Sirius Re-membered
By MELANIE REINHART
An astrological reverie into the events of September 11th 2001 1
The astrology of recent times is as extraordinary as the events themselves, and reveals multi-layered patterns of meaning. In the last issue I wrote about the star Sirius and its prominence throughout the autumn, but now, exploring the astrology of the current war situation, I found Sirius conjunct the Sun of the horoscope of the USA, and also President Bush. It also features in other charts of key people, events and countries involved.
As above, so below
Sirius is often considered to be the Egyptian goddess Isis, and so we are referred to the story of the death and resurrection of Osiris. As the political events developed, I followed the astrological threads, and was astonished at how the mythic imagery seemed to unfold in chronological sequence. I found it offered an immediate way of relating to the meaning of the events of September 11th and onwards. I shall allow the story to speak for itself so you may form your own interpretations. The myths and legends of the celestial landscape are not arbitrarily imposed by scholars: rather, the ever-moving sea of cosmic energies in which we all live is sensed, deeply felt and inwardly known by us in the very cells of our bodies. Thus the sacred material of mythic image speaks to us of what we already know.
'The Mundane Becoming Sacred'
The astrological process of Sirius is sometimes described as 'The Mundane Becoming Sacred'.2 Its names 'The Shining One' and 'The Scorcher' refer to the rising of the life-giving waters of the Nile, snaking across the fertile flood-plains of Egypt, and overflowing into surroundings parched by the heat of summer. Likewise, the waters of spirit faithfully relieve the encroaching inner desiccation which at times assails us, and Sirius also symbolizes this luminous renewal. 'Fair Star of the Waters' was one of the most popular epithets of Isis.3 These qualities are bestowed where Sirius is prominent, for good or ill: brilliance, success, abundance, and the dangers of arrogance, excess and going too far are implied.
I visit once again the story of Isis and Osiris...
Osiris was entombed in a coffin made of a tamarisk tree, tricked by his evil brother Set into entering it. The coffin was sealed with lead and cast adrift on the Nile. His grieving sister-wife Isis wandered the land in search of the body of her beloved, and after many trials and difficulties discovered its whereabouts. The coffin had floated into a reed bank and lodged there. A great tree had grown up around it, and had been felled and used as a tall pillar in the palace of the king of Byblos. Isis disguised herself and gained entrance to the palace. Having located the pillar, she nightly kept vigil beside it in her grief. When Isis revealed her divinity, the queen granted her this pillar which contained the coffin of Osiris.
On the long homeward journey by boat, Isis brought the coffin ashore on the banks of the Nile and opened it. Her beloved Osiris appeared as one merely sleeping. That night, however, Set and his entourage were out hunting, and while Isis slept he came upon the coffin. Having realized the triumph of Isis and fearing her retaliation, he opened the casket and tore the body of Osiris into pieces, spreading his dismembered limbs all over the land, so that Isis would not be able to find and re-collect them.
Isis cried out in anguish when she saw the empty casket, and called to her twin sister Nepthys who came to console her. For many long years they searched the land together, and wherever a piece of Osiris' body was found, they made an altar, an offering of thanks.
The myth comes to life
The waters of this story gently inundate my soul. I see an unforgettable image of a helmeted New York rescue worker, a young man with ash, dust and tears streaming down his face, walking around in jagged rubble and twisted metal with a black plastic body bag, looking for human remains. In that moment, the myth comes to life, 'The mundane becomes sacred' and takes a form far beyond the newspaper I read, with its appetite for sensationalism and its cheap fear-mongering.
Isis walks the streets of New York, in disguise. No, not only New York, but any place where lives are dismembered, broken by the violence of hunger, poverty, disease, brutality and war.4 She walks where the soul is ravaged by horror, or the spirit stifled by denial. She walks where the unspeakable has yet to be spoken. Invisible for all to see she walks in hope, in devotion and in the power of her love which transcends destruction. Below, in New York, the sniffer dogs prowl in the stench of catastrophe, while above the Dog Star glimmers.
Isis eventually found all the body parts of her beloved, except the penis. So this she had to fashion from clay, or some say from gold, and breathe life into it so that Osiris could once again fertilize her, and thus the land itself. From this union in resurrection was born the god Horus, whose all-seeing eye graces many monuments of ancient Egypt, and who in turn symbolizes the capacity to see truthfully. The Sun and Moon adorn the brow of Horus, and the falcon is one of his sacred forms. The 'eye of the hawk' sees through...
