orbit around the planet. For two and a half years, it will study minerals in the rocks and measure chemical elements like hydrogen in a quest for water. "NASA's main goal here is looking for life," Phil Christensen, an Arizona State University geologist, said, "and so life means looking for water." Paula Yates' correct birth time is now known: 12h10 BST on April 24th 1960 in Colwyn Bay, North Wales. Moon, Venus and Mercury all culminate. I'm a happy bunny, as my speculative chart (based as always on interdimensional work, angular named asteroids, and Daily Progressed Angles for key events) had the same configuration with a time only 17 minutes earlier. This stuff really works! SON OF GOD The following is a copy of the email I sent to the BBC's Production Assistant in Manchester after the screening of part 1 of the "flagship series" on the life of Jesus on Sunday 1st April at 21h10. I had been filmed for this programme, on the strength of an earlier contribution to the unit's unfortunately-named but well produced 1997 documentary on astrology "Twinkle Twinkle". The footage was not used "because they had too much material" - and I would have been content, had not the chosen data for the Nativity been so inadequate and its presentation so flawed. "I thought the first programme was most attractively and inventively presented, so well done everyone! However, I do wish you had given more time to the astrology. Michael Molnar appears to be an astronomer not an astrologer. When his version of Jesus is displayed as a birth chart, it simply does not describe the most unique of all divine incarnations. It doesn't describe Christ's Mother either. At the Sun-centred heart which matters most of all there are serious human flaws which Jesus did not, could not possess. It would have been less frustrating if the astronomy had been presented correctly; as it was, Jeremy Bowen referred to the Moon being eclipsed on the morning of April 17th 6BC (a full moon), when the only eclipse in the offing was a Solar eclipse at the approaching new moon. Even the timing of this was wrong: the Solar Eclipse didn't happen until the afternoon of the following day, so all the excitement about April 17th was quite out of order. It was never made clear, either, in all the euphoria, that the planetary cluster occurred specifically in the constellation of Aries; Saturn was still in Pisces in the framework of the tropical zodiac. I always understood that Judaea was connected to the sign Pisces, not Aries - hence the importance of the three Great Conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn in Pisces in 7BC. And why show a comet rushing toward the Earth and then fail to mention the one that appeared over Bethlehem at the real Nativity on May 7th 5BC, the following spring? Why ignore that astonishing Star of David and Cross around the Sun in March 5BC, close to the powerful Pisces eclipse, which I showed you? Three of the eclipses in the nine months preceding Jesus' May 5BC birth occurred with the all-important Jupiter either setting or on the meridian. The inaccuracies in the programme are most unfortunate, given that you all had the time and opportunity to double-check everything and at least add some extra commentary and an image or two - even if the filming was too advanced for radical changes. Incidentally - the chart for the programme's broadcast (its own 'birth') shows beautifully its divine subject matter and its excellent intentions - but also the fact that it is spoiled by otherwise well-motivated men in too much of a hurry to finish a job, the resulting distortions of fact, and creative liberties which fail to serve the truth. It also shows the disinclination of busy, confident men to pay sufficient attention to well-informed women!" Talking of well-informed women - In case I haven't mentioned it before, I heartily recommend Astrid Fallon's book of Ephemerides, published by Editions Rocher. "Ephemerides Graphiques et Previsionelles 1920-2040" have instructions in both French and English, and it is one of the most useful books I have ever had at my elbow. Granted, it is all in the familiar Tropical zodiac, but the way she organises the monthly planetary positions, the finer details, and the graphic plots of the planetary movements over each year, is clear and innovative. Appendices contain cyclic and symbolic data, plus tables of Sidereal time. Her companion book, "Cycles et Calculs Astrologiques" is most comprehensive and again beautifully organised, but is entirely in French, so less accessible to many of us - which is a pity. Knocking at the doors of the Universities... Many, many congratulations to France's renowned astrologer, Elizabeth Teissier, on her award of a Doctorate of Sociology by the Sorbonne in Paris this past weekend. This was for no ordinary thesis, but for "The epistemological situation of astrology through the ambivalence fascination/rejection in Post-Modern societies." After a 2.5 hour debate and the enraged departure of one jury member shouting "It's a major farce!" (there's one heart surgeon storing up problems for himself!) a doctorate in astrology was a step too far for France's intellectual elite, but Mme. Teissier is quoted as saying, "I'm delighted and relieved. It's been like giving birth." But of course! Well done, for restoring proper dignity to what "has been relegated to the role of a barbarous and pariah subject" - and for making it to the front page of the London TIMES! No April Foolery in the foregoing, I assure you! Have a peaceful and happy Easter, and, DV, Small World will be on its way again in May. God bless you all, Pam ......................................................................................................... May 2001 MAY DAY! MAY DAY! Yes folks, it's the 1st of May and we're still waiting for Spring, in a North wind, with driving rain, amid the heart-breaking silence of the lambs. In London shops are boarded and all police leave has been cancelled as the capital's streets fill with anti-capitalism demonstrators and potential trouble-makers. The Moon's South Node now straddles England's 8 Capricorn MC, the tropical Mars/Chiron conjunction in 28 Sagittarius has hit her tropical Uranus-conjunct-Sidereal (public/historic/socio-cultural) Sun while squaring her Pisces Moon, and Sidereal Uranus is on her Venus at the end of Capricorn. Draconic Neptune is heading for England's Draconic Ascendant in early Scorpio. We are collectively anticipating Trouble, and it is axiomatic that What You Foresee Is What You Get! ... WYFIWYG! Our one hope lies in the penetrating rain; heaven's hose has been turned on the mutinous crowd and may rein in its passions to courteous and entirely legitimate protest. PHOENIX RISING At 5h00 pm BST on April 25th the UK Cabinet in Westminster gathered for a hastily-convened Policy Decision meeting. A small milk-white calf had been found alive, huddled against her dead mother under a pile of culled carcasses, and rescued by the farmer and his family. Bottle-fed and petted, the miraculous survivor was named Phoenix, and within hours her pretty face and liquid eyes were meeting the gaze of every family in the land. She had become the symbol of every innocent victim in this horrible, unending epidemic of foot-and-mouth - not only of the millions of creatures suffering and slain, but of the farmers and their rural communities whose lives were, if not ruined, then changed for ever. As the meeting began, Venus was setting! The Mars-Chiron conjunction had been cleared by the IC in the past half-hour, and the MC was closing on the Moon's Nodes. The Moon in the 9th, approaching sextile to Venus, was just 6' from Saturn in 0 Gemini. Shortly it would reach 2 and 3 Gemini, aligning with the Sidereal Mars/Chiron. You will find the chart's asteroids interesting - Agnes ( = agnus, lamb ) in 10 Cancer is not only still close to the Moon's North Node, its close conjunction with Farmer, Varuna, Veteraniya and that approaching MC (with Shearer), but conjunct England's IC opposite her culminating Sun. Bacon is right at the IC. Brown - Nick Brown the Agriculture Minister - aligns