The Anti-9/11

BESIDES CAUSING A LOT OF suffering and changing the course of history, one thing the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and Hurricane Katrina have in common is that both events were preceded by unusual Sun-Moon aspects exactly on the summer solstice.

Just four hours into the summer of 2001, there was a total solar eclipse in Cancer. Occurring at the beginning of a season, with the Sun's annual northward journey at a halt, daylight went out for four minutes and 57 seconds. We can see from this why, in ancient times, eclipses were considered such powerful omens, and why we need to listen to them today.

Coming on the first day of summer, the eclipse was positioned in an exact 90-degree aspect to something called the Sidereal Vernal Point (SVP) -- more commonly called the Aries Point or the first degree of Aries. Because so many cycles came together at once with such exacting precision, the implication was that something unusual with far-reaching effects would soon be taking place.

Note: Astrology, or rather astrologers, missed it coming.

What some people had noticed was the imminent face-to-face meeting of Saturn and Pluto, which is one of those aspects that changes the world every time it comes around on the guitar, in an approximately 35-year cycle. Think of it: tiny, dense Pluto -- the unstoppable force -- and the vast, structured planet Saturn -- the seemingly immovable object -- meeting at 180 degrees. It's one of those things where something was bound to happen, and it did.

That aspect occurred Aug. 5, 2001, the day before the now infamous Aug. 6 Presidential Daily Brief, wherein the CIA informed the vacationing president that Osama Bin Laden, the half-brother of a Bush family business associate, was determined to hit targets inside the United States.

About four weeks later, with no additional security having been put in place in light of the warning, four airliners were hijacked, some buildings were knocked down, 3,000 people died, and another phase of a long coup d'etat in the United States was accomplished. We know the story: massive shifts from civilian to military budgets, a rapid gutting of civil rights (what some call "givebacks"), the rise of the national security state, the PATRIOT Act, and the beginning of what some hoped (and still hope) would be a world of perpetual war.

Let's remember back to those terrifying days, when reality seemed to be turned upside down. Remember the panic of not knowing what was happening. Not knowing where your kids were or whether they were safe. The silent skies. The Executive Branch government complexes of Washington, DC being evacuated to bunkers. And then, from nowhere, weapons-grade anthrax showing up on the desks and in the mailrooms of journalists and Democratic Party public officials, the U.S. Supreme Court, and of course maybe in your own house. In the wake of this, there were the Enron, Worldcom and the Arthur Anderson scandals in a stampede.

Remember the march to revenge and the American flags and the beginning of the war on terra and the bombing of Afghanistan, and George Bush, newly studded with an American flag pin that has not come off his lapel since, standing tall and proud and popular. Remember the megaphone speech at Ground Zero. Election night 2000 and all its mercurial scamming were forgotten.

Remember how this whole thing was spun into the need to bomb Iraq, which was falsely associated with the World Trade Center. Remember the Space Shuttle disintegrating over Texas, that little omen. Remember the millions of people who came out to peace marches two weeks later, then vanished into the woodwork like mice. Remember the shock and awe campaign beginning a few weeks later. Remember Bush declaring victory on an aircraft carrier. Remember the rows of flag draped coffins finally being seen by the public in the spring of 2004.

Is it possible to remember so much? When you think of all that, think of the June 21, 2001 total solar eclipse.


ON THE SUMMER SOLSTICE of 2005, with the Sun making its annual visit to the first degree of Cancer, the Moon entered Capricorn. There was an exact Full Moon, to the degree, on the first day of summer.

With this aspect, the solar eclipse of June 2001 was re-activated. Eclipses have a long shelf life, and they do something that planets don't -- they stay still. They stand there waiting for a transit or a progression to come along and set them off. Four years is a pretty good duration for an eclipse, but the solstice/total solar of June 2001 was no ordinary chunk of space debris.

With a Full Moon triggering the eclipse in 2005, we had reason to be concerned that something was developing this summer. One immediate result was the transit bombings in London. But that seemed too localized to be the full effect. Now, given that Hurricane Katrina has made her appearance, and the effects are beginning to be felt around the world (petrol is now about $6.50 per gallon in Paris), we have reason to be concerned about what else that something includes.

As we saw with Sept. 11, the problems did not end with the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. They were exploited, enhanced, bungled, manipulated, twisted, business-planned and developed into something beyond what most anyone was expecting and what any reasonable person seriously thought was possible; indeed, beyond what any of us now realize.

