Thursday, April 10, 2008

Of Tibetans and Void Moons

In my Monday posting, I commented that the chart for the Tibetan protests has Sun conjunct Moon in Pisces (10 March 1959, 7am, Lhasa, Tibet), and that Pisces is not a very good place for starting things, as we have seen with the Iraq War, which has Sun at 29 Pisces.

What someone pointed out at our astrobabble group last night was that the Tibetan Uprising Chart also has a Void Moon. So it really was a lost cause from the word go, and there has never been any serious pressure on China to relax its hold on Tibet.

A Void Moon occurs when the Moon is not going to make any major in-sign applying aspects with any planets before it leaves the sign it is in. The Moon traditionally activates the other planets, transmits their energies to earth. So on a Void Moon nothing can happen.

In the Tibetan Chart the Moon is at 25 Pisces, and all the other planets are at less than 25 degrees, so that is clearly void.

The Titanic set sail on 10th April 1912 at 12pm from Southampton, UK. The Moon was at 29.36 Capricorn. This is a Void Moon. It is in an applying conjunction with Uranus, but Uranus is at 3 Aquarius, so it is out of sign and does not count. If they’d waited ½ an hour, the Moon would have changed sign and no longer been Void, and their journey would have stood a much better chance of completion.

Now for a qualifier: I don’t think it’s necessarily the case that a Void Moon is an unwise time to start things. In the ordinary way, if you are making plans, it certainly is an unwise time. But I think a Void Moon also works a bit like Pisces: there is a gap that we cannot fill with plans, but through which energies and events can pass if we get out of the way. It is a place of Magic rather than Will.

So the Void Moon can be seen as very potent in a particular way, while being impotent in the usual ways.

And I think this says a lot about Tibet, which has not just Sun conjunct Moon in Pisces, but a Void Moon as well. They certainly chose their moment to rise up against the Chinese! It has doomed them to failure in the ordinary sense, it just isn’t going to work.

But it is also a chart of modern Tibetan aspirations, and it is an extremely good chart for maintaining the magical traditions for which they are known. What I’d say to Tibetans inside Tibet is OK, you need to press to be treated better by the Chinese, but if you quietly keep practising your native Bon and Buddhist traditions, they will flourish, you will have an enormous power working through you that the Chinese can do nothing about, and they may hardly even notice it.

Sun conjunct Moon in Pisces in the 12th House plus a Void Moon: I can hardly think of a combination that is more potent for channelling magical power, for being collectively guided from a higher source. And it means that, however much the Chinese oppress them, the Tibetans will probably remain an inspiration to the rest of the world. As China’s economy expands, it is being forced to have stronger and more open relationships with the rest of the world, and it becomes less easy for China to operate in the old authoritarian ways. This means that, over time, the influence of Tibet as a ‘spiritual’ tradition, as the guardian of much that we in the West have lost, may increase.


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5 comments:

Tseka said...

Makes perfect sense.

Anonymous said...

It's a nice mellow Western approach... There's a lot of talk about China sending a million more Chinese to Tibet after the Olympics which means that the Tibetans will, more sooner than later, die out, esp considering their population of approx 5 mill people.

Barry Goddard said...

Anon, if you look at my Monday post, you'll see I note the fact that Chinese already far outnumber the Tibetans in Tibet. For many, it is now legitimately their homeland as well. Like Americans in the US.

Anonymous said...

Regarding planning on the void moon:

I worked as a funeral director for a while. Every time the moon was void, i dreaded having to do a funeral arrangement. The arrangements done during a void 1) took forever, and 2) were always rearranged in the next few days.

There were a few stunningly noteworthy exceptions to this pattern. These were arrangements which happened under a void moon, yet they were exceptionally concise and simple. The family left satisfied and everything went off without a hitch. These particularly successful arrangements were far easier than any arrangements done when the moon was aspected.

How could this be? I came to see that the successful void arrangements were the ones where the family saw their loved one's funeral arrangements as simply a conclusion to a finished life, like cleaning up after a project. As the void moon is perfect for completions and cleaning up, the families who came in with such an attitude had an extraordinarily easy time.

Anonymous said...

The other aspect is that the Chinese are busy rooting out the traditional religious traditions in Tibet, even going so far as to establish their own "Panchen Lama" and abducting the one chosen by Tibetans. Make no mistake, they intend to root out the Tibetan people and their culture and traditions. The Chinese want the land and resources, not the people of Tibet or their culture. If the Tibetans don't fight now, they are lost and will be strangers in their own land. So, your analysis of maybe nobody will notice them is most likely correct, though perhaps not in the benign way that you described it.