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Wednesday, October 13, 2010

News Flash: Chilean Mine Rescue



 Chile's national flag



As the people around the world watched on live TV, a rescue capsule painted in the red, white and blue of Chile emerged from the tube dug 2/3rds of a mile down into the earth.

One of 33 trapped miners had returned to Earth's surface.

The chart for that moment is illuminating...



The first miner's emergence 
(Copiapo, Chile/AST +4)



Positioned at 16 Gemini, fixed star Rigel is just behind the Ascendant - the degrees just behind each angle being known as some of the most powerful and potent in any chart.

Known as a position of 'knoweldge' (or knowing) and being 'under the foot of the teacher,' Rigel says a lot about this moment. Of course seeing the capsule and the living person in it allows us all to 'know' that the rescue was no longer an attempt - it was a reality.

Gemini is about choices. About finding the information and putting it together in order to 'construct' something in your life or in greater life itself. The specific degree of the rising being 17 Gemini, there is a lot of planning and enthusiasm, and...interestingly...a 'weakness of hands.' Things at this position cannot thus be done manually.

As they weren't. Drilling experts had been brought in by the Chilean government to help in the rescue and in this moment their cumulative information (knowledge) proved fruitful. And that the polarity (Descendant) degree (17 Sagittarius) is about one's the great and simple gratitude to God (or fortune or however one believes) also seems apt.

Going back to Rigel's image of 'being under the teacher's foot' for a moment, those who watched the live telecast will probably remember seeing one of the operators of the winch and cable rig literally using his booted foot to knock the guide pulley a bit back into position just moments before the capsule emerged. It seemed an odd gesture at the time - but apt when you look at the chart of the moment.

Any base of the chart represents the foundation and what we stand on. It's the 'innermost point' of the chart and thus in this picture, the mine, deep in the Earth, still holding the other miners far from light.

This IC/Nadir point is in Virgo, an earth sign to be sure! Pictured at 28 Virgo, this point is a degree which promises little more than hard work, unless 'enlarged upon' by some other force.

A mine? That is certainly one form of 'enlarging.' And that this chart is about breaking through from the surface to a chamber which might otherwise have been a tomb for 33 hard-working men? That's enlarging in many a positive sense. 

With Virgo ruled by the Mercury (in green) in the 4th and foundational house of the chart conjunct Sisyphus (knowledge used either to help or kill people) and Rhadamanthus (dispassionate fairness) we know that the miners understood why they were there. They had taken a job, there had been a disaster.

Pictured with this Mercury we see the Sun - life and human will. With both these symbols opposition Eris Discord conjunct inventive Edisonia in the elevated 10th house we are also given a really useful lesson about Eris as a symbol of celestial 'discord' which simply changes things. 'Discord' isn't bad! Fighting tyranny is discord, but is it wrong? Digging a hole in the Earth technically disrupts the Earth's structure, but in this moment, it was certainly far from a terrible thing to do.
But again, back to 28 Virgo, the IC/Nadir point of this chart. Standing at the Nadir was Typhon (primal forces) and Bali - the longed for thing. For those men pictured by Mercury, for their families and for many millions watching, was this rescue not the longed for moment?

The last 'note of note' to be cherished in this chart is the position of the Moon. Any time you we are looking for the 'picture of the moment' we look particularly to the axis points (as we have) and the Moon, which basically moves a full degree in about two hours.

Here the Moon was at 29 Sagittarius, a critical (intense) degree which speaks first and foremost to physical fitness. With the Moon stands Eurydike, an astrological symbol of personal rescue.
The first man chosen to be rescued was selected based on several criteria - one of the first on the list being that he was particularly physically fit.

So does the chart of a moment tell its tale.



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