Heartbreak in Kerala: A Tale of Undecaquartisextiles, Part 1
Please note: This is the first of a two-part article.
April 10, 2016: During my trip to India in 2013, I had the honor of staying with friends through most of my time there. I’m not writing about each place this time however and am reserving my thoughts for one state alone. Kerala is truly a kiss of heaven; it’s been kissed by the gods. Full, lush, a maze of every shade of green wherever one looks.
For all of the beauty I walked through while I was there, I was entranced, completely captivated. The views below as I gazed from Ponmudi after we drove the 22 hairpin turns to the top where I was surprisingly cold and longing for a fleece jacket as I gazed on the paler green of tea plantations below; the ocean as it rushed in on the shores of Kovalam and Shanghumugham Beaches just before sunset; the baby elephant learning to bathe at the rehabilitation center; the bush filled with countless butterflies, and the temple drummers smiling with shy delight as I captured them in movies and photos. Everywhere I looked, India held me in the palm of her hand through these experiences, and they remain so.
But even the monkeys and the lone mongoose I saw by the waterfalls may have taken second place to Billi (“BEE-lee”), the slender black and white cat who made her home with the family of my friend Murali Sankar in Thiruvananthapuram (commonly known to Westerners as Trivandrum). Billi and I adored each other. (But of course don’t tell my cat, Holly!) She loved the petting and attention and scratching behind her ears, much to Murali’s protests for fear that he and his family would have to do the same. As much as I loved Billi, the chants that woke me in the mornings from some nearby monastery I never saw also stole a piece of my heart as they called softly through the trees. Could I have been in heaven? I think so.
A clove tree greeted me through the window each morning too, reminding me of lessons about Christopher Columbus when I was in elementary school: The Spice Islands. Before I left, Murali’s mom packed some freshly roasted cloves for me to bring home. What a treasure! There’s a world of difference between the freshly roasted clove and what we get in a jar or a small tin in the United States. The fragrance of Christmas in one tiny gem!
And so I cried that morning at hearing the words on the news that the toll of the dead and injured was rising… “84 dead, 200 wounded. 56 immediately identified.”
Soon, it was 112 dead, 400 wounded although at one point, CNN had reported 500 wounded. No more numbers of how many were identified, only that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was flying there. So was Rahul Gandhi, and their names alone reminded me of politics. sigh…
My heart was breaking. I had to look at the chart, and then at the charts.
I’ve recently started following the patterns in writing. While they’re somewhere in my astrological software program, my methodical approach to this process surprises me. It’s not that I don’t see them anymore. It’s that the charts keep giving me new surprises, and this one had bigger ones yet.
The chart’s clear Eastern 1st quadrant, below-the-horizon dominance wasn’t referring to independent, selfish thought often related to the act of one person, rather to the likely independent thought that led to the fire having started. I know the events that transpired on Sunday, led to the charges now being levied against temple officials for “culpable homicide,” but take note of Mars in its tight conjunction (not partile) to the Midheaven (MC) and Jupiter, ruling that MC sitting in the 7th house. Jupiter also rules the natural ninth house, where we look for international relations and foreign affairs, higher thought, philosophy and religious studies. Jupiter is also considered the traditional ruler of Pisces, which is found in the natural 12th house of spirituality, institutions, and hidden things like fears and secrets one doesn’t want others to know.
As I usually do where I can, I look at the Lunar Return(s) if I think they’ll shed some light on the issues. Ironically, I had looked at the transits and nearly forgot to do the Lunar because of my excitement about the transit itself. But I still need to be fair so I’ll back up a bit and give you a quick look: With the 12th house rising in the March 18 return, the 4/8/12 terminal houses were already in play, warning that people’s lives could be in danger. If you recall from the 2015 Solar Return , I said the entire year seemed to be a hotspot and couldn’t simply name one or two dates here and there as a result. The 4/8/12 came clearly into view with the Moon in the 4th along with natal Mercury, Pluto and Saturn. While I might normally simply give Pluto and Saturn to the next house since they’re so tightly conjunct the 5th house cusp, Mercury’s conjunction to the dynamic duo (no, not Batman and Robin, but Pluto and Saturn–that dynamic duo) inclines me to think this pair could be relevant to both the 4th and the 5th houses in this chart.