with the Sun/Mercury and squares Neptune and Gunhild (holding a gun...) from Scorpio. Fini (finished) is about to set. Phoinix herself is in an interesting pattern; at 22 Leo opposite Uranus in the 5th, she exactly aligns with the Draconic Moon/Saturn, vividly describing how her orphan image shocked a nation through a medium of entertainment. When you look at the helio positions of the asteroids, Phoinix the little white calf (not bull this time!) is in tight conjunction with Tauris square WhiteRabbit and just separated from the square to Saturn - alone, but escaping death. The decision reached in this meeting - which the asteroids clearly describe as focussed on the livestock, environmental conditions and farms, culling and veterinary involvement in general - was to "refine" the culling policy, relaxing movements of hungry, muddy cattle between pastures, permitting slaughter for food of healthy animals, opening up some of the closed tourist areas, but continuing the preventive culling of sheep and pigs. Today we have had 5 new cases reported; but the spread of foot-and-mouth seems to be slowing down - please God. JILL DANDO The trial of Barry George, suspected of murdering Jill Dando the TV presenter, began on April 23rd (time unknown) with a brief hearing at the Old Bailey in London. (Proceedings began in earnest on the morning of May 4th 2001.) On May 1st, The Jill Dando Centre opened its doors for the first time according to BBC's "Woman's Hour" which went out at 10h00 am. Its object is to research and improve crime prevention and detection. Signs of Life in the Media On April 22nd at 22h00 BST (I assume London) in the first episode of the new ITV comedy series "High Stakes" (very starry with Richard 'I don't believe it!' Wilson, and Jack Shepherd - a Scorpio I used to be at Drama school with!) the whole joke centred on one of the Bank's junior fund-managers' enthusiastic use of astrology to play the markets and net a cool£14million!!! "Steven Clay"s first entrance with his extraordinary news was at 22h11 BST. He wanted to call his fund "Star Performer". Lots of fun, and quite nice for us as it was only the people who were made to look totally silly, not astrology for a change. (Though they needed to brush up on their astronomy!) Wilson's character "Bruce Morton" was apparently an Aries, totally incompatible with the Bank's Chairman "Nicholas Quinn", Shepherd's Capricorn character - and I must say this comes across rather well. Promising! And after last month's nice surprise in ITV's new comedy "High Stakes", now we find Mercedes-Benz' current advertisement on UK TV also availing itself of astrology - albeit their own slick spin on the 12 signs versus the mass of mobile humanity, and their own 76 models. Not so much blowing their own trumpet as their own trombones?... Also ... In the closing moments of ITV's two-parter "Perfect", starring Michelle Collins as an abused, immature late 30-something addicted to divorceless white weddings, she is leaving Court in a taxi. She catches the limpid eyes of the taxi-driver in the mirror, breaks into a slow smile and says, "You must be a Virgo!" "No, actually I'm a Leo" he replies (convincingly) trying to keep the afore-mentioned eyes on his driving. "Then you must have Virgo rising!" she responds winningly, her own eyes bright now with more than the so-recently-shed tears. "Are you an Astrologer, then?" enquires the hapless prey. "No, I'm a nurse." " A NURSE!" There is no Part 3 - but the viewer can deduce the rest! The episode began at 21h00 BST on Monday April 30th (take London), and finished at approximately 22h30. However: A far from happy experience was had by the Astrological Association's President, our good and dear friend Roy Gillett, who was invited by UK's Channel 5 to participate in what should have been a legitimate and useful test of applied astrology. And, effectively, was Had. Here follows, with his blessing, a copy of Roy's response to the perpetrators of a disgraceful media scam: "New Zodiac or Old Debunking" Channel 5's documentary presentation "The New Zodiac", made by Pioneer Productions of London W6 hit a new low in misrepresenting astrology to the public, bias and unfair tactics. Below are reasons that show this clearly. 1) The two astrologers involved in the programme, Russell Grant and Roy Gillett, were interviewed and filmed but not informed what were to be the main thrusts of the programme. Consequently they were afforded very little opportunity to explain particular points or to answer apparent criticisms. As astrologers are all too aware of public, media and "scientific" misapprehensions, both astrologers would have been more than happy to clarify matters, thus preventing errors on the part of Channel 5. In contrast, an astronomer and a psychologist, both of whom were sceptical of astrology as they had little knowledge of the subject, appear to have been consulted at every stage and to have helped in determining the plot and development of the programme. In support of this are two documents: a) A letter written by Pioneer researcher Alex Williamson, written on 25th January 2001, which shows that Roy Gillett's contribution was "in the can" on that date. Roy received no further communication from Pioneer from then on. b) Copy of an email distributed around the "skeptic network" in the third to fourth week of March, which shows clearly that Tony Youens, the programme's self-confessed "con artist" knew the content of the programme in advance of its screening. 2) As a result, the editorial commentary throughout was sceptical. Views contrary to what astrologers would claim were carefully explained, honoured by the commentator and illustrated by expensive graphics. In contrast, the astrologers' answers were confined to snippets, edited from long, wide-ranging interviews, during which the astrologers were given no indication of the programme's true intentions, or what the viewer would be seeing. While the viewer could sit back and absorb elaborate and painstaking, albeit erroneous, criticisms of astrology, he/ she was given very much less time to grasp much more information about how astrology really works. 3) With all the "authority" of his massive telescope in the background, the astronomer was allowed to claim astrology could not work, because the planets moved around the sun. The astrologer would have answered that we live on the earth, whose movements are determined by the solar and star systems, but he was not allowed to comment. 4) Worst of all, the astrologers were not allowed to answer the main thrust and actual title of the programme - the alleged "New Zodiac"!! If they had been, they would have advised viewers that there is nothing new! Astrology has always taken account of the precession of the equinoxes. It is the basis of astrology's view of the main aeons in the grand sweep of history. In fact, Indian astrologers have used the so-called "New Zodiac" for thousands of years - it is called the sidereal zodiac. The eastern sidereal and western tropical zodiacs have validity and important complementary relationships with each other. The planets move in the same cycles, whichever zodiac you use. Having misinformed and confused the public about this very important subject and compounded their error by offering to supply a "new" zodiac, for a fee, Channel 5 has a duty to commission a programme that explains what the astrologers would have explained - had they been asked. We would be happy to cooperate in the making of this programme 5) The programme's second attack, using the so-called Barnum Effect to assess astrological readings, seems reasonable enough, until you know how the pseudo-experiment was arranged and think through the implications fully. a) The critics knew that the experiment was taking place, but not Roy Gillett, who was told he was just giving an example of how he did a reading and that the clients would be asked their opinion. Dr Chris French (sited authoritively in the Grand Hall of Goldsmiths College), who suggested the pseudo-experiment, was allowed to speak about it, both before and after, as was Tony Youens the