Although Occupy Wall Street had been planned for weeks before, it was on the afternoon of September 17, 2011 that the invasion took place that was the beginning of something that has become a worldwide movement. There are many astrological ‘events’ that presaged this revolutionary event, and perhaps one of the most talked about has been the square from revolutionary Uranus (who often seems to resemble Prometheus, the being that smacked the major gods in the face by stealing fire from Olympus and giving it to the common people, thus putting power in their hands) in the new-beginnings sign Aries to transformational Pluto in the big-business/big-government sign of Capricorn.
But there are other signatures of this event that you might miss if you only look at the regular planets. Enter the Centaurs.
When Occupy Wall Street officially began, there was an exact conjunction between the Centaurs Pholus and Hylonome at 14 Sagittarius 09. According to Dane Rudhyar, the Sabian Symbol for this degree is “Ground Hog, out of its winter sleep, looks for its shadow.” If you are familiar with the tradition, the ground hog looks for his shadow to decide if the cold of winter is about to end, or if it will still be bitter and miserable for many weeks. One can imagine the protestors, the “99%”, finally emerging from their cave to look for a way to get the “1 %” to provide a more humane financial future for them. (The Centaur Pholus, himself, lived in a cave.) Some interesting key phrases have been surfacing for these two bodies. For Pholus some keys include invasion, communion of two worlds, clash of cultures, dispossessed, homeless, dissolving structures, the catalyst and provider for a landslide-like change from which there is no return to the previous state. And Hylonome includes such key phrases as the cry of the poor, the ability to evoke sympathy, an increase in the emotional gradient of a situation, helplessness, a yearning for the impossible. One can see elements of both in this growing movement.
And Mercury, by the way, was 14 Virgo 58, just separating from the square to these Centaurs.
Pholus and Hylonome might have been in exact conjunction on the day the occupation began, but they were keeping pace with each other for quite some time. In February 2011, they moved within a half a degree of each other (and will be until December of this year.) It was in February that there were a series of protests in Wisconsin, sometimes with as many as 100,000 protestors, opposing a government bill aimed at handling a $3.6 billion budget deficit which many saw as severely penalizing all but the wealthiest residents of that state.
And in June 2011, when a Canadian anti-consumerist magazine called Adbusters registered the domain name occupywallstreet.org, the two bodies were only 15 minutes apart.
One more pair of Centaurs is quite active in this movement, and these two have a special relationship mythologically as well. In the chart for Occupy Wall Street, Chiron at 1 Pisces 58 R was square Chariklo at 1 Sagittarius 13 (reaching exact square 8 days later as protestors were starting to be arrested, and videos started appearing outraging many that showed women getting maced by police.)
Mythologically, these two were husband and wife. A lot has been written about Chiron. He is quite frequently active when we are forced to look at deep wounds we have tried to bury or cover over, and are forced to take a close look at the cause (and perpetrators) of the wounds in order to find a way to bring about healing. Chariklo’s influence stirs people to question reality so that they begin to see that what has been limiting them is only apparent reality and therefore they have options they hadn’t considered….it leads people to choose to open a door in spite of possible consequences.
They can travel for years without making any noticeable aspect, and at other times make a specific aspect such as a square over and over, sometimes covering whole decades. Why? Because the length of their orbits is so similar they can sometimes be travelling at the same rate of speed for long, long stretches of time. (They had squared each other 3 times in 1998, but prior to that the last time they were in square was in 1896.)
The occupation occurred during a period when they had been moving in and out of square for months, the first one occurring in the Autumn of 2009 around the time of the G-20 Summit of world heads of state (held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) which was set up to discuss the world’s financial crisis. The city turned down, time and again, permits for groups wanting to assemble for a peaceful protest, until finally the ACLU sued the city and forced them to allow the demonstrations. It began with small protests, but eventually there were rallies with between 5000 and 8000 participants. One of the speakers declared, “We’re rallying here just a few miles from where the corporate robber barons have settled down to divide up the planet, that group of bankers, financiers and political leaders who have wreaked havoc upon our world,” urging listeners to “fight for another world, put people before profits.”
There will be two more of these squares in this series, one in June and the other in August 2012. I suspect that this Occupy Wall Street movement will continue its momentum until at least then. And there may be some really major events in those months, as Chiron goes stationary in June closely square Chariklo, while Chariklo stations two months later again closely square Chiron.
One more thing. There is an asteroid named Hidalgo that stirs people to demand respect and to stand strong and firm for their principles. When Occupy Wall Street began, Hidalgo was at 1 Sagittarius 29, closely conjunct Chariklo.
Hi Zane,
Very nice blog!!
Lorraine