Uranus or Anu represented the impersonal God of Uruk in Sumerian mythology.  The God of the rotating sky, by which we can determine the seasons, God of the pole star Thuban (serpent of the sea dragon Tiamat or Draco as the constellation is now known) by which they found direction of North.  This point is the point of mythological genesis.  Understanding astrology means understanding this symbolic point.

It looks as if the world revolves around the celestial axis because the earth does, from earth we see the stars revolve around this point.  The axis cuts straight through the Earth from North to South or vice versa. The star and the point of celestial North mark a mythological genesis point where the universe begins or the big bang.  This point in Sumerian mythology is Nammu, the primordial Goddess that gave birth to the universe.  Ancient cultures didn’t belief the world revolved around the Earth they believed it revolved around the axial tilt because they could see it doing so with their own eyes.  The pole star does not move in the night sky everything else does, all the other circumpolar stars revolve around it.  To be head sky God you have to be at the centre of the universe, the one everything revolves around.

How Anu became the centre of the universe, you need to know about his predecessor to understand.  In Sumerian Mythology Thuban the serpent of Tiamat or constellation of Draco ruled the Northern point of the axial tilt.  The sky North of the celestial equator is the sea or the Tiamat showing her dominance.  The sky south of the celestial equator was the Absu/Apsu fresh water.  Remember the axial tilt hits a mythical south point and this is where Enki resides.  Enki was the Deity of Eridu/Eridug the first Sumerian city state.  The waters of Enki or the Absu rise up through the axial tilt and cut through the Earth just as the axis does, Enki fertilises the Earth with his water and Absu/Apsu fertilises the Tiamat.  Fresh water and semen are the same word in Sumerian writing, they both fertilise or as Jesus called it living waters. “If any man thirst let him come unto me and drink.”  “He that believeth in me according to the scriptures, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living waters.”

Enki in Mythology becomes sick and Ninhursag Lady of the Mountain representing Earth cures him by creating Ninti, Lady life, Lady rib and lady arrow from his rib.  Ninti is Thuban the pole star it is the northern point of Enki’s rib, later in mythology that rib will once more belong to the Tiamat when she is slain.  But at that time Enki’s rib is the axial tilt from celestial south through the Earth to celestial north at the pole star she is Ninti lady life a representation of Ninhursag Lady mountain created from Enki.  This is similar to the Djed in egyptian mythology.  When Set kills Osiris by trapping him in a coffin, his body is swept into the ocean by the Nile and is washed ashore at Byblos (where the title Bible originates) in Lebanon.  Where it washed ashore a sacred tree sprang up containing the body of Osiris.  The King/ruler of Byblos had the tree cut down and used as a pillar in his palace Isis requests the pillar and extracts the coffin the pillar is then anointed.  The pillar represents the spine of Osiris, in Egyptian mythology it is the spine that produces semen or gives life to us, it is the spine in which the Kundalini (serpent) rises in Indian mythology. It is the pillar of Djed(axial tilt) that holds up the world and produces stability. Just as it is our spine that holds us up and provides us with stability.  Byblos is a Greek translation of Gubal which means well or origin, Jabal also means Mountain in Arabic.  Both Lebanon and Dilmun are cited as the garden of Eden in Sumerian mythology. Dilmun (Bahrain) an island in the Tiamat from which fresh water rises up through wells it is symbolic of the mythology of the Celestial north.  Lebanon which represents mountains (Ninhursag, Lady Mountain or Lady earth), Byblos the well (Absu or the rising waters of Enki), Cedar representing the good tree, tree of life, tree of knowledge, the pillar that holds up the sky – it is the trees of the Cedar that were traditionally used in temples and boat building. The Cedar as a boat floats in the Tiamat.  Dilmun was an important trading place between sumerians/Mesopotamians and Indus Valley civilization, Lebanon is also important for access to wood for temples and ships it too is a trading place where the grass is always greener. Eden is the point of Celestial North but also a representation of its fertility the womb that gave birth to the universe and our home the Earth.

However there is no evidence that the early Sumerians knew the Earth was a sphere, Absu/Abzu/Apsu also refers to Aquifers that lie under the ground and the Absu rising in the Tiamat is a mythological representation of upwelling as well common in the gulf.  The mythological point of origin of Absu is the celestial south of the axial pole whatever shape they did or did not presume the Earth to be.

Anu god of the later city state Uruk usurps Enki as chief deity by becoming his father, and having him building his temple.  Anu represents the celestial equator which crosses the Axial tilt at the centre of the Earth.  Anu is the centre point of the cross which also makes him the centre point of the axial tilt.  This is reflected in later Babylonian astrology when Anu/Inanna rule the equatorial stars and the signs/ constellations of the equinox. Enki the southern Hemisphere stars, Aquarius the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates (absu/apsu)  as well as the constellation of the winter solstice (sun at the most southern point) and Capricorn sign of the start of the flooding of the Euphrates and Tigris representing Enki/Ea himself.  Enlil the Northern hemisphere starts especially Bootes as the plowman and Antares the star closest to Ursa Minor, Leo sign/constellation of the summer solstice and the sun’s most Northern point.  Enlil and Inanna’s role in this mythology is best understood by understanding Anu.

Anu is impersonal he moves the sky but his purpose is unknown and unknowable.  Anu is responsible for changes, all the good and all the bad changes, but we can’t figure out what we are being punished or rewarded for or if it is all impersonal and we don’t matter.  A God that does not intervene and see our side of the argument is immune to worship.  A god we cannot placate is a god in which worshipping becomes futile.

This corresponds with Pascal’s night of fire and the revelation that the God of Isaac and Abraham is not the God of the philosophers but an unknown and unknowable God.  Uranus is the God we cannot relate to.  The God that lets kids die of Cancer without reason and so we castrated him.  Uranus brings out the violence in us for Uranus also represents our own castration and frustration our own unknown and unknowable aspects of our personality – the inner demons we hide from ourselves lest we see into our own abyss, for the celestial axis and celestial equinox meet in the heart of Hades or the underworld and it is at this point he fertilises the Earth, Ki or Gaia.  Hades the place, in Sumerian is Kur or Kigal later Irkalla in Akkadian and is ruled by Ereshkigal – Queen/scented house of the Great Earth/Land or Ninkigal, Lady of the Great Earth/Land.

In Uruk his castration of power was in the worship of a queen of heaven who usurped his powers Inanna or Venus.  She is sometimes his wife and sometimes his daughter.  Originally his wife was Uras – Ur means hill, mound or mountain.  Kur is not only the underworld but also Sumerian for mountain and can be used instead of Kir for land, it is also the name of the first dragon that dwells in the centre of the Earth, under the mountain from which it sometimes rises in the form of smoke and fire.  The dragon under the Earth is a parallel for the dragon of the North celestial axis. It is likely that Uras is a representation of Ereshkigal, Ninhursag and the Tiamat/Nammu.  Enki mythology both Ninhursag and Nammu are used interchangeably both are his wife and both can be represented by the pole star.  In mythology Inanna becomes the twin sister of Ereshkigal and it is she who visits the underworld at the slaying of the Golden Bull of Heaven at the spring equinox instead of Anu.  Due to venus having a closer proximity to the sun, it is always near the equinox at the spring solstice.  Inanna is also queen of heaven and thus the pole star as well as Venus.

In sumerian mythology it is Inanna who breaks the back of the scorpion to end its grip on the earth and the autumnal equinox and because Inanna has broken the back of the Scorpion the nights will once more get longer.  In greek mythology Inanna becomes Aphrodite born from Uranus castration, but Inanna is also Urania daughter/wife of Uranus.  The impersonal God is replaced by the Goddess of love, hedonism, pleasure, power and greed.  The Goddess who is very personal and very relatable.  This Goddess rules a city state so large and powerful, Uruk becomes the symbol for the word city not only in Sumerian but Assyrian and other cultures that borrowed its cuneiform writing.  The name of that city Uruk may lead to the name of the country Iraq, which may be derived from Aramaic Erech pronunciation of Uruk.

Anu remains merely as a symbol, he represent the ancient settlement that existed during the Eridu period, hence the claim that Anu is the father of Enki, the Uruk period 4000 – 3200 BC is Inanna at at her most powerful.  It saw a shift from smaller agricultural settlements to larger urban cities like Uruk the first real city in the world, with a full time bureaucracy, military and stratified society.  When any settlement increases to a certain point self organisation and communication gets stretched to breaking point.  This means that a bureaucratic class becomes essential.