A Full Moon setting off the total solar eclipse gives the feeling of a 180-degree turn. Something has both come to full fruition since 2001, and something is reversing itself. Rather, it has reversed itself, and fast -- in the space of a few days or weeks. Full Moons often signify the breaking of a deadlock, and this is what we are now facing as well; a long-held deadlock shattered in the mud.

This time around, while ordinary people are once again suffering and struggling and voluntarily throwing their bodies into another grossly toxic disaster zone to assist others -- both Ground Zero and New Orleans are dioxin areas -- and many people are getting sick and dying, reality has finally come home to roost at the front door of the political community.

It has not done so, until now. We can only hope, pray and keep paying attention and make the connection between politicians and the businessmen they really are. This is always the elusive connection for Americans; we sometimes see politicians as bad, and almost always see corporate executives as good. In reality it is the same greed that drives capitalism and its favorite form of government, corporatism. They are one and the same. Only public relations makes them different.

But for now, what happened in New Orleans is going to land in Washington, D.C.

A massive region of the United States has been destroyed, and its population has been scattered across the country, from Texas to New York City to Seattle. Evacuees are everywhere. Because of this, the story is a local story everywhere. And everybody knows somebody in New Orleans. Just about anyone who travels has been there.

The cleanup and rebuilding is going to go on for a long, long time. There may be other storms that set the whole thing back to the beginning. The effects may or may not -- it remains to be seen -- be crippling to the United States economy. The economy is resilient, but it can't absorb $4 per gallon gasoline for long without massive and painful changes in our entire way of life. How will we function without the Port of New Orleans, without barges to transport lumber, steel, oil and grain? How badly will this situation be exploited by businessmen?

The changes that result will be with us every day, so we're not going to forget. People with SUVs are not going to forget when their monthly gas bill far exceeds their car payment. (Hmm, we may actually start to see smaller cars on the road, an appropriate, if indirect response, to a hurricane that was probably enhanced greatly by climate change. Americans will have to consume less. We can stand it.)

It is becoming painfully obvious that there was government neglect involved both before and after the disaster struck. Neglect or, as many are now observing, some kind of intentional act. The money, the National Guard, the highwater Humvees, are in Iraq. Why are they in Iraq? Because Sept. 11 was exploited; because Halliburton and the Carlyle Group and Chevron control the United States Government; and because due to a wide diversity of circumstances, we now find ourselves without an electoral process, living under an empire rather than in a republic.

And the empire is, unfortunately, no longer funded or prepared to deal with disasters, just with terrorism. Sorry, we could have handled a hurricane five years ago, but we're not in that business any more. You now live in the United States of Homeland Security.

The most important difference between 8/29 and 9/11 that it's more or less impossible to blame this on an enemy and launch a bombing campaign. (Who knows, maybe Karl Rove will figure it out, and we might want to watch for that somewhere soon.) This is usually the feel-good response when something goes wrong in America, or when we need to clear out the munitions stockpiles and buy more from Boeing, General Dynamics and Raytheon. We assert our might and power, get out the yellow ribbons and beer and watch it like the Superbowl or the Grand Old Opry.

But now, that illusion is failing, and we all know that what happened in the southeast could be anywhere. To give one example, the city of Houston, longtime home base for Bushes and Enron and much else, has been turned into an evacuee staging area. Many of the people seeking refuge there are senior citizens, uprooted from their homes and their reality after long lives. The Houston Astrodome is a refugee camp. Isn't that weird? People are camping out in $200 box seats.

For a long time, reality has resisted having such a foothold, or rather, we have resisted. We might have noticed and you might have noticed. Most people did not, and for most, life has gone on as usual. There has been a long, long series of national disasters and tragedies and pain and bombs raining down on poor countries in the Middle East, and for the most part, people have played along with the game -- even many who "objected." We have watched television helplessly and wondered what we can do, if anything.

Now something real has happened. It has happened at home, where we can notice it, and where we can do something. What has happened is so real that we may even get angry. While anger is a good start, it's not a replacement for leadership. And leadership is the one thing that's lacking in the United States right now, both in the form of a person, or people, and in the form of an idea.