Sirius is conjunct the Sun of the horoscope of the USA, and also of President Bush
The days after the Full Moon on October 2nd were resonant with connections to Sirius. The USA began retaliatory air-strikes into Afghanistan. I noticed that the week surrounding the November 1st Full Moon was also abundant with powerful celestial signatures. Jupiter's Station Retrograde would occur the next day, as well as the 2nd of three Saturn-Pluto conjunctions.5 Also, October 31st marks the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, when the veil between the worlds is said to be very thin, when the souls of the dead are restive, and when great healing is possible in the letting go and purification that occurs as the light wanes prior to renewal at the Winter Solstice in late December.
The magnificent figure of Isis arises out of the mists of timelessness, as if stopping to rest awhile in her weary searching, a celestial being alighting here in these brief moments of earth-time, pausing in her grim task. She fills the canopy of my imagination, looming bright from the darkly glowing unknown. A Moon goddess, her head-dress a pair of upturned horns, crescent-like, she holds a great glowing orb within their upreaching embrace. Her robes shimmer like the light of Sirius itself as she walks the troubled Earth.
The Full Moons of autumn appear to me like the footprints of Isis. One step occurred at the October Full Moon...what will the November Full Moon bring?
Asteroids Isis and Osiris
The asteroid belt lies in between Jupiter and Mars, and consists of over 10,000 small bodies. There are asteroids named Isis and Osiris, and I place them on the chart for the terrorist strike, and study their movement. The asteroid Osiris was followed into Capricorn on September 8th by Mars, the god of war, now cast symbolically in the role of Set, the evil one who kills Osiris. They were exactly conjunct on September 10th, the day before the multiple attacks...In the court of Osiris, the judges of the dead prepare, for many are to be called. In Egyptian mythology it is said that the souls of the recently dead are weighed to assess their truthfulness and purity. On September 10th there was the conjunction of Mars and Osiris, so I imagined that he was preparing the way, as it were, for the many who would die the following day.
In astrology, the Moon's South Node is sometimes called the 'Dragon's Tail' and signifies a need to let go of what has become toxic; powerful energies are released – here in violence and destruction.6 There were multiple contacts to this axis from the planet Mars and the asteroids Isis and Osiris during the week following September 11th. Myth seemed to fuse with the mundane. A great wail goes up. Osiris is dead, the precious limbs strewn. Grief and rage intensify across the nations, as does the call to prayer.
During the same period, on September 17th, there occurred a conjunction of Isis and Chiron, the healer. Wounded by loss, Isis herself must now be the Healer. To see events as dire as these accompanied by this celestial imagery of resurrection and healing brings tears to my eyes. I feel very small and shivery and strangely peaceful.
It is said that Isis was a great magician, powerful enough to affect Ra himself, the primordial Sun-God, ruler of Heaven and Earth. As Ra grew old and weak, he would sometimes drool from his mouth. Isis gathered his spit, kneaded it with some earth and created a serpent which she placed, poised sharp as a dart, on the path Ra would daily travel across the sky. When he approached, the serpent reared up and Ra was bitten. Burning with the poisonous venom, he was further dismayed to discover that, being not of his own creation, he was powerless over the serpent which inflicted this wound. Isis offered him healing, but on condition that Ra would reveal his secret name. Although this meant surrendering his power, Ra so feared for his life that he transmitted knowledge of the Great Name directly into the heart of Isis. Thus he bestowed upon her his own magical abilities, which enhanced and complemented her own considerable powers.
This story too is mirrored in the heavens. The poisoning of the Sun-god Ra by a serpent on his path is like a Solar Eclipse, when the Moon truly 'crosses the path of the Sun', and obscures its light. Shortly after the Total Solar Eclipse of June 21st 2001, Isis made a conjunction with Pluto. This brings to mind the abduction of Persephone, the tragic necessity of separation and initiation through loss of innocence, which brings deep knowledge and healing. Pluto, Lord of Transformation signals a need to turn within, allowing gestation in the safety of darkness and unknowing. Isis, magician queen, rooted deep in the Underworld, holds the earth, its waters and its peoples in her embrace. She is ever nascent herself, midwife also to the feminine Spirit of Wisdom, as well as comforter of the souls of the bereaved and the departed. She both effects the downfall of Ra, and also the resurrection of Osiris. She is the mutable fire of alchemical purification, where the mind must be purged of its wrong thinking, so the heart may breathe again.
The retaliation
On October 3rd Isis follows Osiris into Capricorn. On the 7th, she too conjuncts the transiting South Node, the 'Dragon's Tail', covering the same holy ground on which his body was strewn a short while before. As his transit of the Dragon's Tail heralded the deaths in New York, her transit occurs exactly as retaliatory attacks began in Afghanistan.
