TIM LYONS – 11.03.23

1.   First, and as I’ve said in previous blogs or podcasts, the recognized State of Israel (SOI) has the same birth-chart as the political entity we can call the Palestinian Refugee People (PRP). In other words, when Israel entered the largely-dysfunctional so-called family of nations, the Palestinians entered de-facto refugee status. Up until that point, though the Palestinians had not joined that family, they did not yet officially qualify as refugees. I should add that my designation of Israel as a state and Palestine as something other than a state does not mean I value Israel more highly. The notion of statehood – of, in particular, the nation state – has rather recently arrived on the international scene, and its advent has not proved altogether, or even on the balance, beneficial.  Nevertheless, we have to take official designations into consideration, as those designations have weight in international negotiations, as the Palestinians have found out rather painfully over the past several decades. Astrologers use them, as they can give us official birthdays and birthtimes in ways that such notions as “the Palestinian people” cannot.

2. The horoscope offered here, one generally in use, recently received some unfortunate evidence related to rectification (i.e. having the correct time). Hamas’ attack on Israeli citizens took place with Mars at 26 Libra, having moved just within orb of the chart’s ascendant at 0 Scorpio. On the 9^th, with Mars at 28 Libra, Israel announced . its complete blockade (as distinguished from the blockade ongoing for fifteen years). By the 11^th, Israel’s retaliatory bombing of Gaza, billed as “self-defense,” had begun; on the 12^th, as TR Mars entered Scorpio, Israel announced that Gaza would get no food, water, or electricity. In sum, as TR Mars moved towards and over the horoscope’s ascendant, open hostilities began (as distinguished from the hidden hostility suggested by TR Mars in the 12^th). TR Mars served as a trigger for more enduring transits and directions: TR Pluto’s square to the ASC; TR Saturn’s now-separating square to N Mars. TR Pluto will repeat its square to the ASC and move toward its 2025 conjunction to the nadir (IC), transits suggesting that the conflict will probably get worse before it gets resolved and may bring a death-and-rebirth process to the home-ground (IC), however considered. Solar Arc (SA) Mars gathering square to N Pluto reiterates the threat long-standing danger, as does TR Pluto’s 2026 opposition to the Moon and SA Saturn’s conjunction to the ASC in about two years.

3. The natal chart, with its fixed square from the Sun in Taurus to Mars in Leo certainly suggests the conflict and bitterness that has characterized the Israel-Palestine relationship. However, because the horoscope belongs to both entities, we shouldn’t automatically blame that aggression on one side or the other – or, perhaps, we should blame both sides equally. It may not always take two to tango, but in this case it has taken both sides to continue the conflict.

4. Though the horoscope belongs to both entities, we shouldn’t feel surprised if one side acts out some horoscope factors more than does the other. We shouldn’t make hard-and-fast divisions here, but it certainly seems that the Leo Moon in the 10^th, plus the Saturn-Pluto conjunction, also in Leo and in the 10^th, appear in Israel’s near-autocratic power in the situation, as the 10^th generally represents the group in power.  Neptune in the 12^th suggests an often-hidden or repressed victimization by people calling out for justice and fairness (Libra), the Palestinian role. If we accept this analysis, it seems reasonable to hold the Israeli government responsible for failures to take decent steps toward peace, as Israel has for quite some time had the power to do that.

5. What of the relationship between the Taurus Sun to the four planets in Leo? Clearly it has led to conflict, but the sextile from the 12^th house Neptune to the 10^th house Libra planets suggests the possibility, as yet unrealized, of effective communication. Some years ago, a study funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) suggested that the ongoing conflict springs not merely from land-issues, reflecting Taurus, but from issues involving respect, suggested by Leo. An investigator interviewed many hundreds of Palestinians and asked whether, if Israel would publicly acknowledge that it had wronged the Palestinians, they would make land concessions. A majority – I think a considerable majority — said that they would. The interviewer also asked many hundreds of Israelis whether, if the Palestinians would grant that Israel had a right to exist, they would make territorial concessions. Again a majority said that they would. These results suggest that the conflict (the square) has much to do with respect: with one side respecting the other, granting it human dignity (Leo), and not merely with land (Taurus). [1]

6. Projection, though, runs rampant here, and in many ways. One example: various Israeli spokespeople and leaders, Netanyahu among them, have recently compared the Palestinians to the Nazis in Germany, though Israel, not Palestine, has maintained Warsaw-Ghetto-like conditions in Gaza for years, increasing the pressure recently. In general, Israel has surely acted far more like Nazi Germany than has Palestine. Perhaps this has occurred because Israel has more power, as just discussed. The N. Saturn-Pluto conjunction, perhaps projected by Palestine and acted out by Israel, reminds us of Richard Tarnas’ observations regarding Saturn-Pluto conjunctions’ connections with right-wing turns in government. It seems that each side periodically projects the Taurus Sun onto the other, seeing that “other” as intransigently trying to secure land for itself or seeing itself as more securely connected to the earth (Palestinians because they had their homes there, many Israelis apparently at least partly for Biblical reasons); Mars then aggresses against that entrenchment. It seems, too, that the Jupiter-Uranus opposition appears, often enough, via projection. Though that aspect has the potential for a somewhat erratic and restless, though not-always-problematic, progressivism, in this case we see a rather more depressing scenario (and not all that surprisingly, as collectivities generally manifest the most problematic potentials of any planetary aspect): the Palestinians seem to play the role of Uranus, rebelling against the values or evaluations of Israel, while Israel plays the expansive and good-fortuned role of Jupiter in Sagittarius. TR Neptune’s current square to both ends of that opposition has brought confusion to the ongoing and dangerous splitting resulting from the projection.

7. The long-term situation looks fraught, to say the least. As I said above, TR Pluto has not yet reached either the IC or its opposition to the N Moon; nor has it completed its square to the Ascendant. SA Saturn will reach the ASC in a bit over two years, entering Scorpio in about 16 months. SA Mars will square Pluto in about two years. In the shorter run, TR Mars has begun its square of the Saturn-Pluto conjunction in Leo and will soon square N Mars and oppose the N Sun, suggesting open hostility.

8. Hamas’ secret preparations (TR Mars in 12^th, among other factors) for the recent attack certainly suggests that they acted out the Mars role against Israel’s security-oriented Sun in Taurus. At the same time, Israel’s ongoing tendency to try to sweep the situation under the collective rug, apparently thinking or hoping it would go away, provided the fuel for Palestinian anger. For what certainly look like good reasons, the Palestinians felt undervalued – though we can probably say the same for Israel.

THE END.

NEXT: THE ROLE OF THE UNITED STATES AND JOE BIDEN

Notes:

1.  This material comes from memory. I knew someone in the AFOSR who had a hand in funding this research. He sent me a newspaper clipping describing it, but I can no longer locate the clipping.