I assure you that we're going to see a tar and feather campaign for the Bush administration. It will not be pretty, and it will be interesting, and on some level, it will be satisfying. We are likely to see a Constitutional crisis of some kind, but that may come in 2009 when, still well coated, Bush or Cheney refuses to leave office. But tar and feathers is not enough.

To understand the astrology of the Bush administration, Sept. 11, the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina, one needs to look no further than the four cardinal signs (Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn). For the moment, the focus is on Libra, and on Oct. 3, we will have an eclipse of the Sun in that sign. This will accelerate the process of karma that has -- at long last, after what has seemed like years of being stuck -- finally been set into motion.

We will see things happen in government and in society that we had no notion could go down. What will shock us most is how fast things can change, and how fast we need to adapt. It can be a very exciting time in history, a great moment to be alive, if you go with the flow. The potential creativity, the sense of adventure, the community and the sense of being alive are unlikely to be like any other we've ever experienced, except maybe Burning Man. I propose that soon, having been to that desert party will become the equivalent of a college diploma in post-industrial America, where life is organized into camps.

On the other hand, many people who have become extremely comfortable doing the same thing and thinking the same thoughts and, more than anything, holding themselves as better than everyone else, will be presented with what we can politely call a spiritual challenge. Well, there really is only one spiritual challenge, which is the need to love.

As I have said, the spotlight is about to be thrown onto Libra. The current theme is JUSTICE. Something that for long periods of time is dormant in the American mentality, then occasionally returns with a vengeance, is the need for justice, and we're about to feel what that is like. My concern is that, if taken for its own sake, justice often becomes vengeance. And that is what we need to beware of right now. Anger is an appropriate response; but we need to direct it.

So much outrage at George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, Scooter Libby and many others of their ilk has been forced beneath the surface of consciousness that it's far better that it come out than stay held down. We have been lied to, our country has been ripped off, and our government is now bankrupt and in debt and waging a huge war it can't get out of and at the same time, cannot take care of its own people. As a result of all of this, thousands of our young people are dying for a lie in Iraq, and it's known that 100,000 civilians have been killed as a result of that lie. And now, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama are laying in waste.

Fact: those levees could have been fixed long ago. Fact: they were not. Fact: the money was spent on a private war. Fact: oil business cronies of the White House, as well as Halliburton, will rake in billions on this disaster.

When this all hits home as ONE idea, it's going to transcend politics entirely. And that moment is coming soon. Indeed, it's coming now. The challenge, in true Libra fashion, will be staying in balance and keeping a grip on ourselves, and applying reason. The larger issue is leadership. Because the power vacuum that is appearing on the national level only reflects a power vacuum that has existed in our minds for a long time.

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There is much more on the Katrina charts in Eric's weekly astrology Q&A at: http://cainer.com/ericfrancis/eric.html

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Planet Waves by Eric Francis
Friday, Sept. 9, 2005 -- Weekly Horoscope #575

[NOTE TO VIRGOS: Once again I declare myself unfit to write the longer birthday report today -- so I will have it for you Monday, and may leave it there for a while, as it does tend to work better, and I have more time to devote to it. Thanks for your patience. The short version below is the "newspaper edition" for where Planet Waves appears in print.]

Happy Birthday, Virgo!
Faith is not about proof. In this respect, it has nothing to do with thought, the intellect, or even with ideas. It's a state of knowledge, and one of the more natural conditions that the mind can assume. That's because it represents knowledge about yourself. But don't let this deter your quest for self-understanding. The journey itself counts for more than anything, and it can begin wherever you are today. All factors point to the same thing -- you have an astonishing year ahead, one that will take you far and wide and beyond anything familiar. Don't worry about where -- just go forward, grow and learn.

Aries (March 20-April 19)
The missing factor may have specifically involved sex, but that appears to be resolving itself. Sex is the ultimate gift to give, the ultimate gift to receive, and the most powerful negotiating point. It's this third factor you've been struggling with lately, and what you may have learned is that it's okay to decide you're interested only in who or what really gets your attention. By keeping your focus, you claim the power of your own desire. My hunch is you're about to see you did exactly the right thing, because this time around, it looks like you'll get the results you want.

Taurus (April 19-May 20)
Gradually, something is coming into focus for you. It is perhaps the great irony of human relationships that, so often, what we really seek is ourselves, and when we find that, we have less need to seek ourselves in others. But once this little game of personality is over, there remains the experience of relationship that is based on authentic common ground, and on something genuinely complimentary about different people. You're quickly going past the little plays and dramas of the world, and past any need to associate love with power. Reality is about to touch your heart.

