News Notes
Zip Dobyns
I may have mentioned Fate Magazine in the past. It is a monthly publication devoted to anything unusual, especially parapsychology (psi phenomena) but including UFOs, monster stories, archaeology finds, unorthodox science, and occasional astrology items. I have subscribed to it since shortly after I became involved in the borderland area in 1955, which is not long after it came into existence. The founders sold the magazine to Llewellyn in 1989, and I am pleased to report that it has not suffered for the transition. Also, it will now be publishing more on astrology since that is a primary focus for Llewellyn.
This introduction is leading to an explanation of what I plan to include as a regular Mutable Dilemma feature in the future. The first column in Fate was always “I See by the Papers,” written by the publisher, Curtis Fuller. I always read it first and it would have a variety of short items from sources not readily available to most people. The new editor, Donald Michael Kraig, is doing a good job of continuing the feature. I plan to include a similar “grab bag” called “News Notes.” In the past, I have occasionally had articles called “Leftovers” or “Odds and Ends” for such bits and pieces of miscellaneous information, but there are always a lot of short items which I think are interesting but which are omitted for lack of a place in the journal. Or there are miscellaneous charts which I would like to include without doing a thorough analysis. This will henceforth be their place. Data for both people and events will be featured, but I’ll include short astrological comments so it won’t be just a data column, and it might include comments on almost anything from anywhere to live up to my mutable dilemma.
Though most of this Sagittarius 1989 issue of The Mutable Dilemma was written in December, it has been waiting for some kind of decision on our problem copier. After three months in limbo, on March 12 we finally kept phoning for an hour and a half until we got through to someone to get a price for a replacement machine. We were told $8,000 which is simply out of the question, so we are having the machine repaired and will see how long it lasts. Eventually, we will be taking our problem over the head of the local business to Minolta. It is really their responsibility since they sold this model before it was adequately tested and they have since stopped making it. I think they owe us a machine which will do what this one was supposed to do. In the meantime, this Sagittarius Mutable Dilemma is being edited and completed in March 1990 and you will be receiving it with the Pisces 1990 issue to get us caught up.
The new Republic of Hungary has a chart for a noon proclamation in Budapest on October 23, 1989. A front page article in The Los Angeles Times on March 10, 1990 was headed “Struck by a National Bad Mood.” The sub-heading continued “Extraordinary political reforms in Hungary are evoking fear and uncertainty, not euphoria. ‘All the rules are changed,’ one psychiatrist observes.” Astrologers would not be surprised at the feelings. The chart has the Capricorn stellium rising, including Uranus at 2 degrees, Ascendant at 7, Saturn at 8, Neptune at 9, Vesta at 16, with oppositions from Ceres at 4 Cancer, Jupiter at 10, and Chiron at 16. The Moon and the south lunar node are at 22 Leo with the eighth house cusp at 23 Leo. The Sun is 0 Scorpio on the midpoint of Saturn/Moon and Saturn/south node. The people have good reason to be worried. Their government-owned businesses are being sold to wealthy foreigners for peanuts. They are getting freedom in exchange for giving up security. The Venus in Sagittarius in the eleventh house and the loaded ninth house with Mercury, Juno and Mars in Libra in addition to the Scorpio Sun are not enough to make up for the threat to their previous stability and security. For some people, the uncertainty is enough to induce anxiety, but some can see themselves just trading communist bosses for foreign oligarchs.