self-confessed "con artist". The impression given was that Roy Gillett and consultant astrologers in general unconsciously used similar techniques to the "con artist". However, Roy was not allowed to comment on Tony's performance, or "con artists" in general. Indeed, Roy only found out about the trick, when he was shown a copy of Tony's bragging email - see 1(b) above. b) The basic rules of scientific research were broken: for a test to be valid, there must be agreement in advance as to the design of the experiment, as to what constitutes a proper result and that the test be carried out in isolation. Presumably Dr French would not submit to such a loaded test in his own field of expertise; thus it is surprising that he appeared willing to have Roy Gillett tricked into such. c) As a result, the test devised by Dr French and Tony Youen makes a crucial logical error, which would make most people's lives impossible, if its apparent findings were true. It goes like this: "A "con artist" can make people believe he is an astrologer. This means that astrology is worthless. "con artists" have successfully made people believe they are doctors, therapists, psychologists (even Dr French's brand of it), financial advisers, solicitors, priests, journalists, politicians, government officials, trade union officials, social workers, farmers, business people, teachers, bus and train drivers, computer technicians, etc. etc. This means that medicine, therapy, psychology, Dr French, financial and legal advise, religion, politics, the civil service, trade unions, social work, farming, commerce, schools, buses, trains, computers, indeed all things in our lives are worthless. Or is it more likely that self-confessed "con artists" and those who employ them ought to be discounted as worthless? 6) All of which explains why the astrologers in this programme were not given parity with the sceptics and were denied an adequate or equal chance to comment on the points raised. Just a minute's comment by one of them on the not "new zodiac" and the Barnum pseudo-experiment would have made the main thrusts of the programme unsustainable. The astrologers may also have pointed out a similar programme, made by the BBC some six years ago in their "Heart Of The Matter" series, covered the same points. Was Channel 5 aware that it was repeating old material, old gambits and old arguments? 7) Astrology is an easy target. The public knows mainly the sun sign columns, which everyone admits are superficial and generalised. Serious astrology is entirely self-supported, while governments and businesses grant billions of pounds to finance scientific and other research - and some of these funds find their way into the coffers of opinionated debunkers rather than true researchers. The highly advanced and complex knowledge of astrology is not taught at school. So, it is a simple matter to combine the sun sign information the public do know with a few snippets of scientific-sounding misinformation to ridicule the profound wisdom that the public seeks, but find it difficult to find. Do Pioneer Productions and Channel 5 aim to be no more than lackeys to such cheap tricks and public disinformation? 8) The Association would be happy to cooperate in programmes that would restore the balance. Below are two suggestions. a) A truly original television documentary would study and judge astrology on its own grounds, merits and aims, divorced completely from spurious irrelevancies dreamt up by those who have not yet had the time, inclination or opportunity to examine the subject properly. Points to be debated by astrologers and sceptics would be asked and answered face-to-face. Sceptics would then have the opportunity to have their misapprehensions dispelled and their anxieties allayed - if they were willing and open to this. When this happens a good astrologer will always win the debate. This seems to be what the "skeptic" sub-group are afraid of. b) A programme, or series of television programmes, which examine the role of science and academic expertise in our twenty-first century world is long overdue. This could consider the strengths and weakness of making judgements solely on the basis of constantly changing empirical research and so called "expert" opinion. It would look at the part this plays in medical research, antibiotics and diagnosis and has played in the BSE and Foot and Mouth and ecological crises. Such a series could consider those scientists, who oppose state funding of religious schools and see religion as "inferior", even unnecessary knowledge. Are they trying to indoctrinate the public into making decisions solely from a simplistic material science view of reality? It could investigate academics, who are so desperate to debunk astrology that they will use tricks and misrepresentation to cloud the public mind. Similar "tests" could be applied to their area of expertise. "Twenty-first Century Inquisitors" or "The New Bigotry" are possible titles for this last programme. Roy Gillett - President Astrological Association of Great Britain - 18th April 2001. * * * * * * * * * * * * I had a reply from Jean-Claude Bragard, Producer of "Son of God" - "I'm sorry we couldn't give more airtime to astrology - I wish we had 6 hours in which to do the series - there were so many things we had to leave out. ... You are of course right that M.Molnar's views - though about astrology at the time, are from an astronomers' point of view. The 7BC Pisces conjunctions was indeed the previous theory to hold sway, but M. Molnar's is now regarded by most astronomers as the better theory. .... As regards the comet - I'm very interested to hear you say that one appeared on May 7th 5 BC. I wasn't aware of this - are there records? M.Molnar's theory is that comets or supernovas were not regarded as important by ancient astrologers. In any event I hope one day there may be an opportunity to do a more in-depth programme on the Nativity. We are trying to develop ideas to do so,but it takes time. .... As for everything occurring in Aries, this is the nub of his theory, following his discovery of some 1st century coins from Judea which finally proved that Aries was the astrological sign for Judea. So - in his view - astrologers looking for omens about Judea would be looking in Aries. His whole theory stands or falls on this key assumption. And as far as I understood from his charts, on that day, Saturn was in Aries. ...." .... to which I have responded: " .... Thank you very much for your kind reply. I do mention in Chapter 17 of the Draconic Chart volume which I gave you in Manchester, that my information on the 5BC Bethlehem comet - as well as a great deal of supporting data for a Nativity in Spring 5BC - came personally from Prof. Colin Humphreys at Cambridge University. He has spent much time over many years researching both the Nativity and the Crucifixion (with Prof. John Waddington.) The theories of pure historians and astronomers produce birth-charts for Jesus that simply do not work astrologically - surely you can see that if one is to accept the premise that astrology was fully functional in antiquity, it must continue to do so - and increasingly with our enhanced technology and perspective - in the modern world? It is desperately sad that so very few people are properly educated in astrology, and even they are treated with the flippancy of a sideshow by most academics and media. If you were to help us fight our corner with a follow-up series on serious astrology, it would be a breath of fresh air, clear away many misunderstandings, and awaken a huge amount of public interest. I am convinced there is an audience waiting for this. ...." While we're on the subject of questionable media... ... a nice little daily programme on ITV, "Revealing Secrets", ran an item on one William Hope of Crewe (Cheshire, UK) and his Spirit Photography which was all the rage in the first couple of decades of the 20th Century. They actually showed a poster that gave the date, time and venue of one of his Lantern Lectures! Monday September 9th 1918 at 7h30 pm in Union Street, "Rayton", which I must have