However even great empires fall and another takes their power, Inanna and Anu are usurped by another city state God Enlil of Mesopotamia, Nippur means city of Enlil and becomes the spiritual centre of Mesopotamia, and she becomes his granddaughter subservient to the God of the new ruling empire.  Enlil is in turn replaced by the Babylonian Marduk or Jupiter.  Enlil castrates Anu by mythologically stopping the God of the spring solstice penetrating the earth, by prevention of this penetration Anu has no access to the axial tilt.  He makes Innana his granddaughter and puts Ninlil on the dais as represented by the pole star.  This mirrors later Chinese Dragon mythology where the Dragon becomes not only a representation of the Emperor but also the storm God.

“I am asking about the relationship to the Deity of all the different beliefs of mankind.  I am asking about the general revelation of God to the whole universe with all those cloudy nebulae.  What am I doing?  To me personally, to my heart, has been indubitably revealed a knowledge unattainable by reasoning, and I obstinately wish to express that knowledge by reason and words.

Do I not know it is not the stars that are moving?  But I, watching the movement of the stars, cannot picture to myself the rotation of the earth and I am right in saying the stars move.” – Leo Tolstoy ‘Anna Karenina’

At the time of the Rise of Babylon as ‘The’ city state, the pole star which was Thuban in Draco changes to kappa Draconis in Draco however because this star is not bright, Kochab was used as the pole star.  In Babylonian mythology Marduk / Jupiter slays the great sea dragon the Tiamet who wants to pass the ‘Tablets of Destinies’ onto Kingu or Qingu – the unskilled labourer,peasant, red neck, pagan, plebeian or the sign of Aries (Babylonian constellation of the agrarian worker) which had replaced Taurus as the constellation on the eastern horizon as the sun rose at the spring equinox.  Marduk slays Tiamet and places her rib at the centre of the world to hold up the heavens.  He also delivers Qingu to the underworld just as Inanna or Gilgamesh had despatched the Golden Bull to the Underworld.  Aries is the time when the peasant is struggling to be heard and the head deity is the one that can keep them in control, Taurus represented hedonism provided by agriculture – Aries its continuation by abuse of power to enslave others.

This mythology is also reflected in Adam and Eve.  Eve in Hebrew means life and it come from the hebrew word for serpent as Thuban does.  Adam and Eve is a retelling of Enki / EA and Ninti – lady rib or lady life.  Enki / Ea was the god of the first Sumerian City state Eridu / Eridug.  In Sumerian mythology Ninti or lady life comes from Enki’s rib not the Tiamat.  Enki in Marduk mythology slays and usurps the powers of the Absu/Apsu or the constellation of Aquarius which represented the water of the Euphrates and the Tigris to create mankind. The Apsu represented freshwater or semen – water that can fertilise the Earth and make it green.  The Tiamat represented seas both on earth and the primordial sea on which the stars floated in the night sky.  The Absu or Apsu being the husband of the Tiamat can be represented by her Pole Star Thuban as a sign of procreation – Thuban or Ninti is the daughter of Enki she is created from his rib but she is also the Tiamat / Thuban incarnate in Eve.  The pole represents the eternal heaven its stars stay in the night sky whatever the season they are eternal.  The pole star represent eternal life, she is the mother of all.  The Tiamat is also the great serpent or the constellation Draco wrapped around the tree of knowledge, which is also the tree of life, the North celestial pole.  Eve has already given the peasant knowledge of good and evil, The Tablets of Destinies she has to be banished before they are given immortal life.

She does this through giving the tablets to Enki who with her is the symbolic father of humanity, for he is God of the first Sumerian city state, a city of ruins that poses no political threat to the powers of the day.  In claiming descent from Enki and Ninti they are claiming equality with Sumerians, Mesopotamians and Babylonians they are saying we are one of you.  This is a wise thing to do if you are a Babylonian captive.

In Marduk mythology he wrestles the tablets of destinies back from the peasant kingu or the constellation Aries, under Marduk’s or Jupiter’s reign the peasant is created a beast of burden to work for the God of the Babylonian city state for their leisure.  Aries will not rule the spring equinox for Marduk has fashioned himself the son of Ea or Enki and the New rib of the Tiamat which holds up the sky, kappa draconis is his rib placed there after he slays the Tiamat and it is dead, it has no power Kochab ‘The star’ does.

This mythology is also reflected in Hurrian myth of Teshub / Teshup slaying the dragon, the Hittite myth of Tarhunt slaying the serpentine dragon and in Zeus and the Typhon.  The spring festivals of Puruli (celebrated by the Hattian people of Anatolia), and Akitu (celebrated by Babylonians) recreate the myth of Marduk and lead up to the spring equinox.  This is also part of Gilgamesh or Pabilgamesh and his usurping of Inanna, Inanna cannot remove the serpent from the tree Gilgamesh does it for her – Gilgamesh has the power to control the heavens.

Pabilgamesh relates to Pabilsag the constellation of Sagittarius, city god of Isin.  Isin was a city close to Nippur and thus Pabilsag (great descendent, city may date as far back as Ubaid period as a settlement) is the son of Enlil due to the dominance of Nippur. However when the Elamites invade Mesopotamian power retreats to Isin and from Isin the Mesopotamians still rule Ur, Uruk and the spiritual centre of Nippur.  This is a time when Uruk is also becoming less important, in the epic of Gilgamesh an early king from Uruk’s height of power, with an ideal name Gilgamesh means chosen one of the ancestors and that relates nicely to great ancestor could be interpreted as being the chosen one of the great ancestor, is chosen to represent Pabilsag and Isin as always being part of Uruk mythologically and its rulership.  To do this gilgamesh needs to usurp Inanna.  He does this by slaying the Golden bull of heaven, Inanna or Venus still rules the sign of Taurus and the spring equinox to replace her is to usurp her.  It is Gilgamesh who mythologically changes Thuban as the Tiamet to Thuban as Inanna.  This is because ‘The Epic of Gilgamesh’ earliest written copies pre-date both Marduk and the change in pole star, although Thuban is moving from the pole at this point.  But pabilsag is the son of Enlil the ploughman that put Ninlil Virgo the field of cereal on the dais of Thuban, making Thuban Ninlil’s star.  Pabilsag is the ancestor of the Marduk mythology and Pabilsag or Sagittarius is ruled by Marduk or Jupiter.

This is why the signs at the equinox and the constellations no longer match, symbolically Aries the peasant is still striving to overthrow Marduk we have ancient symbolism that is still unresolved.

When the constellation of Pisces sat on the eastern horizon at the time of sunrise on the spring equinox we had twin pole stars. Kochab ‘The star’ and Pherkad ‘The dim one of the two calves’ of Ursa Minor the little bear.  We have twin pole stars and this ties into the mythology of the Gemini constellation which now marks the summer solstice.

Pisces the constellation is the remnant mythology of the Tiamet, Thuban and her fall.  Gemini absorbs the immortality of the twin pole stars into the constellation that sets and rises in the form of resurrection and eternal life for all including the peasant.  Yet Kochab the brightest of the twin pole calves still represents Marduk – Babylonian for Bull calf of the sun God Utu, this gives him a permanence of both the sun and the pole star – Marduk is always in the sky night or day.

What is more when Gemini was the constellation of the spring equinox Theta Bootes was the pole star, Bootes represents Enlil as the ploughman.  The big dipper is the plough, Kochab and Pherkad the calves that pull it.  Today Polaris is the pole star it is also part of Ursa minor.  Enlil is still the ploughman that moves the heavens and the bull still brings the spring equinox.  Polaris will continue to be the pole star until around 3,000 AD/CE when gamma Cephei,’The Shepherd’ takes its place.  So Marduk / Jupiter is still under the influence of Enlil and Enlil is the symbol of Leo and the self, it is Hercules with his lion skin, only that lion skin controls Hercules and not the other way round.  Hercules cannot remove the lion skin and neither can we our beliefs and judgements are based on our own thinking and that means they are based on our own best interest even when we pretend otherwise.

So we have Uranus symbol of the unknown and unknowable sky God in Aries the sign of the peasant and the peasant ruler Prime ministers and Presidents.  Aries represents peasants assuming the throne of kings, emperors, high priests and popes, it is the overthrowing of the caste system.  But the peasant when he ascends the throne becomes the elite and thus the peasant is forever castrated from attaining power.  Uranus in Aries is symbolic of this frustration.

We have seen Uranus in Aries, Square Pluto in Capricorn, Jupiter in Cancer and opposite Mars in Libra.

Lets start there with the symbolism.  Capricorn represents Enki himself it is only the water or Absu/Apsu of Enki that is represented in Aquarius.  Enki was the Patron God of the city state of Eridu/Eridug the first Sumerian city state.  The city although involved in trade was self reliant having a population that fished, grew agricultural produce and raised livestock.  The population although large was small enough to feed itself.  Capricorn represents this self sufficiency, hard work and management of resources wisely.  It represents our ability to be self sustaining as a community and it represents the ability to trade, save and everything associated with traditional banking whether that is seeds, grains or other resources put aside until required.

