Susan and I spent an hour in bed this morning reminiscing about Cloe’s life. There is a hole where she used to be (laying between us, near our pillows) but we filled the space with our shared memories. She is now waiting at the Rainbow Bridge for our arrival, some day.
To some this might seem facetious to create a chart for her death event, but as always the importance of the chart is its significance for those who are left behind with the ‘passing’.
As always, I concentrate on the inconjuncts because they show us what’s going on behind the scenes. There are two here.
Jupiter Inconjunct Midheaven
This aspect can mean that you have mixed feelings towards adults and persons in authority over you. Although you know that they have your best interests at heart and that they want you to succeed at your own objectives, it often seems as if their demands are keeping you from doing what you want. When you want to go off and have fun, for example, you are told to finish your work first. At times you want to break free of this restricting influence and go off by yourself.
Neptune Inconjunct Ascendant
This aspect can be a sign that you feel you must give way to others in order to get along with them. This can take two forms, both of which will be difficult to handle while you are young. The less positive form is simply yielding to all outside pressure and always giving in to others’ desires. This will produce unconscious feelings of resentment that you can’t express, but that make your relationships with others rather difficult.
But the other, more positive, way of dealing with this energy is by giving freely before others try to take it away from you. In order to do this, you have to feel good about yourself and confident that you will always have enough for yourself and others.
On another level entirely, you should be very careful of your health because you are unusually sensitive to certain elements in your environment. You may not be able to handle certain foods or drugs — even prescribed drugs should be handled with care — and you should avoid letting your body become weak.
Conclusion
All things considered, she had a ‘good innings’. She’d been without sight for almost six-and-a-half years; she’d developed a liver disease in the last seven months; and her hearing was almost non-existent. Within the last week, she was becoming disoriented, unable to follow her own scent back to the house from the middle of our garden. It was painful to watch her turn in a close circle trying to find her way out of the spot she was in. We knew it was time for her to go home. But right to the end, she was her usual compliant self.
Being responsible dog owners meant that we had to make the hard decision for her. Her quality of life was slipping badly, and we knew that, for her, being here was becoming a chore, not a joy. We finally thought, “The first day of summer would be a good day to die.” It was.
Photo taken by my daughter, Rosanna, in Plymouth UK 5 minutes after Susan messaged her yesterday with the news of Cloe’s passing.
So why didn’t Julius save Ethel? The FBI was right: he had recruited spies, so he could easily have given names and probably saved her life, and very possibly his own, too.
“Dad’s unwillingness to rat out his fellows wasn’t about him wanting to be a soldier of Stalin,” says Michael. “It was more personal. These were his friends! My father was not going to cooperate with the government, and that’s why they arrested my mother. So now he’s going to turn around and say, ‘OK, I’m going to save my wife by ratting out my friends?’ No! He had a naive belief that the American justice system was going to work because half the case against him was a pack of lies, so he thought he could deny everything and save them both.” Almost until the end, Julius believed that they wouldn’t go to the chair. The government and FBI hoped that, too. They never wanted to kill this young mother and father – they wanted names. After Ethel was killed, the then deputy attorney general William Rogers said, “She called our bluff.”
Then there’s the question that baffled officials at the time, and has become the defining mystery about her: why did Ethel choose to stay silent and die with Julius, over staying with her children? We know she was deeply in love with her husband, and her letters to him during their imprisonment are filled with her longing to “lift my willing lips to yours”. But they are also full of her anxiety about the boys. Yet she said nothing.
Astrology never lies, right? Their final moment of life shows the truth of this statement. There are two inconjuncts, one for him and one for her.
Mercury Inconjunct Ascendant
You are likely to have some problems, but not serious ones, in communicating with others. The problem is that people’s first impression of you may not fi in with what you say or your manner of thinking and speaking. People tend to hear what they expect to hear, and they may not listen to you as carefully as they should. So you will have to be as clear as possible and insist that others listen to what you are really saying. If others do not understand you, it is up to you to set them straight.
Venus Inconjunct Midheaven
You are likely to feel that there is a conflict between what you ought to do in a particular situation and what would be acceptable to the people around you…Later in life, you may see your job, career or profession as a part of your life that is quite separate from your personal relationships with loved ones. This may cause you to neglect one area in favor of the other, instead of trying to create a balance between them.
Conclusion
Ethel’s role of supporting her husband ‘in sickness and in health’ through thick or thin may have been the reason she chose death instead of letting her husband rat out his friends. They both believed that justice would not allow such a travesty. Oh, well, America in the early 1950’s was a very scared country. Communism was the great equalizer and Capitalism was at stake. Besides, the Korean War was three years old by this time, and just about to end in a draw. (And we are still suffering the consequences of that cessation of hostilities without a resolution.)