mis-copied and is most probably Royton in Lancashire, UK. Now this is interesting - I have just transformed the chart by the Balancer Harmonic you will find at the end of the bulletin, and look how it paints the picture! An exact Sun/Uranus conjunction in Taurus10th opposite Neptune in 4th all square a Venus/Mars conjunction in 7th, while a 5th-house Sagittarian Moon, trine 9th-house Chiron, squares a Pisces Mercury in 8th (itself in grand trines with Neptune and Jupiter in 12th.) Here in a nutshell is the charismatic wonder-worker mystifying and electrifying a mixed audience with apparent proof of discarnate realities. Many are women, thoroughly enjoying themselves, open to persuasion, and likely to swallow any occult hocus-pocus he can produce so easily and sell so fluently. Do try it. IT'S 2023 AND TELFORD'S DAYS ARE NUMBERED! ... SECRET GAME OF COSMIC GOLF COULD SMASH CITIES! ... Thus thundered the Daily Telegraph and the Times on the 12th of April when it was revealed by David Asher and Nigel Holloway that explosions on an asteroid could blast its orbit into a deadly collision course with an enemy city during a space-age war. Using a computer model they steered asteroid 1998 HH49 to impact with Telford in Shropshire, England, economically wiping out Manchester, Leicester, Nottingham and Birmingham all at the same time. After October 16th 2023, the UK's prime manufacturing bases and living heart would no longer exist. Damage would extend beyond the British and Irish mainlands to the European Channel coasts. A photo of Telford's Time Machine clock in the Telegraph's alarming montage shows it at 1h01 pm (it's daylight!), so my chart is set at this time. Oh dear. How did they come to choose a culminating Sun/South Node square Pluto? And how come, according to Solar Fire, my Times Atlas, and my AA Touring Guide, Telford never even existed??? That mystery was eventually solved by an intense scrute of said Atlas and a brand new road map - what is now Telford New Town was once a scattering of more evocative communities including Wellington (of Duke and Boots) and Oakengates (which Solar Fire knew all about!) Sadly I don't have the town's inceptional data - can you help? All this tells me is that it's 33 years old this year and it is doomed at 55! Looking at the dwad is just as dismaying - the Nodes and Meridian now line up along the Asc/Desc with Uranus "setting", and Chiron squares all this drama from the 4th ... along with the radix Sun/S.Node/MC square that Pluto which now collides with the "setting" Uranus. Not exactly a day to look forward to. What was that about WYFIWYG...??? NOW - SOMETHING FOR YOU TO TRY. . . From Arizona, Michael C. Heleus writes, "As Uranus neared my Sun in '98, I found the inside-outside balancer angle of 79.3837 degrees (try that and its multiples in charts)." I've been applying myself to this, taking an Harmonic approach. Divide 360 by 79.3837 and you have the 4.534936th harmonic. (Solar Fire will accept input to 6 decimal places.) Divide again, and you have at your disposal the 9.069872nd harmonic. Now, it is pretty obvious that we are nestling up very close here to the 9th harmonic and its relations - but just try comparing the straight 9th H chart - and the 4.5th H chart - with Mike's "Balancer" as a harmonic series and you may be quite startled at the increase in precise description of something crucial in your life and your nature that gives both substance and meaning. Adding the "Balancer" angles themselves to your software will limit you to aspects of less than 180 degrees, so the only multiple is a 2x Balancer. A semi-aspect is so close to the Novile that unless you are doing some astonishingly precise stuff ( as MCH is with Astrosonics ) there is little point in looking for it. I favour the Harmonic approach very much - the results so far have been extremely interesting. *In future, this will be referred to as the 'BH' chart. Mike adds: "I have finally managed despite big odds to get a token site up at angelfire.com/music3/astrosonicservices" - so take a look at his work; it is extraordinary stuff from an extraordinary mind; some of you who tick the same way will understand and appreciate what he has spent the last three decades researching and developing. Dateline May 2nd 2001: Luciano Pavarotti on trial for tax evasion! (claims constant travelling entitles him to claim for heavy expenses) Delicious asteroid pattern! Pavarotti conjunct Venus in Aries, Luciano(tesi) conjunct Jupiter in Gemini; the Venus/Jupiter, Luciano/ Pavarotti Midpoint in tight square to Neptune which rises in his Q-chart for today (remember - the current date (& optionally place) set for the natal time (& optionally place.) Also in his Q-chart, Saturn at the IC! Pavarotti's Daily Converse chart is something to behold: the Sun and Mercury (square a Moon/Jupiter conjunction on his natal IC) culminate for maximum exposure, as the slings and arrows of Mars rise in Scorpio opposite the outrageous fortune of setting Uranus. The transit of Uranus has already hit the tenor's natal Desc, and it's even sitting on the 7th at his 2001 Solar return. This is one it seems he has always had to go through. On the angles of his Daily Progressed chart, Marconia and Lucretius Carus are to be found - the media spotlight again, and Enormous Expense! Let's hope it all proves to be a constructive wake-up call and not a sad disintegration. Either way, the Leo-rising ego is in for a severe bruising this year. In view of MCH's Balancer - do look at Pavarotti's 4.534936th harmonic - especially at the centre of a bi-wheel with the radix chart around it. What a stunning pattern! My own works well, too, in this format. Next, do the same thing, this time with his Converse Daily chart for his birthtime today, May 2nd 2001, again in a biwheel, BH of the Converse with the Converse. What drama! If you don't have a program that allows custom harmonic input, then do it by hand - it's worth the effort. Here we go again! Is there no end to the surprises and glories of this heavenly language? The more we discover, the more there is to be found. It is a perpetual delight! The great tenor's data, for those of you who don't have it: October 12th 1935, at 01h40 CET in Modena, Italy. (supplied to Frank Clifford by Grazia Bordoni, from the Birth Certificate.) Here's a nice little snippet - - I have a newspaper photograph of a print-out of an email that was supposed to be utterly private, but which went all around the world! As it involved a solicitor, and I don't think the term is used in the USA for a legal representative, I'm assuming London, the date December 7th 2000, the time 16:12. It was sent from Clare to solicitor boyfriend Bradley, thanking him for a very intimate compliment. He then decided to swank by forwarding it to his best mates - and off it went to the entire wired world! Here we have asteroids Clara and Bradley cosying up in 14 and 17 Libra in the lovers' 5th house, conjunct sexy Mars (naturally!), trine a culminating Uranus in Aquarius and sextile a Sag. Sun-Pluto-Chiron trio that has just set (maybe another location corrects this to the 7th cusp), identifying a bloke on an ego trip having fun by publishing (Chiron in one of its lesser-known roles) stuff that ought to be secret. The Aries Moon in the 11th has been impulsively indiscreet - and is heading rapidly to a square with 9th-house Capricorn Venus ... Oh woe is she! How she wishes she could swallow her words! Now this is what I call 'panning out'! ..... This same April day was trumpeted as "Another Bad day For The Royals". Do you really need to see the DPA's for our Queen? Can't you imagine? Well, she was born on April 21st 1926 at 02h40 BST in London with South Node rising in Capricorn and Saturn on the MC ( and for your interest, her BH Moon, S.Node, Asc all conjoin on her radix Saturn/MC). On April 11th 2001 at her birthtime, her Q-chart is weighed down with South Node rising in Capricorn and an exact opposition of Moon-Saturn just past square to Uranus, still close to the Queen's meridian, and two days from her DPAsc. The converse, inescapable, DC(onverse)A's had just