Capricorn represents the plenty we can produce by our own hands if we have and use our resources wisely.  It represents fairness and respect for agreements between parties.  Pluto is Ereshkigal the dragon under the mountain the twin sister of Inanna.  In reality she is the twin of the Tiamet.  The axis goes through the centre of the Earth itself, The dragon above is also the dragon at the centre of the earth.  Ereshkigal represents the dead as immortal spirits of the underworld.  We plant the dead in the soil just as we plant seeds and Ereshkigal represents this duality, lady death is also lady life.  Pluto represents all that is dark and hidden within us and society at large, it represents our darkest desires and our deepest fears.

The rod of Asclepius with the snake entwined is the symbol for medicine or rather the symbol of resurrection and eternal life, Asclepius is killed for bringing the dead back to life and robbing Hades of his subjects.  However the earliest snake staff is that of Ningishzida, Lady of the good tree and it has two snakes entwined one representing Thuban itself the other representing the constellation of Draco.  Ningishzida is sometimes male and then she is the son of Ereshkigal, the Lady/Queen of the dragon under the mountain and the lady of the good tree are however the one thing, the axis cutting through the earth.  Hermes or Mercury ruler of the twin stars Gemini, and  Ninlil or Virgo also has the double snake staff and thus he can visit the underworld at any time.

We have the peasant castrated from usurping the throne and the darkest desires of the banking world and our deepest fears of them, not to mention the abandonment or death of those Capricorn values themselves or our inability to access and control our own resources anymore.

Jupiter in Cancer, we bring in our beliefs about our environment.  Cancer represents all environments but is especially connected to our first the womb.  Jupiter represents our beliefs about our environment, family, community, culture and nationality.  More importantly Jupiter represents how our beliefs drive our actions.

Lastly we have Mars in Libra.  Libra represents the claws of the Scorpion that held the world in balance at the time of the autumnal equinox, Libra represents the striving for balance and equality or fairness it is also symbolic of the scales of justice.  Mars represents our most basic instincts common to all life and that is survival and reproduction. Mars in Libra is all about the need for balance, justice and equality because our lives depend upon it and the lives of future generations.  Mars here is an instinctive reaction to injustice and inequality.

It is no surprise then that at this time we have the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street and Scottish Independence referendum.  It is no surprise that these issues are still unresolved.  Pluto is still in Capricorn and still square Uranus except now we Jupiter in Libra opposite Uranus as well.

Jupiter represents beliefs and how those beliefs drive our behaviour.  Right now those beliefs about equality and justice are opposing the castrated peasant.  Lets deal with some of those beliefs.

White privilege: white students should not enjoy their education but feel guilty, hispanic and black students do not have to feel guilty for rising to privileged position in society it is equality for them to have privilege and inequality for others.  Poor white people will not get a college education and that is okay because they have white privilege they don’t need it and they don’t deserve it.  Poor black people are subjected to racism because they do not get an education and some white people do this shows that white privilege is real.  Although privilege without acknowledging it can only exist for elite if a majority of black, female, hispanic, disabled and other groups are kept in poverty. Thus black, female, hispanic, disabled and others never benefit but keep an elite in power.

White privilege does not move towards equality for all it does not address racism but use poor black people to drive the idea that those with privileges do not have them and are not part of an elite system.  Under this although Barack Obama was President of USA and one of the most elite men in the world he is still regarded as having less privileged and a harder life than a white homeless man or woman.  However because it pits the poorest in society against each other it does prevent them uniting and demanding more equality.

It also raises the issue that the black peasant like the Arab peasant or the white peasant cannot sit on the throne only the black elite, Arab elite and the White elite.  No black president can overcome racism and no female president can overcome sexism because it is only the elite than can sit on the throne.  Thus the Aries conundrum still exists.  Except now we have the term ‘privilege’ to justify people never having any right to sit on the throne as peasants.  Not only can the peasant not sit on the throne like Marduk in mythology the peasant is being told he has no right to it, and his job is to slave away for the throne sitters because he has ‘privilege’ and because he has ‘privilege’ his lack of access to resources is his fault and not the elite throne sitters because they made it without ‘privilege’.  This is ‘Catch 22’ brought to life when the elite have no privilege and no responsibility for their dependence on inequality, and the peasant is to blame and has all the ‘privileges’ denied the poor elite.

Thus we have a clash of justice, either a system of massive inequality which is deemed fair because people have ‘privilege’ that doesn’t exist but marks them from birth to be a slave and have no right to expect a share of the elitist gains.  Or we challenge this ideology, and we pick somebody that represents this ‘privilege’ and offends the ‘elite suppression using victimhood’ and we put them on the throne.  This my friend has happened.

This is the reason Donald trump was elected president. However the myth of the peasant throne still holds strong despite never being achieved and putting Donald Trump on the throne is admittance that the myth is a bust, it does however let the elite know the ‘privilege’ con is over.  That may take a while to sink in and the elite is rallying its celebrity and academic elite to fight it ‘for the sake of humanity peasants must be slaves’, cry is ringing loud and clear from all quarters just now.  Trump the reality star embodies Kim Kardashian white trash hell – the peasant is on the throne and the Anarchists are outraged that he has sullied it.  The Anarchists those supposedly against Hierarchy are enraged that a white trash peasant instead of Graeber or Chomski dared to put his arse on their throne.  You can rape and sit on that throne like Bill Clinton, you can bomb the entire planet like Obama, but speak like Kim Kardashian and the end of the world is upon us all.

That leaves one major issue – ‘the end is neigh’ers.  They are ready to kill to keep the peasant throne myth alive they have self righteous indignation on their side.  This is especially true of those of the ‘victimhood, free pass to elitism’ group, even if they were never getting that free pass to elitism but being kept in poverty to guarantee another’s freedom to elitism without responsibility.  For this has worked as well as the ‘American Dream’ that nobody was ever going to get but even better it has social responsibility and equality twist that ensures the opposite for the elite for ever more.

Although the fight right now is about free elitism and ensuring poverty through the ‘privilege’ mythology if the myth is busted a new Aries mythological step may be created. If  Aries can’t sit on the throne and be Aries in what way can the peasant rule, Uranus is the unknown, unknowns this is what we may discover soon.

Saturn will soon be in Capricorn symbolising that the hidden bodies of the banking system will be revealed, tough times and tough action taken are ahead but some of those resources may well head back to the peasant especially the land as the source of our food and all our resources.

Before this Venus is conjunct Uranus at the beginning of June and whether or not the peasant gets his share of the elite’s hedonism will be on the agenda symbolically.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chiron at its core contains an eternal wound that cannot be fully healed.  Chiron was in Pisces during The Great War and this is it’s second return, this is a time when the Wounds created her are felt once more all over the world. Because this is the moment in time Tolkien’s Shires were abandoned by the innocent hobbits who were marched into the Hell of Sauron and the bleak land of Mordor.

The first World War marks the end of one age and the beginning of a much darker time in human history.  The young men who fought in it from all sides were still innocent children, thrilled and excited by heroic tales of daring and bravery, of knights and cavalry and rescuing damsels in distress. They were innocent in age and in time for they belonged to a time of horses, music halls, sing-song around the piano.  They belonged to a time that moved at a gentler pace and had a softer, gentler attitude to each other a world where innocence and hope filled the world. They belonged to this time and yet within months they entered the new age of chemical weapons, shelling, mass death and bodies annihilated on mass before their eyes; where 20,000 of your comrades can be wiped out in just one day.

Before this time war had been accepted as heroic and brave; after this time war contained no victory only the weeping of mothers and widows, children who would never know their fathers and the world said never again. The world said we did not know, there had never been a war like this, how could we know, never again.  Yet it happened again, how do we deal with the fact that the War To End All Wars; didn’t end all wars, that the only solace that could be found from the mass slaughter of innocents failed to prevent another slaughter and another slaughter?  We don’t but in remembering the waste of lives we still hope to pass that understanding of the futility of war down to the next generation.  We still try to make something positive of the worst and bleakest of times by ensuring it does not happen, we still try to respect the memory of the fallen by ensuring another generation is not lost and sometimes we have failed and that failure adds to those wounds but it also spurs us on to continue to ensure the next generation understand.  For in our promise to remember them there is the only answer to the insanity of War.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

©neptunes aura astrology

Uranus is in Aries and Pluto is in Capricorn, at the time Burke and Hare were murdering people to sell their bodies to anatomists Pluto was in Aries and Uranus in Capricorn are there any similarities between both times.  To understand Burke and Hare we need to understand the times they lived in.

Up the close and down the stair,
In the house with Burke and Hare.
Burke’s the butcher, Hare’s the thief
Knox, the man who buys the beef.