The lives of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were taken by their country to prove to other Communist spies that they should stop. Look how well that worked!
Pluto Transits My Natal Mercury One Last Time (October 6, 2021)
Oh, sh*t. Just when I thought I was in the clear, Pluto decided to remind me that it’s not over until he moves forward again, after being retrograde, in 2021.
Up until now, I’d been pleased with myself for having survived three transits of Pluto with my natal Mercury during 2020. I forgot to look into 2021, too.
The hidden message is that this very close conjunction between transiting Pluto and my natal Mercury will bring to a close a very long two year self-examination which is starting to reach a crescendo this year. Here’s the combined chart to demonstrate what I mean.
This time, the conjunction is not ‘exact’ but close enough for jazz, being only 7′ apart @ 24° Capricorn. It is in my final degree of my 1st House of Personality. The transit Moon and Sun (and Mars) get in on the equation being conjunct to my natal South Node, Mars and Midheaven, while the transiting Midheaven is triggering my natal North Node in Aries. Finally, transiting Saturn is conjunct my natal Venus in Aquarius. That’s a lot of work going on at the same time.
October 6, 2021 is the 14th anniversary of my permanent return to Canada.
When Pluto transits your Mercury, you have to re-wire your brain. But first, you have to unlearn, to make a clean slate out of it.Tabula rasa. Staring into the void, dismantling every concept, prejudice and dogma that has been drilled into your head and give birth to what philosopher John Locke described as the “free, self-authored mind”. In a nutshell, it’s about reverse-engineering your own thought patterns, questioning them, and deepen your understanding of yourself and the world around you.
It must be my age. And this pandemic. I’m missing my children, badly.
But is that feeling even reasonable? Due to the distances between us, we very infrequently saw each other before COVID-19. My son lives only 75 km from here, so I see him the most. My youngest daughter used to fly here from the UK every couple of years, the last time being just before the coronavirus was declared a pandemic in February 2020. My other daughter hasn’t been to Canada since 2013. See what I mean?
When Susan and I visit Ireland and England in 2017, I saw both daughters, separately. And, until this month, Ontario has been in lockdown since April. I saw my son in early March, last.
Paignton Zoo, May 2005
If I could say one thing to all three children, it is this, “I love you.”
I came across a post on Facebook this morning which purports to be a message from the shamans of the Andes.
This is a message from Andean shamans about the energy of change that will bring Earth to the summer solstice…
The indigenous people knew them, they never lost touch with the earth and the source, they knew how to interpret the messages of the universe, and they still do it…
Summer solstice has always been a sacred moment, a moment of reconnection with the source.
However, this time they announce an unusual moment in the sky and a milestone in the fate of mankind. On June 21th – summer solstice – Earth will be in direct and precise alignment with the centre of the galaxy and the central sun of Alcyon.
At this unique moment, Earth will receive the direct flow of very subtle and high-level energies from a divine source.
It is the energies of evolution, the energies that are capable of changing our genetic codes and causing evolutionary changes in species and planets.
On this day, we must accord ourselves to the highest of peace, love, among all living beings on earth.
Always full of hope for mankind, always full of good advice. But is it true?
According to this image, the Galactic Anticenter is not directly in line with Alcyone. (In fact, given that Alcyone is ‘near’ the end of Taurus, and the Galactic Center is ‘near’ 0° Capricorn, I would suggest that they are inconjunct to each other, which makes this a stressful time.)
Text from “Encyclopedia of Astrology” by Nicholas de Vore (1947)
“Alcyone. A greenish yellow star; the brightest pf the Pleiades, representing one of the seven daughters of the nymph Pleione, by Atlas, who by Neptune became the mother of Hyreus. The names of the other six are Maia, Elecra, Taygeta, Sterope (or Asterope), Celano, and the invisible, or ‘lost’ one, Merope, who concealed herself from shame at having loved a mortal. That Alcyone was at one time presumed to be the center of the Milky Way Galaxy indicates that the ancients may have visualized Atlas as resting on this point while supporting the Earth on his shoulders.” (Page 95)
Conclusion
There may be some truth to these legends. We have been traveling through the ‘photon belt‘ for quite an number of years, now. The implication is that we are being bombarded with light.
Are these our ‘enlightened’ years? It looks to be true.
Oh dear. This is the moment when a permanent stain was placed on Étienne (Stephen) Brûlé’s memory. As a background movement, he may have been instrumental in the Kirkes’ capture of Quebec, but history doesn’t record his version of events.