rolled Saturn and Ascendant together, six days after Uranus conjunct DCIC. T Uranus squares her natal Saturn, and before long will square the royal MC. For good measure, the Queen's Sun is conjoining natal Pluto square p.Mars and is nearly on Pluto progressed. To cap it all, her crucial Nodal return was at 4h00 am on October 13th 2000 (you can produce Nodal Return charts instantly with the Herschel program from Graham Bates) - Mars rises in Virgo square the Pluto/Chiron-Jupiter opposition up and down the meridian, while a full Moon in Aries straddles the 2nd and 8th houses. Moon/Uranus=Mars, in quincunxes. It must be horrendously hard for her to contain her fury when she and everything she solidly stands for is repeatedly threatened and undermined. But it is impossible to fight the Plutonic forces of essential or historic change. She has to put her own interests last, her subjects' first, duty and restraint over desire. Over the next year or five we'll see major developments at Buckingham Palace and/or in the history of Britain, since p.Sun/Pluto is rapidly followed by p.Sun/N.Node, and she will hopefully do as a spiritual duty whatever a Queen must do. She had just laboured through the excruciating embarrassment of Sophie Wessex's PR gaffe and consequent resignation from her firm; now on 11th April the senescent actor and Pensioners' campaigner Tony Booth, one-time TV son-in-law of BBC's immortal royalist reactionary 'Alf Garnett' and now father-in-law to the Prime Minister of Great Britain, went on record to criticise the royal family as "arrogant, greedy, disreputable and stupid." What were we saying about negative Capricorn earlier this year? The Cancer N. Node urges empathy, the mothering and nurturing of a nation. Above all, it impels us to grasp the challenges and rewards of an ever-nascent future as we continually fulfil and let go of the past. Well, it was April 1st... I didn't manage to get this one in last month, more's the pity! ... ...A delicious spoof for April Fools Day adorned the normally solemn Business page of the Sunday Times! I quote: "BA PLANS TO REINVENT THE WHEEL The British Airways London Eye is going supersonic. After a large number of complaints that the wheel, which has unrivalled views over London, moves too slowly, the airline has sprung into action. Prufrock reported in 1999 that the central spindle keeping the whole thing together was made by Skoda. Now, in a bid to speed things up, BA has commissioned a replacement hub from Ferrari's Formula One foundry in Marinello. It will make the switch at 11 am today. Engineers will be testing the wheel, which will achieve speeds of up to 60mph for an hour this morning. If the exercise is successful and there is sufficient demand, BA will offer the faster ride for an hour each day. Passengers will be asked not to take loose change with them for fear of injury and BA says the move will mean that more people will get to enjoy the experience. Kate gay, a BA spokeswoman says, 'We've wheeley got into a spin over this.' " Naturally one must check out heaven's wheel for 11h00 BST on April 1st 2001 in London! South Node setting in Capricorn assures us that slowness Will Not Do, and the interdimensional pattern says everything! Draconic positions tell us what a person or situation is really about, and here we have a draconic Capricorn Sun in tropical 6th (grindingly slow piece of equipment) squared by a Moon/Asc conjunction in Aries in 10th, up in the sky in tropical sunshine with a great view and raring to go! The Mercury-Mars square in coelo is ever so busy; not only do we find draconic Mars and Pluto going into overdrive at the trop.IC, but sidereal (socio-cultural) Mars on the draconic MC with sid.Mercury on dr.Jupiter to boot. Helio Jupiter lines up benevolently with the sidereal Moon/Asc/N.Node in Gemini to ensure that everyone has a really really fun time! Asteroids to do with wheels and speed have to be spoken for, of course; at the ASC/MC midpoint is the conjunction of Swift and Ferrari with dwad Mars and Aeria. Conjunct Uranus, opposite the dwad of the Sun and Jack London ... and Blarney! , and neatly sextile Mars we find Sisyphus rolling along. Aligned with the radix Sun are Spinrad and Schneller (faster!). It just goes to show how inextricably integrated our imaginations are with the Universal Mind! Enjoy! Until June, God Bless, Pam ......................................................................................................... June/July 2001 Happy Holidays, folks! - or at least Happy Summer! It's July (already!!!), so we've skipped an issue, and I apologise. But it has been Thinking Time - as you would be if you had the transits I've got! And maybe you have, in which case Welcome to the Club and How is it for You? In this issue we look at Astrology and the I Ching, The Peruvian Quake, Jill Dando and her murderer's conviction. (No data files attached this month - no time to process them. Should be with you next issue.) Incidentally, if you miss the end off Small World, do tell me and I'll send the 'balance' - I know some mailboxes have limited capacity. And if what you read in these bulletins whets your appetite for asteroid work, you can buy a near-complete Pottenger collection direct from me at Mark's agreed discounted price of $100 for the 'roid-packed CD-Rom. Drop me an email and we'll get it organised. SIMPLY DIVINING.... In a desperate bid to get some sort of handle on inner meltdown before I lose it altogether, out came my dusty volumes of the I Ching. As Tucows had provided a splendid free download of the I Ching to my Psion, many hours were lost to its exploration in the June sunshine - and I came rapidly to the realisation that I would never, ever be able to translate its antique world-view adequately into my own. Unless it would cross-reference to astrology. In which case there was Hope. For a while I really thought I'd cracked it. A lovely system arranged itself over the hexagram table in the back of my workbook. Yet doubts nagged. Nothing quite fitted completely. It was a bit like the cheerful swimsuit I tried on one very, very sweaty morning, and which fitted really nicely round all the usual dodgy bits of body - except for one utterly intractable dimple on one side of the bust - so it was abandoned in despair. As was Fu Hsi, King Wen, Wilhelm, Jung, and Crane's optimistic transliterary effort. THEN the penny dropped! The whole point about pure divination (perhaps with the exception of astrology - but WHO KNOWS???) is that it is you who make the rules. Hands will no doubt fly up in horror at this point after all those head-pounding hours spent memorising the mesmerising pronouncements of so many honoured adepts on the telling juxtapositions of cards, runes, tealeaves, coins, yarrow-stalks, flying geese, entrails, bits of beach and God knows what else, and the painstaking intensity of practice, in fear of contradiction. The workshops. The seminars. The Conferences. The dreaded exams. The expense. But all you are doing in every case is agreeing to a set of rules devised by another human being living in the same world as you, often at a considerable distance in time, space and culture. These rules may have been intuited, or rationally planned. They may even have been divinely inspired. Or concocted for the current incarnation of a tabloid rag! None of this alters the fact that all worldly systems of divination have their origin in the world (spiritual and material) and are organised and passed down the generations by the denizens of the world to further their collective and individual insight into that world. And they only work if practised by folk who agree to the rules. Hence the utter impossibility of so-called scientific testing. No sceptic agrees to the rules. At this point I must stress a) that astrology by its very nature, being Bigger Than All of Us, and being the notes of the complex music that is our eternal development, is not under discussion here despite its differing systems, since astrology as a phenomenon applies descriptively and predictively to all lives with or without their awareness or consent. Nor b) is spiritual healing, which can be so effective for patients who have no faith in it at all, and may even be unaware that it is flowing to them. But how many of you have picked up a pendulum and forgotten whether right or left, circular or straight movement means Yes or No? ...and decided one way (which works just fine) only to find the book said the complete opposite? You made the rules. You initiated and entered into agreement with the Cosmic/the discarnate/ the Higher Mind. Your questions received their proper answers. All chosen paths, followed upwards, lead to the Summit. The Book of Changes ... has very high status among divinatory systems due to its extremely antique and doubly royal provenance. It asks to be treated with respect; it will reward you with ancient imagery and utterances of sibylline ambiguity. 