A common purpose of body snatching, especially in the 19th century, was to sell the corpses for anatomy lectures in medical schools. Those who practised body snatching were often called “resurrectionists” or “resurrection-men”.  Before the Anatomy of 1832, the only legal supply of corpses for anatomical purposes in the UK were those condemned to death and dissection by the courts. Those who were sentenced to dissection by the courts were often guilty of comparatively harsher crimes. Such sentences did not provide enough subjects for the medical schools and private anatomical schools (which did not require a licence before 1832). During the 18th century hundreds had been executed for trivial crimes, but by the 19th century only about 55 people were being sentenced to hang each year. With the expansion of the medical schools, however, as many as 500 cadavers were needed annually.  Body snatching became so prevalent that it was not unusual for relatives and friends of someone who had just died to watch over the body until burial, and then to keep watch over the grave after burial, to stop it being violated. Iron coffins, too, were used frequently, or the graves were protected by a framework of iron bars.

William Hare emigrated from Northern Ireland to the UK and worked along with many other Irish immigrants on the Union Canal before moving to Edinburgh where he ran a lodging house. William Burke was born in Urney, County Tyrone in 1792 and moved to Scotland around 1815. He also found work as a navvy on the Union Canal, where it is suspected the two may have at first met.  Burke and Hare crossed paths in late 1827 when William Burke became resident at Hare’s lodging house on Tanners Close on the west side of Edinburgh. William Hare would later testify that the episode began when together they sold the body of a deceased resident of the lodging house to Doctor Robert Knox, in order they said to  reclaim money owed by the deceased. Seeing an opportunity to make money, and spurred on by the requirements of Robert Knox, Burke and Hare no longer waited for their victims to die of natural causes. They first preyed upon tenants of the boarding house before moving on to prostitutes and strangers on the streets of Edinburgh. They developed a trademark method of suffocation which would later become known as ‘Burking’.

On Monday, November 3, 1828, Edinburgh awoke to the horrifying news that the most atrocious murders of the decade — of the century — had been committed in the West Port district of the Old Town. William Burke and William Hare, together with Helen M’Dougal and Margaret Hare, were accused of killing 16 people over the course of 12 months, in order to sell their cadavers as “subjects” for dissection. Their purchaser was Dr. Robert Knox, a well-regarded anatomical lecturer with a flourishing dissecting establishment in Surgeon’s Square. The ensuing criminal investigation and trial raised troubling questions about the common practices by which medical men obtained cadavers, about the lives of the poor in Edinburgh’s back alleys, about the ability of the police to protect the public from deliberate, unprovoked murder for gain.  The murders were discovered when two of Burke’s lodgers, Ann and James Gray, grew suspicious about the unexpected disappearance of a visitor, Madgy Docherty, whom they had met in Burke’s house the night before. They found her dead body under the bed and went for the police.

Mary Paterson’s corpse was, as historian Lisa Rosner put it, “the most notorious cadaver.” Her murder at the hands of William Burke and William Hare, and the subsequent preservation of her body at Dr. Robert Knox’s anatomical study facility were the fodder for many titillating and moralizing versions of the Burke and Hare story. When Burke delivered Paterson’s corpse to Knox, the anatomist treasured his new acquisition, preserving the body in whiskey for three months before dissecting it. Knox even brought in artists to capture the beauty of his young specimen.

One of the most despicable acts in the series of Burke and Hare murders was the killing of Daft Jamie. Young James Wilson wandered the streets of Edinburgh “barefoot and bareheaded, in all sorts of weather.” Perhaps that was why he was known in and around the Surgeon Square area as Daft Jamie. If he had frequented fancier quarters, Jamie may have been called eccentric. In any case he was not actually mad. Apparently, he had what is known as savantism. While Jamie’s unusual behavior kept him from regular employment, he could easily perform amazing feats of calculation. Jamie could name the day of the week of any given date in exchange for such small tokens of appreciation as food, drink, snuff and the occasional dinner reception. Jamie was a well-known neighborhood character. He never begged. And his mother and sister did their best to care for him in spite of his penchant for roaming the streets.

Both of these victims were well known in Edinburgh especially ‘Daft Jamie’, and Dr Knox was well aware of who both of these victims were. Historian Lisa Rosner writes, “Robert Knox has been an enigma since his purchase of Burke’s and Hare’s cadavers was first made public.” How could a man of medicine be involved in a series of cold-blooded killings? How could a brilliant scientist fail to notice or suspect that the remarkably fresh bodies on his dissection table had been the victims of foul play? Was Knox, “the boy who buys the beef,” a villain or a fool? History rarely gives simple either-or answers to these questions.  If Knox was a villain, perhaps his greatest sin was over-reaching ambition. He made a profit off his purchases from Burke and Hare in the form of tuition from his anatomy students, but knowledge seemed more valuable to him than money. “I would rather be the discoverer of one fact in science than have a fortune bestowed upon me,” he once said. Knox seems to fit the stereotype of the myopic scientist who is so focused on discovery and fame that he never questions the ethics of his research.

The case provoked a massive outcry, with the public clamouring to have Burke and his mistress, Hare and his wife, and Dr Knox hanged. However, the police had very little evidence of murder – there were no physical signs on Docherty’s body – and they didn’t want the case to result in lesser charges, or an acquittal. Therefore they made a deal with Hare that, if he were to become a King’s Witness and tell all in court, he and his wife would be released, provided Burke was convicted.

The trial, which started on Christmas Eve 1828, lasted only until the next morning. Hare’s evidence sent Burke to the gallows, although Burke’s mistress received a not proven verdict. Before his death, a month later, Burke confessed to sixteen murders, but always denied that they ever robbed graves. On the day of his hanging thousands of people, of all classes, turned out to watch the hated man’s execution. When he died the crowd cheered, and when his body was cut down there was a stampede as people tried to reach it. After a period in which it was laid on a slab in a public gallery, so all who desired to do so could see, Burke’s fate was to have his own body donated to medical science – it was dissected in a lecture, which drew a full house. After this, his skeleton was displayed in the Medical School he had kept so well supplied – the bones are still there today.

The case of Burke and Hare so shocked decent society that the British parliament was prepared to legalise the dissection of dead bodies in order to stop the black market trade in them. The 1832 Anatomy Act legalised the use of cadavers in the event of the body being unclaimed – this, in effect, meant that anatomists could now buy their bodies from the workhouses. Since there was now an abundant legal source of bodies, the prices fell, and grave robbers found that the risks of their trade were too great compared with the pitiful rewards they now received.

However this is not the end of the story, the bill established a regime of presumed consent to dissection. It authorized certain parties to be in lawful possession of corpses for the purpose of disposing of them to medical schools, if the person had not, in life, formally registered their dissent to being dissected, and if no relatives claimed the body for burial within forty-eight hours of the death. The bill failed to specify who these powerful parties would be, but they were envisaged as the men who were in positions of authority in places where large numbers of poor people died, especially workhouses and hospitals.  One of the bill’s critics, Lord Teynham, made a last ditch stand in parliament, claiming that as the legislation failed to ban the sale of corpses it would “convert every workhouse-keeper into a systematic trafficker in dead bodies”.  However it would be another twenty-five years before the public learned the prescience of that prediction.  For example, they could persuade workhouse masters to send them bodies by guaranteeing to subject these to a quick, minimal dissection—of the viscera only—before sending them back to the workhouse for burial without obvious disfigurement (at least to a relative who did not insist on the body being taken from its coffin and its shroud removed).   Alfred Feist, master of the St Mary Newington workhouse, was accused in the Central Criminal Court of unlawfully disposing of pauper bodies to Guy’s Hospital medical school. He and the parish undertaker, Robert Hogg, had turned the workhouse into a place where corpses were processed into profitable objects. At any given time, the dead house contained workhouse bodies and others brought in from elsewhere, as well as coffins containing dissected remains that had been removed from Guy’s for burial. The men’s resourceful system for turning these remains to good account was relatively simple. On the morning of a workhouse inmate’s burial, after a relative (usually a daughter or sister) had viewed the body, she was sent from the dead house to the waiting room while Hogg or Feist nailed down the coffin lid. A little later, she was called and told to step into the funeral carriage, while the undertaker’s men lifted a coffin into the accompanying hearse. That coffin contained a stranger’s dissected remains. While the relative accompanied this coffin to the burial ground to witness what she thought was a family member’s interment, Feist filled in the notice that made that corpse available for dissection. Hogg then took the notice to Inspector Bacot, and received in return a warrant that authorized the body to be taken to Guy’s.  Despite the long-held common law principle that there was no property in the human corpse, the Anatomy Act had created a limited right to possess one, and workhouse masters had acquired this right.

