This year, as last, the Equinox is accompanied by unpredictable yet revolutionary Uranus. We saw his work last year with the Arab Spring, worldwide demonstrations and protests, and the Occupy Movement. It was a year in which we saw “The Protestor” make the ‘Person of the Year’ on the cover of Time Magazine. Everywhere where there was some form of discontent, it was raised up several notches, accelerated via the Uranus-ruled internet. These were a direct response to civil rights issues and the apparent inequality of wealth and power, a common theme in Uranus/Pluto cycles, which we are also currently experiencing. It is a time when gross inequalities which people had been tolerating for some time, finally reach a point where they are no longer tolerable. Uranus and Pluto will perfect their square to one another this year and next.
What is different about this year’s Ingress chart is that retrograde Mercury is sitting between the Sun and Uranus, not only mediating the dynamic of change, but also mixing it up with Mars. Mercury and Mars, both retrograde, are in each other’s signs, a relationship astrologers refer to as ‘mutual reception’, doubling the impact of the Mercury (speaking, writing, communicating, traveling, workers, healthcare, servants) and Mars (warriors, soldiers, aggression, anger, militancy, initiative) energy. With Mercury posited between Sun and Uranus, we could be privy to some revelations. Mercury/Uranus also has a great deal to do with the internet... having information go ‘viral’, quickly disseminating information.. so quickly that some may wish they could take it all back again (retrograde).
This is also about issues from the past being revived and brought forward into the limelight. There could also be ‘reversed’ decisions, and reversal of legislation. Mars is also currently squaring the Moon’s Nodes. The Nodes of the Moon symbolize our group ‘Karma’ as a whole, as well as our own personal sense of destiny and purpose. This is where we have arrived as a group as a result of the choices and actions we have made in the past. It encompasses the cultural norms, as well as the inevitable consequences of decisions made historically and recently. With Mars squaring the Nodes there is a conflict arising within the embedded, and accepted traditions of the society as a whole. And this will be felt whether you are in Afghanistan, Paris or Sausalito. It’s this feeling that some sort of belief, some political ideology that is embedded in the current society, is some how hypocritical or damaging to the society as a whole, and it either creates the urge to make or force changes. And it can easily result in anger and even larger conflict.
With Mars at the bending of the Moon’s Nodes, there is a recipe for conflict in ideation, religious views... even the possibility of religious wars. And with the revolutionary energy of the Uranus/Pluto square it is to our advantage to find ways to promote and initiate positive changes without devolving into anarchy or resorting to violence.
Uranus/Pluto cycles are also noteworthy for their non-violent demonstrations, and peaceful resistance movements, from Harriet Tubman who escaped her own slavery, only to return again and again through the Underground Railroad to lead more than 300 slaves to freedom; to Henry David Thoreau’s anti-war civil disobedience, to Mahatma Gandhi’s Salt March, to Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights marches in Alabama... all of these occurred during Uranus/Pluto hard aspects (conjunctions, squares or oppositions). So in retrospective commemoration to these great activists, who used peaceful means to change the world, I thought I would dedicate this Aries Ingress to those people throughout the world today, who seek to implement change without the use of violence, aggression or rhetoric. In other words, we can use this same energy to promote change in positive, non-violent, and constructive ways.
The Sudan
This past Friday (March 16th) actor, George Clooney was arrested along with US Congressmen, faith leaders, and human rights activists who were protesting at the Sudanese Embassy. They carried signs that said “Stop Bombing Civilians Now!” and “End the silence stop the violence.” It is believed by many that the Sudan has been, and will continue to grow to be one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. If it isn’t already. Pluto is currently exactly on the Sudanese Sun at 9° of Capricorn, drawing this country directly into the cross hairs of the Uranus/Pluto square this Spring and Summer.
Clooney is a co-founder of the Satellite Sentinel Project which uses satellite imagery to watch for aerial attacks and troop movements in Sudan and Southern Sudan, which became a separate country last year.
“What you see is a constant drip of fear,” testified Clooney, who just recently returned from a trip to the Sudan. “We are here,” he said, “to ask two very simple questions... immediately we need humanitarian aid to be allowed into the Sudan... and for the government in Khartoum to stop randomly killing its own innocent men, women and children. Stop raping them and stop starving them. That’s all we ask.”
Uganda
Also, recently in the news we saw a video go viral (Mercury/Uranus) on the internet. This was on an issue that has been going on for decades (Mercury and Mars retrograde) but was immediately and suddenly brought into the public eye. The video by Invisible Children was a fairly successful attempt to draw attention to the plight of children being abducted and forced to be soldiers, sex slaves and killers, by one, Joseph Kony and the ‘Lord’s Resistance Army’. Many agreed that Invisible Children brought much needed attention to an ongoing problem, but they also raised a great deal of discussion and controversy as to how to go about solving it.
Anywar Ricky Richard knows something about these child soldiers, having been one himself at one time. He experienced first hand the terror of being abducted, watching your family and loved ones being murdered, and his brother committing suicide. Eventually escaping and returning home to his village, he is now the director of the northern Ugandan organization, “Friends of Orphans”. Since 1999 he has worked to rehabilitate former child soldiers and others affected by the war. He wrote recently in the National Geographic magazine that although he supported the positive attention that the Kony 2012 video has brought, he does not support the sentiment of militarization as a solution:
“What we want is to stop the war in a way that will not cause any more atrocities, because the people of northern Uganda have shed too much blood from this war. We do not want to see more death and destruction in the process of ending the war. Nobody supports Kony in northern Uganda; we are only tired of wars and now want to look at ways in which sustainable peace can be restored in northern Uganda without seeing more people dying.”
The Middle East and Neve Shalom ~ Wahat al-Salam
“My People shall dwell in an Oasis of Peace” ~ Isaiah (32:18)
Whenever we think ‘religious war’ or war period, everyone immediately looks to the Middle East and the on-going hostilities that continue to simmer on a slow boil in the region, where anger, dehumanization, rhetoric and militarization are seen as a constant. Yet unknown to most of the world, strategically situated in the countryside outside of Jerusalem is a community of Peace. The late Father Bruno Hussar, an Egyptian born Israeli citizen who considered himself both a Jew and a Christian, created the “Oasis of Peace” as a community where Jews and Arabs would come together in order to work out mutual fears and hatred. Democratically governed and owned by its members which are equal part Jews and Arabs, it is not affiliated with any political party or movement.
“People would come here from all over the country to meet those from whom they were estranged, wanting to break down the barriers of fear, mistrust, ignorance, misunderstanding, preconceived ideas ~ all things that separate us ~ and to build bridges of trust, respect, mutual understanding and, if possible, friendship.” ~ Fr. Bruno Hussar
May the Oasis of Peace go viral in 2012.....
We should think carefully about the reality of war. Most of us have been conditioned to regard military combat as exciting and glamorous - an opportunity for men to prove their competence and courage. Since armies are legal, we feel that war is acceptable; in general, nobody feels that war is criminal or that accepting it is criminal attitude. In fact, we have been brainwashed. War is neither glamorous nor attractive. It is monstrous. Its very nature is one of tragedy and suffering. ~ His Holiness the Dalai Lama
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