'It' may also argue with you, its answer bearing little relation to your question and seeming to scold or criticise your motive or current attitude. Coming from such an august source, such castigations can provoke much unproductive anxiety. What is going on? You have agreed to be counselled in a language which is unfamiliar and out-of-date. You have deferred to a couple of long-dead Kings instead of the living guidance you know and trust - or obliged your guidance to battle through an alien channel. You have accepted uncritically translations of the oracle which may not do it justice, even from a famous pen. All the above is of course the preferred and honoured practice of many, many people... ...but after taking thought, may there not be other ways to truth that are more appropriate for your corner of 21st century culture, and more enriching? After taking thought, the idea came to me that counsel in the symbolic language I best understood would be most welcome; also that the built-in fluidity of the I Ching's divinatory system could hardly be bettered. Therefore it was necessary to combine these in a way that compromised neither. (I am writing these words to you at the exact Lunar Eclipse!!! Just noticed this. Make of it what you may!) The result became what I call - for want of a better term - SKY CHING. The Mechanics. You use your stalks, your coins, your software - whatever means you have chosen to generate static or moving lines of Yang or Yin energy, just as you would in normal I Ching consultation. But instead of 8 trigrams, columns of 3 Yang or Yin lines that combine to form the 64 6-line hexagrams, Sky Ching forms 16 four-line 'Quartets' that combine into 256 possible 'Octets'... multiplied yet again if three Quartets - a Dodecet - are generated. The lines may be displayed in columns as usuual - or, in deference to the 21st-century's adoption of the Bar-Code, as a sequence from left to right. Instead of solid Yang and broken Yin lines, the energies may be represented by thick/thin lines like a bar code, or by the other pair beloved by those of binary bent, 1 and 0. Or if you are keen to stick with matters closer to the astrological, + and -. It really doesn't matter. Because you are setting the rules of a new and valid contract between your consciousness and the source of Truth. As in the venerable I Ching, if you throw, say, three coins all Yang, that line is then a moving line, transmuting to Yin in a second, derived Quartet that adds to the message of the initial Quartet. The Symbolism Quartets As in the I Ching, from a Creative Monad (O ... or @ ... or * ... or even ? or ! ...?) spring two polar energies, Yang (1) and Yin (0) From Yang come Fire (11) and Air (10); from Yin come Earth (00) and Water (01) FIRE yields Mars/Aries/1st (1100 - Mars exalted in Earth), Sun/Leo/5th (1111 - fixed Fire), Jupiter/Sagittarius/9th (1101 - Jupiter co-ruling & exalted in Water), Asc/Desc (1110 - Fire-Air angles) AIR yields Mercury/Gemini/3rd (1000 - Mercury also rules Earth), Venus/Libra/7th (1001 - Venus exalted in Water), Uranus/Aquarius/11th (1010 - Fixed Air), Dragon's Head (1011) EARTH yields Earth/Taurus/2nd (0000 - fixed Earth), Chiron/Virgo/6th (0011 - concrete, physical), Saturn/Capricorn/10th (0010 - Saturn exalted in Air), Mc/IC axis (0001 - Earth-Water angles) WATER yields Moon/Cancer/4th (0100 - Moon exalted in Earth), Pluto/Scorpio/8th (0101 - Fixed Water), Neptune/Pisces/12th (0110 - abstract, intangible), Dragon's Tail (0111) Octets and Dodecets A Quartet will supply much helpful imagery to illumine the subject-matter of a question. However, you may like to generate the idea of Planet in Sign, or a full sequence of Planet/Sign/House. This is achieved as already suggested by throwing coins (etc) till 3 x 4, 12 lines are formed. These can then be read in exactly that way. The symbolism of the 1st 4 lines will be planetary, that of the 2nd 4 its sign position, that of the 3rd 4 a house position. If there are moving lines, then the corresponding Quartet will transmute to a different Planet, Sign, or House according to its ranking in your sequence. This new information may imply a 'conjunction' in a static Sign, or an 'aspect' between two planets in two signs, or a change of conditions over time, perhaps, when the Sign or the House changes but not the Planet. You see how rich and flexible this is? And any astrologer can read it. It is something you can carry in your head and your smallest pocket; I have a tiny dice (I know it should be 'die' but it looks odd!) on which I have agreed that a 1 or a 5 (Aries, Leo) gives a Yang line, a 2 or a 4 (Taurus, Cancer) gives a Yin line, while a 3 or a 6 (Gemini, Virgo) means a moving Yang or Yin respectively. It's all you need. The results will depend, not on the means of divination you have chosen or on written rules, but on your symbolic understanding, and the integrity of your spiritual agreement. THE PERUVIAN EARTHQUAKE which so rapidly followed the Solstice Eclipse, had its epicentre off the coast of Peru at 16 S 15, 73 W 40. The quake occurred at 20h33m13s UT on June 23rd 2001. The worst effects were felt in the historic city of Arequipa. At the epicentre Uranus had just hit the IC; at Arequipa Saturn was within a degree of setting. The eclipse had occurred just after dawn there and may therefore qualify as still angular. A fifteen-year-old schoolgirl, Danielle Jones, has disappeared from Tilbury, Essex. The time of her last definite sighting was 08h00 BST on June 18th, as she went for the school bus. She didn't get it, but turned back; a girl like her was seen getting into a blue Transit (!) van 'a few minutes afterwards'. Intensive searches have revealed nothing. The only possible lead is a series of text messages to and from her mobile - but the police are not releasing the content of these. They arrested a man on suspicion of abduction, but have let him go. There is great and growing concern. However, she may have gone abroad. At 08h18 the angular Neptune reached the Desc. Asteroids 'Danieladucato' (Danielle led away) and 'Jones' are square in 8 Sag and 9 Pisces, closely configuring Saturn in 11th ... but separating. Does this mean she had already met or made contact with a new 'friend' or stranger and this was an assignation? Or an opportunity taken by this person? Asteroid 'Daniel' is in 11 Leo 39, separating from an opposition to the misleading or glamorous Neptune; the ASC meets the asteroid at 08h36 BST, as Venus in Taurus squares the horizon. Venus and the nearby Moon have also experienced their squares to Neptune, which rules the 9th. She must surely have gone a good distance, if not overseas. An unorthodox adventure beckoned her - but is she alive or hurt or dead? The more skilled among you may have clearer answers than I can attempt. JILL DANDO & HER MURDERER At 16h22 BST on Monday July 2nd 2001 at the Old Bailey Law Courts in London, Barry Michael George was found guilty by majority verdict of 10 to 1 (the 12th juror excused because of bereavement) of the murder by shooting of Bristish TV presenter Jill Dando. One shot just above her left ear from a gun pressed tightly to her head felled her in her own doorway at about 11h30 in the morning of April 26th 1999, in Fulham, London. Until the very end, arguments were still advanced