The murders by Burke and Hare were driven by financial gain, in an age where religious belief and science clashed over the sanctity of the dead, Burke and Hare brought matters to a head.  The clash between both opposing factions was not solved by parliament as it sought to appease both the public and the medical schools resulting in the poorest in society being bought and sold after death. This period also brings up the capitalist free for all that without any moral or societal boundaries can sell the human body to the highest bidder.  This time brought these themes of capitalism vrs dignity, the individual vrs organisations and science vrs religion to the fore in the publics mind however these issues were not solved until much later but driven underground and perpetuated on the poorest in society.

 

Transit Neptune is in Pisces and one of the occurrences the last time this Planet was in Pisces was the Salem witch trials. To understand the trials we must understand some of the events of that time, Salem, Massachusetts in the late 1600s faced a number of serious challenges to a peaceful social fabric. Salem was divided into a prosperous town and a farming village. The villagers, in turn, were split into factions that fiercely debated whether to seek ecclesiastical and political independence from the town. In 1689 the villagers won the right to establish their own church and chose the Reverend Samuel Parris, a former merchant, as their minister. His rigid ways and seemingly boundless demands for compensation increased the already present friction. Many villagers vowed to drive Parris out, and they stopped contributing to his salary in October 1691.

These local concerns only compounded the severe social stresses that had already been affecting New England for two decades. A 1675 conflict with the Indians known as King Philip’s War had resulted in more deaths relative to the size of the population than any other war in American history. A decade later, in 1685, King James II’s government revoked the Massachusetts charter. A new royally-appointed governor, Sir Edmund Andros, sought to unite New England, New York, and New Jersey into a single Dominion of New England. He tried to abolish elected colonial assemblies, restrict town meetings, and impose direct control over militia appointments, and permitted the first public celebration of Christmas in Massachusetts, a celebration of which Puritans strongly disapproved. After William III replaced James II as King of England in 1689, Andros’s government was overthrown, but Massachusetts was required to eliminate religious qualifications for voting and to extend religious toleration to sects such as the Quakers. The late seventeenth century also saw a increase in the number of black slaves in New England, which further unsettled the existing social order.

In other words this was a time when religious factions were highlighted and certain religious groups felt their way of life and core values were being eroded.  Add to this mix an outbreak of smallpox and crop failures and we can see that this is a tense time in which prejudices are most likely to surface.  How did this take place lets meet some of the main characters.

Elizabeth Hubbard, like most of the other afflicted girls, was detached from her parents and family of birth. She went to Salem to live with her great-aunt Rachel Hubbard Griggs and her husband, the town physician Dr. William Griggs who diagnosed the original girls as being under the affliction of an “Evil Hand”. As a physician Dr. Griggs and his wife were viewed as a family of social standing. But Elizabeth was known as a servant to the household and not as an adopted daughter.

In 1692 Elizabeth was around 17 years old, making her one of the oldest of the original set of afflicted girls. Along with Elizabeth Parris, Abby Williams and Anne Putnam, Elizabeth started the accusations with claims of being tortured by specters of certain members of the community. The reasons behind the start of the accusations are somewhat unclear. There are many theories of why the young girls accused people of witchcraft ranging from the hysteria to the social and economic set up of the village of the time. In The Devil in the Shape of a Woman, Carol Karlsen researched some of the accusing girls and suggests that they may have behaved as they did due to the fact that many of them felt that their future was uncertain. As orphans, society looked at them in a different light. Most of the girls had no monetary or emotional support from direct family members. As Karlsen states, that the frontier wars, “had left their father’s estates considerably diminished, if not virtually destroyed. Little if anything remained for their dowries. With few men interested in women without dowries, the marriage prospects of these women, and thus their long-term material well being, looked especially grim (227)”. Elizabeth Hubbard, like most of the other accusing girls, was a servant with very dismal if any prospects for the future. Karlsen goes on to suggest the afflicted were able to use their dramatic possession performances to “focus the communities’ concern on their difficulties”. This was the one situation in which Elizabeth Hubbard and the others accusing girls had the respect and attention of the community. Karlsen thinks that this was the girls way of dealing with the oppression they felt as orphans within Puritan society (226-230). We can never know exactly why Elizabeth Hubbard accused so many people of witchcraft but from the documents we can read some of her testimony and draw conclusions about the kind of girl she was.

Sarah Churchill spent her early childhood in Saco, Maine. Her parents were Arthur and Eleanor Churchill and her grandfather was a well-respected and wealthy man named Major William Phillips. In 1680, when Sarah was eight years old, Wabanaki Indians attacked Saco. During the attack, Sarah and her parents joined 50 other people in the home of her grandfather. When the Wabanaki’s arrived in Saco, they surrounded the house and attempted to burn the settlers out of the garrison. The attempt failed, but they shot and injured several members of the party – including Major Phillips. The attack scared the Churchill family into moving to Marblehead, Massachusetts. While the fate of Sarah’s mother, Eleanor, is unknown, her father Arthur lived until 1710. By 1692 Sarah had moved to Salem Village closer to her relatives, the Ingersolls. According to Mary Beth Norton, author of In the Devil’s Snare, Sarah, like several other girls who witnessed the terrors of the Indian Wars, may have suffered from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.

In Salem, Sarah became the maidservant of George Jacobs Sr., who was a crippled old man living on his prosperous farm near Salem Village. By hiring herself out as a servant, Sarah went from being the granddaughter of one of the wealthiest and socially prominent men in Maine (Major Phillips) to a low status maidservant for a country farmer in Salem.  During George Jacobs Sr.’s interrogation Sarah Churchill was eager to testify that he did not conduct family prayers and that he had led a “wicked life”. As Sarah was probably a victim of Jacobs’ physical abuse, she was quick to implicate her master. It was said that the 80 year old, Jacobs Sr. beat Sarah with his canes when she did not do her household chores to his satisfaction. Jacobs, who at the incredulous at the accusations against him, denigrated his young accusers in court, calling them “witch bitches.”

Elizabeth (Betty) Parris was nine years old when the witchcraft epidemic broke out in Salem, and she actively participated in its beginning. Elizabeth, a sweet girl, had difficulty facing the stark realities of predestination and damnation that her father, Reverend Samuel Parris, preached to her. Elizabeth Parris lived in a period of economic uncertainty and yearned to know what lay in her future.

In the dark winter days of 1691, Elizabeth Parris and her cousin Abigail Williams began to undertake experiments in fortune telling, using a device known as a “venus glass.” A venus glass consists of an egg white suspended in water in which one could see shapes and figures. The girls mainly focused on their future social status, and specifically on the trade in which their husbands would be employed. These fortune telling secrets were shared with other young girls in the area. On one occasion, the glass revealed the horrendous specter of a coffin, which, as Rev. John Hale reported in A Modest Inquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft, (1702) led to “diabolical molestation.”. And it is out of these childish beginnings that the Salem witchcraft outbreak began.

The young Ann Putnam was the daughter of Thomas Putnam and Ann Putnam, Sr. She is listed in every account as one of the “afflicted girls” and her name appears over 400 times in the court documents. She was twelve years old when the Salem Witch Trials began in 1692. By the time they were over, she had accused nineteen people, and had seen eleven of them hanged.

Initially, Ann was fed names by her parents and minister. Her father was an influential church leader and became an aggressive accuser of witches. Her mother was a fearful woman, still mourning the death of her infant daughter, and, later, she claimed that she herself was attacked by witches. Though many of the people Ann accused were those that her family or the Rev. Parris had quarreled with, she had other sources for her accusations. Mary Beth Norton has recently uncovered a connection between George Burroughs (whom Ann first accused) and Mercy Lewis, a nineteen year-old servant in the Putnam’s household. Norton’s groundbreaking research reveals the fact that Burroughs had been minister to the Maine town of Falmouth where both of Mercy’s parents died during Indian attacks. Moreover, the afflicted girls seem to have entered into something of a conspiracy as time went on, so that in the case of Burroughs the name provided by the older Lewis was quickly echoed by Ann who initiated the accusation.

Mercy Lewis was born in Falmouth, Maine in 1675. The Lewis family lived in Maine until an Indian attack killed all of Mercy’s extended family. In the Devil’s Snare historian Mary Beth Norton suspects that Mercy’s parents were killed in a later attack witnessed by Mercy herself. This tragic event cemented Mercy’s connection between the Wabanaki Indians and Satan. The settlers came to fear death, captivity, and torture by the Indians. “In light of the perceived alliance between Satan and the Wabanakis, such suffused dread could easily have been vocalized in what became the commonplace description of the devil’s threats to ‘tear [the afflicted] to pieces’ if they did not comply with his demands.” Mercy testified to one of the witch conventions and reported that they were singing biblical passages regarding God’s judgment of the heathen.