Take note of Pluto’s position conjunct the Midheaven (MC) while Uranus sits in the 12th house not yet conjunct the Ascendant. Although the chart itself neither shows an Eastern nor a Western emphasis, the 4th quadrant above-the-horizon dominance shifts the energy ever so slightly to jar a kind of thought process indicating the need to interact with the public at the same time one retains natal privacy. In this case, of course, the emphasis on above-the-horizon brings events during this particular LR month (March 18 through April 14). Mars falls in the 8th house in this Mars-ruled chart with Aries on the Ascendant, while natal Mars falls in the 3rd house in the outer wheel, alluding to a localized situation. The combination of the 4/8/12 emphasis and Mars ruling the chart from inside one of the terminal houses gives us reason to be concerned about events of the coming month.
Now while we see the angular positions of Uranus and Pluto, the LR mutable T-square of 6th house (it’s on the cusp) Jupiter in opposition to Mercury in the 12th in square to 8th house Saturn becomes a mutable Grand Cross when we note that Jupiter and Mercury are both forming a square to natal Uranus. I see Saturn therefore also in square to natal Uranus since the original T-square was already in position. In addition, however, there’s also a single LR Mercury undecaquartisextile within an orb of 1°23 to natal Neptune which happens to be at Mercury’s antiscion (7 Libra 33) in the 6th house.
By Tuesday, the 12th, the number of wounded according to NDTV had risen to over 1000, and children represented the most obvious living victims of the fire since many lost both their parents, as the linked article notes. They will remember this day most likely longer than anyone else because they still have their whole lives ahead of them. But a Blooming Undecaquartisextile formed from LR Venus to the natal Sun, this one within a 54-minute partile, as well as to the LR North Node within a 13-minute partile orb. The pattern seems to point to the children whose stories began to come out yesterday at least from my observations of the stories.
Perhaps the most potent of the aspect patterns however come in from the natal Ascendant in semisextile to natal Mars, both of which form respective 31-minute partile and 46-minute partile orbs in the nearly perfected Blooming Undecaquartisextile to 8th house Saturn. Here, we see the national crisis as the fire took hold and went completely out of control. While Tuesday’s news noted the arrests of 5, by Wednesday morning’s news, a total of 13 had been arrested.
Because the fire took place just a few days (4) before the new Lunar Return, I also had done the April return. The 4th house was rising in the upcoming return set for April 14, and we still see the clustering of planetary bodies falling in that 4/8/12 house complex. But now, Mars and Saturn were falling in the 4th while Venus in Aries showed in the 8th and the natal massive stellium of 6 planets including both luminaries starting with the Moon and ending with the Sun which was conjunct the Ascendant–Moon, Mercury, Pluto, Saturn, Venus and the Sun–fell in the 12th house. But consider the LR Sun-Uranus conjunction now in the 9th house in addition to Mercury. Mercury sits within about a degree of its pre-retrograde shadow that moves into place on the 15th of April, inclining me to believe the wheels of progress–apparently as always when it comes to the courts–will be unconscionably slow in bringing those arrested to actual justice, whatever that may be in India. Western dominance in the Lunar Return with the emphasis on the third quadrant above-the-horizon again seems to imply this won’t only be a long, draw-out process but one where everyone will be watching and perhaps grousing but to no avail.
As I look at this fixed angle chart from the fire just 4 days before, bringing the midpoint of the Aries Sun and the Taurus Mercury placement into alignment with the Midheaven (MC) while still being aware that the nation’s natal Jupiter is opposed to LR Mercury and in square to the natal Sun, I have little doubt this will be a matter of posturing and blaming and yet the wheels of progress will remain slow. Fixed angles can point to a lack of motivation, which would be criminal in itself, of course. I’d be inclined to say, however, that the most likely excuse will be a simple one: “We’re still investigating.”
In the March LR, which is where we started, the progressed 12th house bodies were at the MC by the 10th of April with the Sun conjunct the MC in opposition to the natal Vertex (remember, this is by progression of the return) and in a simple undecaquartisextile (UQSXT) to the Lunar Return Vertex. The midpoint of the two vertices, however, fell in tight opposition to Uranus pointing to the unexpected, of course. And tragically unexpected at that.
Now the analysis doesn’t stop here. I’m stopping only long enough to move into part 2 of the entire process. As I began to plunge into the various facets of this particular event, I was not only awed by the repeated contacts in so many ways, at times it became overwhelming–and that lies at the heart of what’s taken me so long to write this one. It’s not just one chart. There is so much more to see.
Part 2, in fact, also holds the discovery of another aspect pattern I initially thought was my imagination. It wasn’t. It was right there, staring me in the face, as you’ll see. So please be patient as I write part 2. It’s the part I never expected to write. But then Uranus does that, and Uranus played a major role in this heartbreaking story already, didn’t it? (Rest assured, I have the aspects already noted. It’s just a matter of writing the analysis in a cohesive way now.)