that the single speck of firearm resdue found in his coat pocket after a year, plus the accumulated circumstantial evidence, were insufficient to convict this obsessive, unstable, belligerent man who lived only 500 yards away; but that the killing had been the work of a professional hitman, acting for Serbia in revenge for the destructive shelling of the Belgrade TV station. A small group of us met in the summer of 1999 to examine the chart of the murder for astrological clues to its perpetrator. Although there were hints that there might be Serb involvement, our general consensus was that it looked far more like an obsessive and violent loner, a thwarted fan who had killed the thing he loved rather than watch her constantly taken away from him by fame, marriage, distaste for his advances. He would have seen that week's Radio Times fall open, cover uppermost, and read from back cover to front, "Couldn't you just murder ... Jill Dando". The back was in fact an ad for the Murder & Mystery Book Club; Jill dominated the front cover, posing in alarmingly uncharacteristic leathers next to a silver Aston Martin. Her Scorpio Sun was showing, with a vengeance. The Press this week have frequently mentioned that cover as a probable trigger - but never the words on the back. BARRY Now that the verdict is out, at last we have the birthdate of Barry Michael George, aka Barry Bulsara (because a fan of Queen's Freddie Mercury), aka Thomas Palmer (SAS), aka Paul Gadd (because a fan of the disreputable Gary Glitter), aka Steve Majors, stuntman (after Lee Majors, who played 'Steve Austin'.) He was born in Hammersmith, London on April 15th 1960 - and after some hard and interesting work I believe I may have his time. Although of course it is speculative, it offers a most persuasive chart as I think you will agree. I've chosen 04h53 BST in Hammersmith, as that is the time that has Mars exactly rising in Pisces and Pluto setting. I cannot imagine anything different for a man so obsessed by warfare, guns and the glamour of celebrity that he spent his whole life serially pretending to be someone else or at least their cousin! He lived in a mess. Draconic Chiron on the 7th spells out the pain of his interpersonal chaos - and also again a fascination with the journalistic media. He spent an all-too-brief spell as a messenger for the nearby BBC. Happily, the chosen time also puts the Moon in the 9th in 9 Sagittarius dramatically intensifying its tight square to Mars; this means we have the accurate picture of a sexual fantasist drawn strongly to women from overseas - he briefly and disastrously married a young, sweet Japanese - or stars with an adventurous, luxurious lifestyle. The same pattern points to his ceaseless frustration and anger that may have settled into a fuming hatred of women or boiled out of feelings experienced very much earlier. We also have a Moon/Mars/Asc wide open to the attentions of Pluto throughout 1999-2000 - the period of the murder and his eventual arrest. Jupiter was right opposite that Moon when he married Itsuko Toide in Fulham on May 2nd 1989 (an awful day with Sun opposite Pluto and the Moon in Aries in deep trouble squared to a Mars/Uranus opposition.) The dwad version of George's chart is stunning! The rising Mars is joined by Venus and the N.Node all in Gemini - S.Node therefore on 7th - all square the Moon now in Pisces, and almost everything else in the sky piles into eccentric Aquarius in that house of darkness and torments the 8th. I have always maintained that the 12th vibration of the chart, the Dwad, shows the conscious identity most clearly, and this gives yet more weight to that conviction. His mind is focussed on the fantasy of knowing glamorous people both socially and Biblically - and on his insoluble loneliness; S. Node sets and the more he longs for that intimacy the more it is denied. In the 8th, the Sun/Neptune, Mercury/Jupiter, and Uranus/IC lay the escapism and grandiosity of "Mad Barry" before us with great clarity. And the 8th takes what doesn't belong to it. The Helio dwad is the most startling I have seen - it is dominated by a Grand Cross of Earth/Neptune, Mercury/Pluto. In the life of one who has made close to zero spiritual progress and cannot soar to the heights of such a cross, it will make of him a congential liar - only because he deceives himself, and believes he can get away with anything. In his radix helio chart the conjunction of Mercury and Saturn in Capricorn is evidence of the slow mind, the low IQ which is characteristic of this very sad man. And needless to say, Venus in Pisces and Mars are both involved with Neptune. Jupiter and Venus are angular to the geo chart ... but Sidereal Saturn hangs heavy on his Tropical MC; built into him is the feeling that he is destined effortlessly to mix and identify with the Beautiful People, but in the 'real world' he is a nobody with none of the application essential to achievement. This tension between Jupiter and Saturn may account for his love of talking to the Police - it was he who phoned 999 when he had beaten up his wife, not his victim! It would have given him back some sense of the control he otherwise lacked, paradoxically identifying with the agents of law and order even at the expense of his freedom. Bizarre. I won't take space to labour the patterns for George's arrest (25th May 2000, 06h30, Fulham) or any other of his event dates - you can do that. I want to show you what I believe may be the correct chart for Jill Dando. But before I do, a few asteroids in Barry George's chart for you to savour!... On the ASC with Mars are 'Armor', 'Planman' and his wife as 'Itsukushima'. Conjunct or opposite that controlling but thwarting Saturn are 'Miles' (soldier), 'Bellona' (war) and 'Prey', 'Margret' (his mother), 'Ireland' (her origin) and 'Jack London' the city of their family destiny. On his draconic Scorpio Sun (all his radix Suns are martial!) is 'Fama', opposed by 'Pugnax' (aggressive) and 'Pest' (he was - constantly following women and springing up in front of them to take their photo; he had hundreds of these pictures) - these squared nastily by 'Gunlod' which is too close for comfort to that important dwad Sun/Neptune in early Aquarius. On the Sidereal ASC is 'Makeover' - self-explanatory! 'George' is widely conjunct this MC, and Barry squares it closely from the 1st-house Pisces South Node; lots of karma here. The dwad of 'Barry' is on that Moon. JILL At first I felt it all but impossible to find a chart for Jill Dando as there seemed to be so many possibilities. However, the trauma on her doorstep was so shocking - she screamed once before the silenced shot - that its horrible pattern must have impacted very obviously on her own. Assuming, then, that the early fixed Grand Cross of Sun, Saturn/Mars/Neptune/Asc hit her on at least one vital angle, as you would have done, I tried versions of her chart with the opposition angular, ie 3 Scorpio either rising, setting, culminating or on the IC on November 9th 1961 at Weston-super-Mare. It took a while, but eventually the last of the four, a birth at around 11pm with - most persuasively - Leo rising, seemed to be coming up consistently with the goods. Re-reading accounts of her life in the Press it made even more sense: what we have is a Scorpio Sun conjunct Neptune squaring the ASC/DESC from a 4th-house stellium that includes the Sagittarius Moon. This seems daft for a very public lady who did so much travelling for the BBC's 'Holiday' programme - but in fact when she was growing up she refused to go abroad at all with family or school or friends, preferring to spend all her time in her home seaside resort on the North Devon Coast. And I've learned, from 24 years in intimate proximity to an early-hours Sag., that the Centaur in them will eventually get these home bodies onto a plane - and then there's no stopping them! She also suffered terribly from lack of confidence - and you will see this typically in the Sun-square-Asc person. In fact I first noticed it in a Leo/Scorpio. And importantly this chart places her charming, bright and fluent Venus-Mercury conjunction close to that IC: she started her media career as a reporter for her local paper ... the Weston Mercury! ... on which her father Jack Dando was a compositor. Further to make the point, helio Mercury shines on the Leo Ascendant. The other programme she was known for - and deeply cared about - was 'Crimewatch'. Scorpio. 