It was Gabriel Sagard who, in 1624, discredited Brûlé in Champlain’s eyes. The Récollet friar denounced the wandering adventurer’s loose morals, and disclosed moreover that Brûlé was playing a double game: he was working at the same time for the administration of New France and for the fur merchants, who were opponents of Champlain.
Brûlé’s reputation was blackened for ever in 1629. Champlain had capitulated to the Kirke brothers, and most of the French in the colony had returned to their homeland. At Tadoussac, Brûlé and his fellow interpreter Nicolas Marsolet admitted it was their intention to remain in New France. “We have been taken by force,” was their excuse to Champlain, “and we know very well that if we were held in France we would be hung.”
I set the clock for noon on this fateful day, just to see what the energies were. I was not the least surprised to see Neptune conjunct the Ascendant @ 28° Libra. The rumours of Brûlé’s involvement may have been true after all, in my opinion. Check out the inconjuncts.
Moon Inconjunct Pluto
This aspect means that your emotions are very intense and not always easy to deal with. Often your feelings make you want to do or say something, without knowing why.
Mercury Inconjunct Jupiter
You like to think big, and you have great ambitions, but you don’t always make sure that your thinking is clear or careful. When you make any kind of plan, be careful.
Mars Inconjunct Neptune
With this aspect you must learn to stand up for yourself and demand your rights forthrightly and directly. Unfortunately, some people with this aspect learn to work behind the scenes or dishonestly.
Mars Inconjunct Ascendant
The difficulty with this aspect is to find a balance between getting what you want in life and getting along with others. More than most people, you will have to learn the necessity of compromising to ge along with people, especially because you often seem more aggressive than you are.
“We Would Be Hung”
That sound like an admission of guilt, doesn’t it? It is difficult to separate fact from fiction, especially when almost 400 years have passed since the event. But astrology never lies.
By combining these two charts I hope to show that Brûlé’s astrological fingerprints were all over it. I think the facts speak for themselves: his Moon is conjunct the event Uranus; his Jupiter is conjunct the event Moon; his Neptune is conjunct the event Sun; and their North Nodes are just 2° apart. So, with the almost exactness of the conjunctions, I can only conclude that this event gave Brûlé the freedom from France that he was seeking. Champlain was locked up for three years and Quebec was under English control during that same time. Unfortunately the war between England and France was already over by the time Chaplain was ‘tricked’ into surrendering, which made the whole transaction illegal.
OK. This post is going to be mostly speculative. Even Étienne Brûlé‘s birth and death details are sketchy, but as I’ve learned during this process of research into the past, there are accidental hints that can be found. Here’s one:
Etienne Brule came to Quebec with Samuel de Champlain in French explorer in Canada in the 17th century. Etienne Brule was born in 1592 and died in 1633. Etienne Brule was born on March 15. He lived with the Huron s for 20 years.
So, here’s his randomized birth chart:
I’m not sure of the precise meaning of that ‘exact’ Venus conjunction with the Part of Fortune @ 20° Aquarius 19′ in the 5th House. My guess is that he fell in love with the idea of exploring the Great Lakes and living as a free man with the Huron. Or maybe he just fell in love, period.*
Part of Fortune in Aquarius
Here the individual experiences his greatest happiness by flowing with the energies of awareness and enlightenment. Unfettered by the bonds set by society, unlimited by the confines of predictable expectation, he is able to experience all that exists outside of the limits of established society. He seeks to know all — about man, the world, the universe. He wants to know how so many apparently different aspects of life manage to fit together.(Karmic Astrology III: Joy and the Part of Fortune pages 79-80)
There are three inconjuncts, but all of them could be speculative:
Mercury Inconjunct Neptune
The challenge of this aspect is to make your thinking and communication with others more clear. Your rational mind is strongly influenced by your sensitivity, imagination and ideals, although you aren’t always sure how this happens. You tend to spend too much time in your own imaginary world that no one else can share, and this confuses your dealings with others. You will have to learn o face reality, so that you can at least communicate with people. Otherwise you will have a lonely life.
Mars Inconjunct Jupiter
With this aspect you probably are quite active, with abundant energy for anything you want to do. But you must learn to control your energies rather than have them control you. You may be inclined to take excessive risks, to try out things that you are not sure you can do. But be careful, because with this aspect the energies of Mars and Jupiter do not work very smoothly together. If you overextend yourself and try to do more than you are physically capable of, you may have an accident. Also you may be clumsy when you take up a new activity until you learn to control your physical body better.
Pluto Inconjunct Ascendant
This can be an indication that through experiences with others, you will be forced to undergo many significant changes in life. At times the crises may be quite unpleasant, but for the most part the results will be very positive, although for some people, they may be less constructive. But you must be very careful about the kind of people you get involved with. Choose your friends with great care and try to find people who have a healthy outlook on life and who seem reasonably well balanced. People who are driven to extreme behavior or who act compulsively, as if they could not plan anything in advance, are not very good for you. They will get you into difficult situations that you do not need.
