Newsletter Number Four -- July 20, 2006

Although the period of spring and early summer grand trines gave the world a brief celestial respite, the bombings in Mumbai and especially the invasion of Lebanon now remind us that we are being pulled back to a grinding period of conflict to which no one seems to have a ready solution. It seems like the bad guys are on top even when they’re our guys, and that’s something that seems to happen historically in periods when Saturn (the established powers) stand opposed to the outer planets (social evolution) in the sky. Our leaders everywhere have become part of the problem instead of the solution, which often leads to terrible wars and costly global errors, such as in the run-up to World War II and the period of the Vietnam War, but regularly recurring for centuries before either. The current such period we are now in ends in 2008, so we’ve got a couple of more frustrating and dangerous years to get through. For an in-depth look at that, see our newsletter article on the subject: Which Side Are You On?

But there’s more than just that particular historical trend. In Lebanon, we are seeing a pattern of boxed-in conflict that has continued since the Arab-Israeli wars began in 1948. Starting with the war of Israeli independence that began May 15, 1948, there have already been five major wars in the series, some of which have seemed to be spectacular victories for Israel, but nearly 60 years later not much actual progress has been made. There are many political reasons, but astrologically there is an astonishing trend that describes the obvious. To pursue a successful war, it is important to begin it on a date with a strong Mars – it's the god of war, after all – which depicts the energy, strength, and follow-through necessary to achieve both initial and lasting victory. Unlikely as it might seem, each of the five wars has had a dreadfully afflicted Mars, no matter which side began it, or which seemed to win it.

A Constant Affliction

The affliction is the same in them all – each was begun either during or directly after Mars was retrograde, the weakest period in its nearly two-year cycle. If there are any astrologers left in the cradle of civilization that began the art, no one there has been listening to them lately. Of the five, the first came closest to getting Mars clear of his weakness, and thus was the most successful, staking out Israel nearly as it stands today. Yet, at 28 Leo, it was still six degrees short of getting out of its retrograde “shadow” point at 4 Virgo, and appropriately just fell short of getting one of its major goals, the taking of Jerusalem. The external reason? World powers closed in to stop the affair before its intended conclusion.

The other four did far worse:

*The Suez war of October 29, 1956 saw Mars at 15 Pisces only two degrees past its stationary direct point of 13 Pisces, and nowhere near clear of the shadow point of 23 Pisces, and Eisenhower undercut both Britain and Israel and called a stop to it.

*The brilliantly preemptive 1967 war, on June 5, was a bit too preemptive with Mars at 15 Libra only half a degree past its direct station and was reined in by both the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

*The Arab surprise attack on Yom Kippur, October 6, 1973 had Mars freshly retrograde at 7 Taurus, and was a total disaster, halted by the Cold War powers yet again before the fiasco could go further.

*Israel’s D-Day invasion of Lebanon on June 6, 1982 saw Mars at 4 Libra only four degrees past its direct station, but was not intended to do more than create a buffer zone allowed by the world powers and later given up. In all cases, if these were the dogs of war, they were on a short leash, held back by muscular superpowers ready to incite their surrogates while giving them little room to get the job done.

A New Twist

The current invasion of Lebanon this July 12, the first major post-Cold War effort, has its own afflictions. For the first time ever, Mars at 23 Leo is totally clear of its retrograde space left behind last year. Further, the only reigning superpower seems totally uninterested in reining in the efforts of its surrogate, leaving the Lebanese totally at the mercy of Israel and its greater enemies in the region as they destroy the country and its citizens at will until one side runs out of ammunition. If that were all there was to it, the game would be over, swept entirely by Israel with the U.S. looking on with a smile. But, Mars this time was barely coming out from under an affliction by Saturn, and Mercury was retrograde. That means Mars again has a distinct sense of limitation, particularly because the prearranged plan itself (Mercury) was faulty and once again was triggered prematurely, a seemingly huge overreaction to a very ordinary, usually resolvable provocation.

None of this is of much comfort to the innocents being savaged by yet another set of misguided and mishandled political and military operations. For them we can only pray and hope that the greater historical trends do finally take another reversal at the eleventh hour, as they always have, because in this stage those in power have little intention or capability of doing anything about it. Everyone involved in the situation can be described by a single, somewhat obscene but totally appropriate phrase the Poles sometimes use to describe their own wars of resistance in times of Saturn and Mars affliction: ni chuja. Go on, Google it. The philosophical interpretation would be “hopeless, no way,” while the literal translation is a bit more surgically genital. The parties actually involved right now, tragically, are experiencing both...

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