4th house. 'nuff said! And the project that had just got under way before she died was another 4th-house thing (this time relating to the past), 'The Antiques Inspectors', in which she travelled the UK visiting towns, villages, peoples' homes, to find out what they had of historic interest, beauty and value. Back to that Mercury/IC, remember the IC and the 4th traditionally refer to 'the end of life'; she was (the jury has decided) killed by a man whose idol was Freddie Mercury. Sidereal Mars waits on that IC holding a gun to her head; her death will be remembered. So what about her fame? You so often find famous people with annoyingly pedestrian charts - no 10th-house Suns, no angular Moons, etc etc; But the tropical radix chart is not where you find the limelight. You find it in the interactions between zodiacs. It shows up in connections between tropical and draconic, or sidereal and tropical, or between the tropical dwad and its radix. In Jill's case, the dwad pattern of the speculative chart (settling on 22h55, finally) is triumphant: we have dwad Moon angular to the radix Desc (and conjunct Jupiter for good measure), a dwad Sun/MC conjunction in the radix 10th, and even the radix Sun aligned to the dwad IC! The journalist is pointedly described by dwad Asc conjunct radix Chiron. In this dwad chart, a Taurus Sun, Aquarius Moon and Pisces Asc fit the gentle, friendly Jill that everybody remembers with such love. That will do nicely. And the fateful day?... Annual and daily Progressions spell out the final trauma pretty clearly. That year transiting Pluto was on her progressed IC - on her doorstep - and at the same time joined the conjunction of her natal draconic Midheaven with George's tortured Sagittarian Moon - so close to her own. In the Converse we find Asc opposite Saturn, and c. Mars on the natal IC. The Daily Converse Asc is also lined up with transiting Pluto, as the DPAsc meets radix Saturn and the DPMC presses on natal Mars. The Draconic, karmic progression makes this DPMC/Mars exact. As she had just had her Nodal Return, the Draconic Solar Return was only a few days from her 1998 birthday, on November 14th at 13h59 - and just look at that Pluto on MC, Uranus on Ascendant, Moon on what became the killing axis, and Mars on George's Aries Sun. Three of the four possible charts had an angular Saturn on her 1998 Solar return - but the Lunar Phase Return clinches it, and I have attached a jpeg of this chart to show you how vividly it shows her sudden, shocking, probably karmic death by shooting. Saturn culminates, ending her career with her life. Mars, the gunfire, is again on the doorstep at the IC. South Node rises, sacrificing her. Uranus, the stranger, springs out at her from the Desc. Also attached are George's phase returns prior to the shooting and his conviction. Fascinating - the first has Pluto rising, and a conjunction of Sun and Jupiter at the IC. The Sun/Jupiter/IC is repeated as he loses his liberty ... opposite a clminating Mars/Chiron and with Pluto/Saturn squaring the Ascendant. The 12th-house Moon is repeated. The Q-Charts... Remember a 'Q-Chart' in synastry and its zone-shifted version the 'QZ' displays person A's chart calculated for person B's birthtime (if one is born under GMT and the other under BST there have to be both versions.) These charts tell us what specific experiences each will bring to the other. And the true-time Q chart tells us what the reality of this shared experience is, while the clock-timed QZ shows what the relationship appears to be about. This can seem utterly real to the participant. The latter is indeed the case with Jill Dando and Barry George. Jill brings nothing at all to him in the Q chart set for 04h53 BST/03h53 UT, as there is nothing on the angles. As far as she is concerned, he is not in her life. BUT set her chart for 04h53 clock time to produce the false QZ pattern, and just look at that Jupiter/IC again! And with Saturn! as well as the nearly exact conjunction of Moon/Mars in Scorpio in 2nd. He thinks she can bring him all the reflected glory of her celebrity, believes at the same time that her rejection of him is the cause of his deepest unhappiness - and, feeling that he owns her sexually, may have ended up killing the thing he 'loves'. Putting Barry George's chart up for Jill's clock time, the QZ, places the N.Node on the MC, S.Node on IC. Intriguing... maybe she thought he was going to burgle her home? Or there would be some professional connection that he might have implied? However, go to the Q chart for 22h55 GMT and you find Aries Venus right on the IC ... and Mars square the Ascendant. Yes, he was a sex pest on her home territory, and yes, her last experience of this man was the terror of his armed attack. Taking all these patterns together, I think we have a strong case for the two times; and we certainly have much insight into their lives and states of mind. But the troubling thing - - is that despite all this possible evidence, it doesn't yet prove that Barry George pulled that trigger. All it demonstrates is that she was in all probability one of the celebrity objects of his obsessive and infuriating desire, and that one way or another she would be instrumental in bringing him before a jury and thence to prison. What troubles me is that the straight synastry and composites between them may not suggest powerfully enough the relationship of murderer and victim. (This may of course because despite all the foregoing we still don't have the right times and are failing to see grievous mutual afflictions to the angles.) But with an 'Alan' asteroid on her MC (her fiance Alan Farthing) and 'Telemann' (ie TV personality) on her IC there is still support for Jill's speculative 22h55 or so. What this chart does have is Sidereal 'Barry' on her Leo Asc - which is highly appropriate - and asteroid 'George' only 1 minute of arc from opposition to her Saturn, which in turn places it (square 'Gunlod') on her Sidereal Cancer Asc conjunct his own Draconic Saturn and Sidereal Uranus. What is more, George's Sidereal Mars/Asc opposes Jill's Leo Ascendant by only 2 or 3 degrees - and we all know well enough now that Mars begins to act within that applying orb, as soon as its hot breath can be felt! The thing that really worries me though is that I can't find his names on the murder chart. 'George' is close to Pluto - and his life has been turned inside out and upside down - but however cunningly I have tweaked the planets, angles and asteroids in four zodiacs and the dwads, the only associated names that stand out in direct contact with the killer axis are Alan (conjunction, and opposite 'Paracelsus') and Nick (as 'Nicolini', square.) By this brutal act both men, her fiance (a consultant gynaecologist) and her co-presenter, were sorely bereaved. The question has to be asked, horrible though it is: does it truly mean an assault on their lives - or are we looking at an act with its origins far closer to home? It wouldn't be the first time. The 4-wheel of the murder chart, set for 11h27 am on April 26th 1999 in Fulham, clearly shows it to be a 'crime passionel', with the Draconic Sun/Saturn in the Tropical 5th and the Mars, opposite, conjoining Venus. Circumstantially, both in police evidence and the astrological pattern, the case against Barry George is extremely strong, as he answers all criteria including that of thwarted desire. But it cannot be said to be conclusive; there may be another bitter lover out there, still free, who should be in the hapless George's place - and so who knows what will happen when his case goes, as intended, to Appeal? God Bless! Pam (2013 - the first appeal failed; subsequently his conviction was judged unsafe. He was retried on December 14th 2007; and in 2008, on August 1st, was acquitted of the murder.) |