Both asteroids Isis and Osiris have also been involved in the conjunctions this year between Mars, Chiron and Pluto all in Sagittarius. In Issue 51 I wrote an article called The Warrior Returns, never dreaming they heralded events as literal as what we have seen. I also referred to the Galactic Centre, aligned with late Sagittarius, the centre of the Milky Way, our home galaxy, and thus the Greater Centre around which our small solar system revolves. This provides a powerful metaphor of our alignment to the greater reality of Spirit. The dominance of Sagittarian symbolism is poignantly evident in the event under consideration. Air travel, long distance flights, international concerns, religious fanaticism, political expansionism, refugees and immigrants, ethics, beliefs and morals are all Sagittarian themes, converging upon the Gemini twin towers of the World Trade centre. The 'mundane becomes sacred' as the sacred becomes mundane.
I wonder how their journey continued, and whether resurrection would be symbolized in their celestial movements. I discover that the next conjunction between Isis and Osiris would occur on November 2nd, the day of the 2nd Saturn/Pluto opposition, as mentioned above. This conjunction is in the same degree as Sirius, but in the opposite sign of Capricorn. The star Sirius, the celestial counterpart of Isis, now watches the story unfolding, as if in a mirror from across the vault of heaven. On earth we live its shadowy reflection.
Where Sirius is prominent, abundance, and the dangers of arrogance and excess are implied
By the time I reach this point in the trail I am speechless with amazement. I offer a prayer of thanks for the sighting of these sacred footsteps on a stardust trail, a timeless miracle of resurrection in celestial motion. Back in the world of time, I turn on the radio, let the world in, hear the news and tune in to the immense suffering. I look into my own heart and realize that I too am full of terror and terrorists. But seeing this trail, my faith is restored. Just faith. Not faith in anything, for how could that be? In time, every 'thing' must decay and disappear, even great ideas or visions, prophets or images of god. Just faith. Not even faith in a 'positive outcome' here, for how can I know what that really means? Just faith. Just this small light inside. I am reminded of the well-known saying 'It is better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness'. I do so.
This material was written on September 29th 2001, and revised on October 18th. It suggested to me the image of the opening of a great portal, a stargate, between the various dimensions of existence, focalized very specifically in time around the beginning of November, but thereafter at any time when the heart calls out. These astrological processes are perhaps pointing to an 'other-dimensional' occurrence, which may or may not be accompanied by events on the political front. I know I am not alone in wanting to avoid getting caught energetically, like a spider in a web, into the density and horror of what is occurring. I don't want to deny the pain of any of it; I do want to focus inwardly and attune accordingly so I may act appropriately.
If you too feel this, then know that the effectiveness of your thoughts, feelings and prayers is magnified. Mindful that visible happenings are extrusions from the invisible planes, we can leave aside both terror and terrorists and inwardly align with the Light of the Cosmic Heart, to which Sirius refers us. These days, Isis re-collects, gathers and mourns. There will be renewal of the spirit, whatever forms may perish. Let us breathe into our own hearts and pay homage to Life. For the mundane truly to become sacred, we need only to re-member... ++
Endnotes
- Data source: www.astrodatabank.com/NM/TerrorismNYDC.htm. In the horoscope the asteroid Isis is shown as a1, and Osiris as a2. The astrology is presented here in a thematic and simplified manner. Readers interested in further astrological detail are invited to contact me to receive this information (with sae please). See also www.erinsullivan.com/pr_wtcafter.htm.
- Brady's Book of Fixed Stars by Bernadette Brady. Maine: Samuel Weiser Inc, 1998, p85.
- See Star Names, their Lore and Meaning by Richard Hinckley Allen. New York: Dover Publications Inc, 1963, p124.
- Issue 340, November 2001 of New Internationalist magazine pointed out that 24,000 people died of hunger on 11.9.2001, more than 3 times the number that died in the terrorist attack. The same number will die the next day, and the next...(article Twin Terrors, pp18-19)
- See Caduceus issue no 52, for my article entitled Time for Transformation, and issue no 53 for Sirius Presiding.
- The Nodal Axis is sometimes called the 'Axis of Fate' and is where eclipses occur. It is envisioned by many cultures as the head and tail of a dragon crossing the ecliptic, or the path of the Sun. For further information see Incarnation by Melanie Reinhart.
(Caduceus Issue 54 - Winter 2001/2002)
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