As a result of being orphaned, Mercy was sent to live as a servant with Reverend George Burroughs in Maine and then later to the household of Thomas Putnam in Salem Village. At the Putnam household, Lewis befriended Ann Putnam and her cousin Mary Walcott who were among the first to make claims of affliction by specters of witches. From her previous experience, Mercy was chief source of information about George Burroughs and the Hobbs family in Maine.

At the time the Salem witchcraft trials began, Mary Warren was twenty years old and employed as a servant in the household of John Procter of Salem Village.  Both of Mary Warren’s parents died before this stage in her life. This situation forced Warren to become a servant and support herself since she had no funds or property to claim. Some of Mary’s anxiety over the loss of her parents surfaced during the trials. The document in which John DeRich accused George Jacobs, Sr., states, “that Mary Warrens mother did appeare to this Deponent [John DeRich] this day with a white man and told him that goodwife Parker and Oliver did kill her.” In her statement against Alice Parker, Mary Warren also claims that she killed her mother and afflicted her sister, Elizabeth, “she [Alice Parker] also told me she: bewiched my mother & was a caus of her death: also that: she bewiched my sister: Eliz: that is both deaf & dumb.” Having no family and working for a man who beat her, it is not very surprising that, when accused of witchcraft herself, Mary Warren sought the public attention and legal protection of being an aggressive accuser of local witches.

Although eighteen year-old Mary Walcott was not the most notorious of the accusers, her role in the Salem witch trials was by no means minimal. She was one of the original girls to be afflicted; and it was her aunt, Mary Sibley, who decided to try some white magic to fend off the evil powers in the village. It was Sibley’s idea to persuade Tituba and John Indian, slaves of the Rev. Samuel Parris, to make the “witch cake” to discover witches that resulted in Betty Parris and Abigail Williams making their first accusations.

Walcott’s mother died when she was young and her father, Joseph Walcott, Captain of the Salem Village militia, married Deliverance Putnam thus making him the brother-in-law of Thomas Putnam, one of the most powerful men in the village. The family alliance made Mary Walcott the niece of Thomas Putnam and cousin of his twelve year-old daughter Ann Putnam, Jr., a household that also included Mercy Lewis, an orphaned servant girl, who, with Ann Putnam, Jr., became one of the most active accusers.

Abigail Williams, aged 11 or 12 in 1692, played a major role in the Salem Witch trials as one of the prominent accusers. She lived with her uncle, the Rev. Samuel Parris, Salem Village’s minister. Although it was ordinary practice for young girls to live with relatives to learn about housewifery, we know very little about Abigail, including where she was born and who her parents were.  Even though Abigail played a major role as an accuser at the beginning of the trials, especially in March, April, and May, she gave her last testimony on June 3rd 1692. There is no historical documentation suggesting why Abigail virtually disappeared from the court hearings. In addition, there are no records indicating what happened to Abigail after the events of 1692.

Historians have long pointed the collective finger of blame at the Parris’s slave, Tituba, one of the three women first accused of witchcraft, and the only member of this unfortunate trio to survive the year.  However, the mantle of guilt so eagerly thrust upon Tituba may not be rightfully hers (and at the very least, not hers alone). Later investigations have only raised more questions about the very little verifiable information available on her. Most of the perceptions and understandings of Tituba, today commonly accepted as fact, are actually based on local tradition and fictional literature rather than actual court documents or eye-witness accounts. Admittedly, the legend of Tituba as the “Black Witch of Salem” (a posthumous appellation which immediately suggests interesting racial and class connotations) may be more mysterious and entertaining than the accurate historical extent of her influence on the Salem trials; nevertheless, the ways in which this myth has been constructed are fascinating as well.  Truthfully, Tituba’s story may never be clearly sorted out. Her status as a slave constrains any attempts to uncover official records and papers relating to her. The little glimpse of her life that is available is provided only by the court transcripts themselves. Though Tituba’s words may resonate to us through the court records, she cannot tell her version of the events leading up to the Trials, she cannot share her own history and memory of Salem and life before it.  Nowhere in the court records or contemporary accounts is Tituba said to have taught the practice of fortune telling to the girls in Rev Parris’ house. The fortune telling technique that the girls’ used, as reported by one of them to the Rev. John Hale, was an egg white in a glass of water. This was a commonly known device in New England at the time, and it was condemned by the Puritans as a demonic practice. According to the Rev. Hale, one of the girls saw a “specter in the likeness of a coffin” in the glass, and she and another girl fell into fits. Tituba did not confess to the teaching of fortune telling; she confessed to signing the Devil’s book, flying in the air upon a pole, seeing a cats wolves, birds, and dogs, and pinching or choking some of the “afflicted” girls. She also said she was beaten by her owner, Rev. Parris, and was told to confess to witchcraft, which she did — and what she confessed to was all culturally European, not African or Caribbean.

There is a common theme with all the accusers and that is their life circumstances, these women were subjected to physical abuse and many had seen the violent death of family members as well as the loss of any hope of a better life. They were all empowered and listened to when they became accusers and this power would have been very heady for many of them that were living on the edge of society without hope of a better future.

A recent handwriting analysis of the depositions of the afflicted girls has shown that some 122 of them were written by Thomas Putnam. While it cannot be known to what degree the accusations made in those depositions were influenced by Putnam it is clear that Putnam had the opportunity to shape the words of the young accusers as he saw fit. Further, the similarity in language across these depositions suggests that some of the language might be that of Thomas Putnam rather than that of the afflicted girls themselves.6 In the depositions taken by Putnam, the afflicted often claim to be “grievously afflicted” or “grievously tormented” and “believe in my heart” that so-and-so is a witch. The accused are often referred to as “dreadful witches or wizards” in the depositions taken by Putnam. The frequency with which these phrases can be found in the depositions written by Putnam furthers the theory that they might have been more strongly influenced by Putnam that was previously recognized. Putnam also wrote letters to the judges involved in the trials.

Born in 1653 as the younger son of a London cloth merchant, Samuel Parris began his life in the shadow of others. By his father’s death in 1673 when Samuel was twenty years old, it was clear that he would need to leave England for any chance at financial independence and success. Failing at business in a Caribbean sugar plantation and later in business activities in Boston, Parris eventually decided to join the ministry and look for an appropriate parish in New England. His search culminated at the little village of Salem where the local elders offered the ministry church.  While the trials eventually extended well outside Parris’ control and ability to predict, he undoubtedly holds a position of importance regarding their genesis. Historians Boyer and Nissenbaum in their well-known history, Salem Possessed, define Parris as a “reference point” from which to view the trials and their beginning. He was seen in the village as a dividing line between two groups, in his mind the believers and true Christians of his small congregation versus the suspicious and dangerous people who would not join it. He represented the hatred in the village that enabled people to attack each other so horribly. By naming specific individuals and pushing certain accusations, Parris earns responsibility as one of the most tarnished characters in the history of Salem’s story.

Both Thomas Putnam and Samuel Parris had reasons to level charges at others Thomas Putnam had been disinherited by his wealthy family and through the trials he attacked the family of his half-brother the Porters.  Samuel Parris had also made many enemies that were named during the witch trials. However it was not just the enemies of these men that were named but the most vulnerable and poorest in society.

During the course of the crisis, at least eight children under the age of twelve were accused of witchcraft, and most were indicted.  First, in all of the cases, the only evidence offered against the children was spectral, and came from the “afflicted girls” of either Salem Village or Andover. In no case did anyone accuse a child of maleficium; every accuser was either an afflicted girl herself or someone acting on her behalf. All of the eight children also ultimately confessed to being witches while some, such as Sarah Carrier and Johanna Tyler, went as far as to offer descriptive confessions detailing their initiations into the service of the devil. Most notably however, every one of the eight had an accused witch for a mother. In each instance when a child under twelve was accused, his or her mother had been accused at some point during the previous weeks or months. Some, but not all, of the children’s mothers had been convicted as well.  Dorcas Good was by far the youngest accused child at age “4 or 5,” with the next youngest, Sarah Carrier, being “eight years old in November next.” She was also the only child accused within Salem Village itself.

Ann Dolliver was the daughter of Rev. John Higginson of Salem Town and was unhappily married to Willliam Dolliver of Gloucester. Court records of 1683 show that complaints were made against William Dolliver for being idle and neglecting his family. In fact, he left the Massachusetts Bay Colony, abandoning Ann and her children with no means of support. Ann was forced to leave Gloucester with her children to return to her father’s home in Salem where he and the town supported them. She retained her title of respect (Mrs.), but her social standing was compromised and her mental state soon declined.

Before June 1692 her situation was already on shaky grounds. But on June 6, when she was about 45 years old, she was arrested for “Witchcraft on the Bodys of Mary Warren and Susannah Sheldon.”  While her father was prominent and wealthy, she was a deserted wife and was utterly dependent on her father. Caught between being single and being a widow, her situation was precarious. As such, Dolliver was practically impoverished at the time of her accusation. Her condition made her vulnerable to attack because, as a poor woman, the officials would be less likely to overlook charges launched against her. Also, she did not have a husband to deflect the charges. Basically, she was a poor and therefore vulnerable woman.