The March 14, 1990 Wall Street Journal writes that news of the Lithuanian vote for independence was received at their prospective Washington, DC Embassy on a fax machine at 3:50 P.M. EST on March 11, 1990. The only other time reference that I have so far for the vote is that it was in the evening in Vilnius. Some people had been standing outside waiting for the news for over nine hours. Calculating the chart for Washington, DC for the time that the news reached the western world, puts the Ascendant in a double quincunx (yod) to the Sun and Saturn, suggesting many changes before relationships are stabilized between the U.S. and Lithuania. Vesta is also involved, conjunct the Sun within one degree. An Ascendant-Juno square points to power struggles but Ceres is sextile and Pallas trine the Ascendant. The East Point conjunct the south lunar node repeats the tension in close relationships shown by the Juno aspects. The MC and Pluto square the nodes say it again. But the most intense aspect is Pluto’s exact opposition to the MC. Well, no one expected them to achieve their independence easily. The Moon in Virgo in the second house was full, just past the opposition to Sun-Vesta and trine Saturn. The people of Lithuania may buy their freedom with hard work. The angles in Vilnius bring the Ascendant into the grand water trine of Pluto, Chiron, and Mercury, but I don’t know how much earlier the actual vote took place so the local houses are uncertain. There are quite a few sextiles and trines in the chart though they mostly have wide orbs. The emphasis is on earth and water, and material-economic security will be the primary issue to be worked out between Lithuania and the U.S.S.R. Mars, Venus and the north lunar node are in Aquarius in the third house, so they testify to the passion for freedom which drove the Lithuanians and suggest that the media may be helpful. We wish them well.
The same March 14, 1990 issue of the Wall Street Journal had an article on the disaster of a Soviet submarine on April 7, 1989. The location is not specific, making an accurate horoscope impossible, but we can approximate the area which is shown on a map as north and a little west of Banak, Norway and 119 miles south-west of Bear Island. Mark has calculated a rough estimate of 73 N latitude and 17 E 30 longitude. The first fire alarm was sounded at 11:02 A.M. when a short circuit sparked a fire in compartment seven. The successive events in the tragedy are both described and timed to the minute from the ship’s log and the testimony of survivors in court hearings conducted in Russia. U.S. officials have been amazed at the openness of the published information. The struggle between secrecy (for security reasons) and openness is dramatically illustrated in the case since many of the crewmen could have been saved if Norway had been notified immediately. They could have sent rescue planes and saved men who were clinging to the over-loaded life raft in icy water and who dropped off and drowned not long before Soviet rescue ships could reach them. A fishing boat finally arrived about 6:20 P.M. and picked up the remaining survivors. Gorbachev’s realization of the tragedy of Russia’s isolation in the family of nations may have contributed a little to his willingness to risk destruction in order to rejoin the world.
I am working with Meridian house cusps for this chart since most house calculation systems break down in the far north and far south. The MC is the same in all systems except equal houses from the Ascendant. In the sub fire chart, the MC is 16 Leo. The other house cusps in the most used systems put virtually the whole sky into two houses. All of the systems listed here have 12 Leo rising except for Koch which has 12 Aquarius on the Ascendant. Mark says that the Koch result is a problem with the program. The other houses in the respective systems include Placidus with a 10 Leo second house, 11 Leo third house, 5 Virgo fifth house, 23 Capricorn sixth house. Koch produces a 13 Leo second house, 14 Leo third house, 13 Aquarius fifth house, 12 Aquarius sixth house. Campanus has a 14 Leo second house, 15 Leo third house, 16 Leo fifth house, 19 Leo sixth house. Porphyry has a 13 Leo second house, 14 Leo third house, 14 Libra fifth house, 13 Sagittarius sixth house. Topocentric has a 4 Leo second house, 7 Leo third house, 6 Virgo fifth house, 29 Sagittarius sixth house. Don’t let anyone tell you to abandon Placidus because other systems “work better” in high latitudes. Since the Ascendant is one of the “screwed up points,” only Equal houses from the MC and the Meridian system are usable. Meridian adds two hours to the MC for each successive house cusp so the East Point becomes the Ascendant. This system is often used by Uranian astrologers and I use it for the rare charts I want for the high latitudes.
We have to remember that our coordinates are only approximate and I am using Moscow time, so even the MC is not certain. But the MC does fit an event in which health could be an issue since two asteroids named for healers are closely conjunct it: Paracelsus and Aesculapia. Four asteroids were on the north lunar node in Pisces as well as square Jupiter; Icarus (who crashed in flames), Urania (like Uranus, potentially involved with new technology and sudden change), Astraea (who may be associated with Virgo and thus efficiency and health), and Danmark (the only Scandinavian country to have its own named asteroid though Norway was the country actually involved in the event so the pointer to the north countries was a loose connection). Pluto just missed being on the Vertex within one degree. With a slight change of coordinates, it might make it and most astrologers would allow a wider orb for Pluto. It also squared the MC within one and a half degrees and formed a still wider yod to Sun in Aries and Mars in Gemini.