Gemini (May 20-June 21)
It appears that circumstances are forcing you to make a decision, or to take action you would have preferred to avoid or at least delay. How much of the situation involves reconciling what has happened in the past with what has developed today? How much involves an agenda you have that you're not openly discussing? And is it possible that there's a hint of jealousy involved in the situation? I suggest you call it what it is -- whatever it is. Put your agenda on the table, where you can see it, and where everyone else can, too.

Cancer (June 21-July 22)
You're in the perfect position to achieve great things in the world on the basis of feeling safe with who, what and where you are. The only risk you run is viewing life as a popularity contest. This is not because you don't need a measure of group support (you do), but rather because anyone who strives for their real goals has to be willing to experience some unpopularity or friction. Nobody could accuse you of being insensitive or selfish, so you're in the perfect position to suggest that people deal with their own feelings. Learn the art of being uncompromising. It will suit you well.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23)
If you're feeling isolated, I have two suggestions; one, it's an illusion of some kind, and two, what you need is some time to yourself to pursue a creative project. Spending some time away from the awareness of others may be just the thing you need, and help you open up a source of inspiration. At the very least, get some time away from work and responsibility. Your ideas and sense of what is possible right now are running strong, and if you can rise above the stress of this you will make some awesome progress with yourself.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22)
You have the potential for absolutely perfect focus now. All you need to do is keep giving yourself permission to succeed. Try it. You will then see that all that stands between you and what you want is your own choice to grant yourself consent. This may seem too easy, but I assure you that for you, it is not -- or rather, it has not been in the past. You've made up many excuses for not getting what you want, and they get in your way constantly. All you can really do is deny those factors and say yes to your heart's desire. Then you will have the evidence you need.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23)
What you have not figured out, and what I hope you discover soon, is that you don't need to negotiate, or to make sure that everyone else is taken care of. You don't need to ask permission or please anyone; you need to know what's important to you, and you need to decide what you're going to do in order to make that happen. There is a good bit of impact in this idea, but I have the utmost faith that you have dedicated yourself to what we can call the greatest good for all concerned. Therefore, what works for you works for us; so keep your focus and feel free to issue the occasional progress report.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22)
I suggest you rise above the idea that 'it all comes back to someone else'. Actually, what counts at this point is the origin, which happens to be you. Try that on for size for a while; see if you can find the space inside where your awareness and perception actually have an influence on what happens around you, and what happens to you. What have you got to lose? I would say you have only to gain, because so many other methods of getting control of your life have proven to be so unreliable. There is a good reason; anything that denies your power will deny you.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22)
The pieces of a situation are beginning to assemble themselves, though there may be a few others you need to provide. You have what you need; you merely need to remember that on certain matters, no matter how cooperative others have been lately, nobody is going to come through but yourself. This is fine; you will have the sense of accomplishment and everyone will share in some of the credit. But in reality, the most important factor is that you get to finish something you started, a role which really belongs to you alone.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20)
You are making progress, despite what appears to be a setback staring you in the face. Just stare it right back, and remind people of the promises they have made, the ideas they espoused, and of their own best interests. Do so politely, but clearly, and firmly, and you will get your way. Keep in mind that certain individuals have a tendency to get high on conflict. Watch this tendency in yourself and make sure you don't feed it a single scrap of your emotional energy. Only you can revive the spirit of cooperation that was so strong, so recently.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19)
Things are moving quickly from potential to manifestation, but you need to beware that there are factors that could interfere with this process. One of them is what I would call an overdeveloped sense of commitment. In a sense, I'm suggesting that you put the emphasis on fun and not on the future; and that you use any sense of failure as fuel for determination to let your life be full and real in this moment. And yes, it helps to remember that everything has its limits; I just don't suggest you take them too seriously.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20)
It will not be long before you see that the real gift of a recent breakthrough, encounter or development will be to provide you with even greater opportunities to explore life and love. It's up to you to keep your vision both wide, and clear, and to make the decision not to deny yourself any experience you know you really want. You've had plenty of time to hesitate, and more than enough time to make up your mind; so leave these steps in the process behind and make what will amount to relatively simple decisions. In this situation, you need to lead the way, so be bold, firm and open-minded.

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