Sarah Good was born to a prosperous innkeeper in 1653. However, her father’s estate became entangled in litigation leaving Sarah Good in poverty. After the death of her first husband, she married William Good. The Goods lived a life of begging and poverty in Salem Village. Sarah was regarded as an unsavory person and has come to be regarded through literature as the stereotypical witch, a disreputable old hag. Good was among the first three women accused of witchcraft in 1692 and was the first to testify. She never confessed guilt, but, like Tituba, she did accuse Sarah Osburne, an act that was credited with validating the witchcraft trials and accusations. Good was hanged as a witch on Tuesday July 19, 1692, but not until after the imprisonment of her six year old child Dorcas, also accused of witchcraft, and the tragic death of her infant in prison.

In February of 1692, Sarah Osborne became one of the first three victims to be accused of witchcraft in Salem Village. As the widow of Robert Prince-a Salem Villager who purchased a 150-acre farm next to his friend Captain John Putnam’s, Osborne was required (by Prince’s will) to carry-over their estate to their two young sons. However, by attempting to overtake possession of the property for herself and her new husband, Irish immigrant Alexander Osborne, Sarah Osborne upset social norms that consequently resulted in accusations of witchcraft by the Putnam family. She died in prison on May 10, 1692.

Research done by historian David Green indicates that scholars and writers have confused Bridget Bishop of Salem with Sarah Bishop, a tavern keeper in Salem Village. Bridget Bishop lived on a small piece of property in Salem Town and was between fifty-five and sixty-five in 1692, when she was accused of witchcraft.  In 1666, the widow Bridget Wasselbe married Thomas Oliver and had a daughter named Christian. This marriage was less than idyllic. In 1678, Bridget was accused of calling her husband names on the Sabbath, and both she and her husband were sentenced to stand gagged in the market place for their offenses. In January 1679, Bridget and Thomas were both sentenced to be whipped for fighting. It was not unusual for Bridget’s face to be battered during her marriage to Thomas Oliver. In 1680, she was accused of witchcraft. This accusation could have been facilitated by Thomas’ claim that “she was a bad wife . . .the devil had come bodily to her . . . and she sat up all night with the devil.” (Charles Upham, Salem Witchcraft). This accusation occurred after her husband died without leaving a will, and seems to be the classic case of a vulnerable, propertied woman being accused of witchcraft. She posted bond, and there is no record of any punishment. In 1687, she was charged with stealing brass objects. Her record then remains clean until she is brought up on witchcraft charges again in April 1692.

One of the major factors which made Giles Corey a prime target was not only his relationship with the rest of the community but also his past encounters with the law, including a prior conviction for murder.  By the time of the trials, Giles Corey was already 80, and was married to Martha, his third wife. On March 19, 1692, Martha was arrested for witchcraft. Giles, for reasons unknown to others, decided to testify against his wife, but eventually tried to recant his deposition, which lead to greater suspicion of his involvement in witchcraft because of the stigma surrounding perjury.

Margaret Scott was the only person to be accused of being a witch from Rowley during the Salem trials. This was mainly due to the fact that community members long thought of her as a witch. She most likely was suspected of witchcraft because of her low stature in the community, the number of child fatalities,long widowhood, and begging; all common traits among people accused of witchcraft.

The themes from the Salem witch trials remain with us today, we can compare the attitudes to Native Americans who were seen as Satanic savages and bringers of carnage and death with that held today by many about Islamic Extremists who to some may also be seen as satanic savages and bringers of carnage and death.  We can also compare modern views on the poor and destitute at this time, many have been labeled as good for nothing scroungers who place a strain on the finances of others who can ill afford to keep themselves never mind the work shy; in other words the same demonising of the poorest in society remains with us to this day.  Thus at this time it is important to keep our beliefs about others in check because as history shows once these beliefs begin to run amok and hysteria begins to take control consequences are likely to spiral rapidly.

With the Uranus square Pluto the focus on the story of who we are and where our values lie comes into focus.  This story is what is called Nationalism and it is important to all of us, because the myth and the story we create for ourselves will be passed on to future generations.  It tells us the values that lie at the heart of our identity what is important and valued and what we should protect and keep sacred.  As a Scot I have read a few recent articles over the past couple of weeks addressing the theme of why Scottish Nationalism seems completely different from other forms of Nationalism and Scottish Nationalism has been labeled as civic nationalism – nationalism that is irrespective of ancestry but based on a sense of common identity and values of the people living in Scotland.  The truth is that civic nationalism is a part of every nation and it is passed down in the stories we tell our children, if this civic nationalism is being drowned out by a belief in ethnic , religious or moral superiority then it is up to the whole population to exam the stories and myths that are passed down and what they are telling future generations.

The stories we tell our children of who they are and where they are going, the values and the fight for equality, fairness and justice that never stops nor ever should, represents an aspect of Uranus in Aries because it is our individual duty to pass on the story and the mythology of the fight for freedom and equality.  It is our capacity to challenge the status quo through common held beliefs in justice and equality that marks all nations as great and no nation holds a stranglehold on that belief, faith and hope in a better brighter and fairer world for tomorrow.  Choose your heroes wisely examine your mythology carefully and see what inheritance you are leaving future generations. The story you tell them is the one they will take with them throughout their lives.

©neptunes aura astrology

Chiron is the wounded healer, a whole generation was born with Chiron in opposition to Uranus, this transit is especially powerful for them.  Jonathan Lear’s brilliant book, Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation  is about the Crow Indians. A story about what happens when the economy of a society is destroyed and a people’s way of life comes to an end. It was told by their great chief Plenty Coups, shortly before he died. He said, ‘When the buffalo went away the hearts of my people fell to the ground, and they could not be lifted up again. After this nothing happened’. The Crow people actually survived despite this loss because their leadership re-imagined a future; it created a ‘radical hope’. It was radical because it was a future without guarantees but most important it was without despair.

For a whole generation many have been convinced that there is no point in re-imagining a radical future, that they have no power to change the injustice in the world. The power to change our lives lies within each one of us.The political theorist Roberto Unger makes this point. The institutions and structures we build make us who we are. But: ‘They are finite, and we are not. There is always more in us, more capability of insight, of production, of emotion, of association, than there is in them’. This freedom to aspire and to find self-fulfillment is part of our modern consciousness. It is individual, but it is not selfish. It involves the right of everyone to achieve their own unique way of being human.

Many of us have been wounded in our struggle to be our own unique self, some have given up hope in ever changing a corrupt and unfair system that hordes power but Chiron in Pisces is telling us all not to abandon the dream, that we can do the impossible as long as we keep hope alive and a belief in a better tomorrow.

Chiron’s message is simply to keep on believing, don’t lose hope!

©neptunes aura astrology

Jupiter is quite at home in Leo and takes on the persona of its favourite son Hercules. Hercules wrapped in the robe of the Nemean Lion is impenetrable to attack ,the slings and arrows of misfortune bounce off Leo’s golden fur and land broken it his feet.  With claws that can penetrate the strongest armour nobody is immune to the charm of Jupiter in Leo, Jupiter in this aspect cuts through the gloom and misery of life like a knife through butter.  This is all about the feel good factor and Jupiter here certainly feels good.  Leo in the ancient world had a deep connection to Jupiter its star at the heart of the Lion Regulus, means ‘little King’ in Latin, to the Babylonians it was Lugal, “the star that stands in the breast of the Lion:the King.”  The Persians knew it as Magh, ‘The Great’ and as Jupiter is seen as the king of planets it is little wonder it is also associated with the king of stars.  Jupiter in Leo may also be connected to a famous story.

September 3BCE the first meeting of Jupiter and Regulus (looking East). The country/nation of Israel is often referred to as the ‘Lion of Judah’ so this meeting would have been important. Then nine months (the time of a pregnancy) later in June 2BCE Jupiter and Venus (the planet of love) meet in Leo (in the West over Israel) and would have been a very bright ‘star’ indeed!

Then on 25th December 2BC if you were in Jerusalem looking south, towards Bethlehem, Jupiter would be ‘standing’ in Virgo the constellation of the Virgin.

Whether you believe in the nativity or not most people can identify with the spirit of Christmas; peace on earth and goodwill to all men, that is at the heart of Jupiter in Leo – creation of goodwill towards one another and a belief in letting go of anger, resentment and hatred.