But the Mars aspect that I found most mind-blowing was a square to Murmansk that was exact within 16 minutes of longitude. Murmansk is the Russian city close to the naval base where the stricken submarine was built and based, the same base from which the rescue vessels were sent. I have never worked with Murmansk before because I have not had any charts where it was especially relevant. It is these really precise and meaningful asteroid aspects which take your breath away. What are the odds that the asteroid named for the city associated with both the origin of the sub and its attempted rescue would be square Mars, the planet of fires when the sub is destroyed by fire?
There were many other aspects but they seem almost anticlimactic after Murmansk. Vesta and Uranus were in a close conjunction as well as Neptune and Saturn, all of them in the eighth house. The Part of Death was within one degree of Vesta. Moskva (Moscow) was trioctile Neptune. Russia was quincunx Uranus and conjunct Makhaon, another healer. The healing asteroids often indicate situations where there is a need for healing. Nemesis was trioctile Atlantis and Mercury reached a conjunction with Atlantis during the course of the disaster. America was on Mars in Gemini and our military establishment was delighted with the information they gained from the Russian disclosures. They said it would have cost them millions of dollars to get it from spies.
But, speaking of spies, the U.S. launched another secret military spy satellite on February 28, 1990 using the Atlantis Space Shuttle. It is interesting that most of the Atlantis launches have involved military payloads. The launch had been delayed repeatedly, first by the Commander’s cold and then by the weather. According to Science News, the delay cost the U.S. some 2.7 million dollars. The Atlantis finally took off at 2:51 A.M. from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Most of the past launches of the Atlantis have had the asteroid of the same name in an aspect to one of the angles of the chart. In this case, Saturn, the ruler of the rising Capricorn, and Mars, the natural ruler of the Ascendant were conjunct within 24 minutes of longitude and Atlantis opposed Saturn within two minutes of longitude. Jupiter was exactly on the Descendant. That implies something about our faith (or lack of it) in others. Moskva (Moscow) was on the eighth house cusp and quincunx the asteroid Washington. Michel (Mikhail) was semisextile Mars-Saturn, quincunx Atlantis and opposite Ceres. Herbert was on Vesta in Pisces. Neptune was on the East Point. All aspects listed are within one-degree orbs.
The Atlantis was successful in its mission, but a more recent launch from an unmanned rocket, a Titan III, had a problem when the booster did not separate properly from the satellite. It was launched on March 14, 1990 at Cape Canaveral at 6:52 A.M., but the satellite has not reached its desired orbit and NASA is debating ways of rescuing it. The European Consortium which developed the Ariane also had a recent failure and they are grounded until they discover the reason for the explosion which occurred just moments into the flight. The Ariane rocket took off from their regular base in Kourou, French Guiana on February 22, 1990 at 8:17 P.M. EST. Geocentric Phaethon was on the Descendant and heliocentric Icarus was on the IC, both to the degree of course. They are the two mythical characters who crashed to earth in flames. Atlantis had just reached the one-degree orb opposition to Saturn and it was quincunx China with the latter trine Ceres. Karl Marx was on the Ascendant and Russia was trine Urania. Berolina (Berlin) was on the IC with Phaethon while Germania was on Mars, Teutonia (also named for Germany) was opposite Pallas, and Alemannia (another name for Germany) was quincunx Neptune. Vesta formed a yod with Neptune and Alemannia. Since the aspects to the asteroids for Germany are mostly stressful, it is possible that investigation will find the problem in one of the rocket parts that is made in Germany. Russia or China might profit from the accident if the Ariane stays grounded very long, since they are hoping to develop commercial ventures with their space technology. France has a majority interest in the Ariane, Germany also has a moderate interest, and several other European countries contributed very small amounts to its development. Space has been a major interest for my sons Mark and Rique Pottenger, and Mark has a fairly complete set of data on rocket launches.