No Man’s Brother (1984)
From the back of the paperback 1st edition (Avon Publishing, February 1984)
“A spectacular saga of adventure and wilderness war, of honor, valor and love, and a man’s unconquerable passion for a magnificent land and a noble race.
“The Huron waited for French guns to fight the Iroquois. But when the French returned to Québec , they brought only priests and farmers to subjugate the land.
“Stalwart young adventurer Etienne Brûlé came with the great explorer Champlain. Sent among the Huron to learn their ways, he was the first white man to penetrate the majestic Canadian continent. Tested by Indian torture and the savage wilds, he won his manhood among the mighty Huron, fought their enemies, loved their women, and stood against the jealous hatred of a fierce warrior chieftain. And as England and France did battle for the new world, he turned against his own kind to defend the proud people whose fate was now his.”
The Author Explains His Ideas
Scholars of history unite in praising Brûlé’s bravery and ability as an explorer. The patterns of his life and explorations set out in the novel is accurate. Brûlé, at seventeen, without knowledge of the native tongues, was the first white man to travel up the Ottawa River and live among the Huron and Algonquin Indians. From then on his life was a procession of “firsts.” He was the first white man to discover all the Great Lakes (with the possible exception of Lake Michigan); the first white man to travel the Susquehanna River to its outfall in Chesapeake Bay. Brûlé’s trip to Carantouan and his capture and torture by the Seneca Indians follow closely the details of these events that he gave Gabriel Sagard to record.
His detractors are less generous in describing Brûlé’s character. In the eyes of his contemporary Frenchmen he had three faults. First, as Sagard wrote: “He was much addicted to women.” Brûlé’s sexual activity horrified some of his contemporaries and may shock modern readers; but it is my hope that this book shows why, to Brûlé, permissible sexuality was not such a heinous sin. Sexual freedom was an accepted standard in the world he knew from the time he was seventeen. The Huron were simply not as jealous or possessive about a mate or a spouse as white societies have tended to be.
The second complaint was Brûlé’s wholesale adoption of Indian dress and manners. He refused to adhere to European ways. Yet, because of his ability to adapt, all admit that whether he went among the Huron, Algonquin, Iroquois, or Neutrals, peace and a willingness to trade in peace followed in his wake.
The third major failing attributed to Brûlé was that in the end he proved to be a traitor. Special care has been taken to set out the circumstances in Québec before the Kirkes’ advent. It has been suggested that Brûlé sold out Champlain and France for reasons of greed and personal gain, yet four years earlier Brûlé willingly offered his friend Louis Hébert an interest-free loan of one thousand crowns. Clearly by this act he demonstrated both a generous character and a lack of interest in the wealth he already possessed. In retrospect, whatever one chooses to believe about Brûlé’s motives, the fact remains that he did save the inhabitants of Québec.
Afterword (pages 307-308)
Conclusion
Champlain in Huronia by Don Hollway
No doubt this may come across as sour grapes, but I wish I’d written this man’s story. I live near where most of the important events happened. And my past life as Radisson echoes through my memory banks. But then a new thought occurs to me: could I have been Étienne Brûlé before returning as Pierre-Esprit Radisson? The timing of the first man’s death is about three years before the second man’s birth so it is entirely possible. Radisson’s linguistic abilities and his knowledge of the Native Canadians seem to hint at this. And his jumping ship to the English side can now be understood within the context of history. He was just continuing the journey that he had already started previously!
[*And just to make the reincarnational point: my natal Sun at 20° Aquarius is a direct tie-in…]
Courtesy of Sainte-Marie-Among-the-Hurons on Facebook
My astrologist colleague, Ellie, who writes on these pages under the name Saturn Season is in the middle of exploring how the Galactic Centre is impacting individuals through aspects to their natal planetary positions. Evidently, the GC was @ 26° Sagittarius 4′ when I was born in 1950. So, it is implied that the GC works like a fixed star, even though it’s a black hole in space.
I had a breakthrough thought this morning while I was writing today’s earlier post: in spite of the fact that I have been many personalities in my past lives, I AM a unique individual!
So, to investigate how this idea came to me, today, I decided to raise a Transit chart for 9 am.
Yes, you can trust your eyes: that is a Star in the image of the current aspects combined with my natal chart. And just to accentuate the fact, Chiron is transiting my natal North Node in Aries (on the 4th House cusp). At the moment the Sun is opposite my natal GC in Gemini.