Saturn is about to spend the next few years in Sagittarius, Sagittarius represents our free spirited side it is the wild horse of the Zodiac, it likes wide open spaces and roams far and wide across continents and cultures.  Sagittarius does not like the idea of being tamed and pinned down in a small field, it was born to roam the wide expanses of the mind, the world and the beliefs. Unfortunately with Saturn entering this sign that is exactly what is about to happen. Saturn is there to tame that wild beast and to put that energy to better use through focus.

Horse whispering is not a new concept in fact there are documented records of it as far back as 430 BCE, Mark Rashid, horse whisperer  says that he sees horses as “energy”, and much of his work centers around the ideas of redirecting energy and influencing energy. Rashid describes horses as having two “circles of energy”, the rider themselves makes a third.   The goal, as Rashid sees it, is to have all three circles (front, hind, and rider’s) all going the same direction, moving horse and rider forward as one. Due to his Aikido training, Rashid is more likely to direct a horse than stop him. Stopping a horse who is offering energy is not unlike, Rashid says, putting up a poorly built dam in a flowing river. The dam holds for a while, building up water behind it. The pressure increases to a point that the dam bursts, causing a flood. Now there’s a mess in front of the dam and behind the dam, and the water still hasn’t been held back. A horse who is offering energy where it’s not wanted has already said, “I can’t slow
down/stop/stand still!” By redirecting that energy, the rider or handler can help the horse find the desired behavior.

This what Saturn aims to do in Sagittarius it does not want to stop this flow of exuberant energy for that would only cause it to burst through later causing destruction and chaos but it does seek to redirect this energy and find a channel where it can be used constructively.

Rashid states, if a horse is soft, he is physically able to access power and movement and he is mentally able to offer much of himself. If a person is soft, they will be emotionally consistent, willing to change and be able to offer much of themselves.  In Aikido, softness is what allows a smaller partner to overpower a larger one.   If we live our lives in turmoil, hurry and frustration, then we’re likely to find those things present when we work.   If, rather, we live our lives deliberately, consciously and in a centered way, we’ll find our horse work reflects that as well.

These next few years are the time when many of us will be focusing on our own horse work, to create emotional consistency, power and strength in a centred way.

 

Uranus transit has brought themes of revolution, Independence & fighting for survival against global corporation dominance.

The Arab Spring, Occupy,  Scottish independence Referendum and the regional government of Catalonia insisting it will hold an independence Referendum on Nov 9th all have / had one thing in common they are / were popular by the people and fought against by those in authority.  This has been a major theme to the Uranus transit of Aries and the square to Pluto. It challenges authority and the status quo.

I have to admit bias as I am Scottish, but this also gives me insight into being a part of this global trend.  For the first time I can remember everybody has been reading up on finance, fiscal policy, currency, GDP, social spending, health care, cost of nuclear weapons.  People have been informing themselves and not only that they have been creating their own ideas, their own vision of what an independent Scotland looks like, people all over the country have a vision of the future and a sense of hope, a belief that they can make much better decisions on their future, they are arguing about how we spend the money that would have went on nuclear weapons,whether that could be used for cancer research or education.  They are questioning how much we really need to spend on defence, suggestions include turning new aircraft carrier into a floating hospital for third world countries.  People are dreaming big and their dreams are quite often altruistic.  There is a change in people many have found a vision they believe in and they are willing to do almost anything to see it come true.  People who were once on the scrapheap of life unemployed and with no real hope are inspired for the first time in many of their lives that they can make a difference.  Whether the vote is yes or no people have changed they are much more able to get the facts and figures for themselves to form their own opinion and to question the figures and facts of government.  There is an excitement and a feeling of being able to accomplish anything something that has been gone for a long time and personally I will be voting Yes because I like this feeling of anything is possible, I like being excited about my country’s future and most of all I want the chance to change my world.

The themes of this transit have been many and those themes still to come cannot be fully predicted. This article just covers some of the basic and obvious themes.

The banks were playing with invisible money – money that existed only on computers, they used this money to gamble and when their debts were called in this caused their house of cards to collapse.  At the same time the ordinary man on the street was also buying things with invisible money – money that only existed on a card.  When the crash came and they realised this invisible money had to be paid back with the real stuff many were also in trouble.  Meanwhile the governments of many countries had also been playing with this invisible money too and desperate to keep this invisible currency from collapsing they invested the real money of the people.

At the same time as this was happening food prices of basic staples rose and masses of people used food banks for the first time, the use of food banks has continued to increase.  Though invisible money is pleasant to spend it comes at a high price and everybody has been reminded of the importance of real food, real homes and real consequences.

Real consequences also include our attitude to the environment and the earth, consumerism depends on consuming more resources until they are exhausted.  The earth is not infinite and its resources have always been limited as is our ability to deal with waste in a throw away consumer society. Unchecked supercapitalism produces waste as inevitably as it produces inequality, job insecurity, loss of community and so on. We are rapidly reaching the point, long promised by futurologists, where we throw away clothes after wearing them once, and we already dispose of many electrical goods as soon as they go wrong.  Up to forty to fifty percent of all edible food never gets eaten. Every year $43 billion worth of edible food is estimated to be thrown away.

“Planned obsolescence” is a manufacturing philosophy developed in the 1920s and 1930s, when mass production became popular. The goal is to make a product or part that will fail, or become less desirable over time or after a certain amount of use. Vance Packard, author of The Waste Makers, book published in 1960, called this “the systematic attempt of business to make us wasteful, debt-ridden, permanently discontented individuals.”

We have people desperate for food yet we throw $43 billion worth away every year.  Capricorn represents the cornucopia symbol of abundance and nourishment, associated with the harvest, prosperity, or spiritual abundance, such as personifications of Earth.  We have slowly been trading our cornucopia for invisible money, throw away phones that are out of date 5 seconds after purchase and oceans filled with plastic bag islands.

©neptunes aura astrology

The transit of Neptune in Pisces will bring about many changes long term and it is impossible to predict exactly in what ways this will happen but it is possible to detect current themes and question how they will play out in time.

Some of the most wonderful and deeply spiritual people I know have or have had depression.  Depression is not a sign of lack of spiritual content in life or a focus on the material aspects many people with depression are deeply sensitive to the plight of others in this world.  I’m starting off on this topic because this is one is very symptomatic of this time, we seem to have lost our ability to balance reason and sensitivity.  Depression has many causes genetic, environmental, trauma and that cocktail of situation and events can happen to anybody regardless of their strength of belief or lack.  In an age where most reasonably minded individuals would be horrified if somebody suggested ‘Aids’ was a result of somebody’s sexuality many people still see depression as being caused by lack of spirituality or belief.

Not only is it those with depression who are on the spiritual firing line at times but also those with chronic pain, chronic pain is caused by physical conditions such as arthritis, Ehler Danlos Syndome, Multiple Sclerosis and other conditions many of which are genetic. Yes mood does affect pain levels but chronic pain is not caused by a negative emotions although it can aggravate and worsen pain.  However negative emotions can be a result of chronic pain, Roger Chou, MD, associate professor of medicine at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland and a leading expert on chronic pain. “Depression is common in chronic pain patients, but people who think chronic pain is ‘all in the head’ are not being realistic.”

Perhaps this transit will bring into focus the lack of depth and understanding such attitudes hold, a person’s spirituality resides deep within themselves and cannot be judged by the factors and events of their lives.

At the heart of Neptune in Pisces is the illusion and disillusionment process.  We are just at the beginning of this process.

Lets take a look at two opposites: Big Pharma – $950 billion dollar global industry, issues with credibility, faked trial data, suppression of negative affects of certain drugs.  Alternative Medicine – $115 billion dollar industry globally, $34 Billion in USA, no clinical trials, Unlike prescription medications, herbal remedies are classified as dietary supplements and therefore bypass the tight Food and Drug Administration scrutiny that prescription medications must undergo. In fact, the Dietary Supplement Health Education Act of October 1994 doesn’t require manufacturers of herbal products to prove that their products are either safe or effective.

Both of these industries have serious issues that should concern us all yet we see the Big pharma abuses of the law as a reason to turn to an industry which has no legislation to protect the individual from abuses – when surely the right direction is tighter regulation and control of both industries and an awareness that the most vulnerable in society should come first. Perhaps under this transit people will redefine legislation for both sectors and ensure the sick and terminally ill are protected.

The question of moral superiority also hangs in the air and all sections of society seem to have succumbed to the belief that their religion or lack of defines their morality.  Not only has morality never been defined by one’s religious beliefs but the idea in itself is deeply egotistical, offensive and divisive – this idea that we can simply judge the moral character of anybody by belief systems is no more rational than the eugenics argument belief that any group is morally, physically or intellectually superior is one history has proven to be extremely dangerous.  Perhaps by the end of this transit we shall have learned the lessons of blaming all the ills of the world on the ‘other’ whether we define the ‘other’ in terms of race, religion or political ideology.

©neptune’s aura astrology