Astrology of Kuala Lumpur's Landslides

"Buried Alive" is the headline of the front page of today's newspapers. The article reports two thousand people trapped and four died as a result of a massive landslide near Kuala Lumpur yesterday. The disaster happened yesterday at 4 am when most people were still asleep in Bukit Antarabangsa.

However, yesterday's landslide want not the first to hit Bukit Antarabangsa. Landslides have clamed at least 64 lives around the area in the last 15 years including the four deaths yesterday. Geologists have issued warnings of the area's vulnerability to landslides, but developers have continued to build homes there and people have continued to purchase them. It sounds very much as if some forces of destiny are at work. It also behoves me to reflect on the issue to see if there is any astrological link.

I decided to use the chart of Independence of Malaya on 31st August 1957 for the analysis. According to Campion's "Book of World Horoscopes" this is the more popularly used chart among Malaysian Vedic astrologers. The chart is set at 12 midnight.

There have been five landslides in Antarabangsa in 1993. I have looked up the planetary transits to the national chart and they are as follows:

[1] Dec 11, 1993 - transit Nodal Axis conjunct ASC-DES axis; transit Pluto square MC; transit Saturn conjunct MC
One of the two Highland Towers condominium blocks Built below Antarabangsa collapses due to a landslide killing 48 people. The symbolism of the combination of Pluto, Saturn and the Midheaven aptly describes an event that involves massive destruction of structures with death that catches the public eye.The nodal axis is often a good indicator of the timing of catastrophic events.

[2] May 15, 1999 - transit Saturn square Uranus; transit Pluto trine Uranus; transit Chiron conjunct DES
A big landslide cuts off the only access road to Bukit Antarabangsa, trapping 10,000 residents for days. No casualties. Uranus signifies the sudden and the unexpected and this happens on solid structures as indicated by Saturn. Pluto is also involved but as a trine with Uranus indicating the transformation of the lives of many individuals. The asteroid Chiron signifies pain and suffering and its conjucntion with the ASC-DES axis is expected in natural disasters.

[3] Nov 20, 2002 - transit Uranus conjunct MC; transit Neptune opposite Uranus
A two-storey bungalow belonging to a prominent banker collapses after a landslide, killing eight people. Transt Uranus conjunct MC agan signifies sudden changes in the way the event defines the image of the area in the public's eyes. Neptune opposite Uranus suddenly awakens people to a drastic occurence.

[4] May 31, 2006 - transit Uranus opposite Mars; transit Pluto square Mercury; transit Saturn trine Saturn
Unfortunately memories are short and four years later, four indonesians die as a landslide near Bukit Antarabangsa levels three rows of longhouses in a squatter area. This time Uranus opposite Mars indicates a sudden and major event involving violence and morbidity.

[5] Dec 6, 2008 - transit Nodal Axis square Nodal Axis; transit Pluto trine Pluto
A massive landslide mows through 14 bungalows, killing four people in the area. One person is still missing. Again, Pluto as the planet of power and intensity is invoved. The timing function of the nodal axis is again very well illustrated in this catastrophe.

The association of nearly all the above catastrophic events with either Saturn and/or the Nodal Axis is very suggestive of karmic relationships in action.

Where is My Angel? (2)

Where is my Angel? - Will come in Time

In the fall of 2004, I was in Edinburgh to attend a conference. After the event, I took a day trip to visit the Scottish Highlands to enjoy the fresh air and scenery, visit the places of the legendary Log Nest and where Harry Potter is supposed to have grown up and of course, and of course, to listen to the Scottish bagpipes music.

In one of the souvenir shops, I came upon an Angel-Clock which immediately attracted my attention. It seemed to remind me: "my angel will eventually appear in good time." I purchased it on the spot.

Where are my angels? - They just appeared

Exactly twenty years ago, I bought an "angel toy" from Sweden. However, I have forgotten about it until I rediscover it during a recent spring cleaning.

The "toy" is really an interior household display that is made of four candles in their holders and four trumpet-carrying angels that will move in a merry-go-round manner, once the four candles are lighted up and burning. The hot air from the candle flame would rise and the air current would propel the light metal frame to rotate.

As the angels swirl round in motion with their trumpets, they give a sense that they are bringing glad tidings and harmony to the home. It is as if I can "hear" the sounds of trumpet in my head as they move.

Where is My Angel?

A year ago, I was acquainted with an engineer informally at a corporate gathering. He is an innovator cum enterpreneur and owns his own company. As we struck up a conversation, he suddenly asked me for a question, and said he will formulate a poem impromtu for me. I paused and asked him: "Where is my angel?". He immediately opened his briefcase, took out a sheet of A4 paper and his calligraphy pen and wrote the following passage:

Angel is deemed a blissful wish
that brings blessing to you
So angel seldom appear in our real life
even in our sweetest of dreams
So no matter where you reach
How hard you seek
Even a real angel heaven sent
Is far from your expectation
But if you face the cruel reality
You discern the imperfection even exist in heaven
Then you see some bliss, some wisdom, some trustful friendship
even in the most wicked existence
Then you take it as an angel
An angel that enriches you
As well as chastising you.

signed
2007-11-30

Sword and Sabre Industry

When I stepped into Lijiang Ancient Town, I came across a very unusual industry.

Apparently there are two shops in this old town that display a wide range of designs of swords and sabres for sale. Their designs were simply beautiful and the metalwork all handcrafted.

For a moment I was wondering where the market for this product may come from. Soon I learned that it is common practice for Tibetans to wear a short sword or sabre by their side as part of their normal outfit.

I scrutinized their products and could not help but marvel at the quality of their artwork. They were all made by hand. Apparently the two shops that sell swords and sabres are both family businesses that have thriving for many generations. It is also part of their spirit to preserve a vanishing skill and hang on to a sunset industry.

I did not purchase any of them because I knew I will not be able to get the "weapons" past the customs when I return home!

Blind Fish - an instance of Lamarckism

Apparently this is a species of mackerel fish which has degenerated eyes as a result of disuse and the natural evolutionary process. For more than a thousand years the species have not had the benefit of exposure to sunlight. Hence their eyeballs have undergone atrophy through evolution and lost their visual function. This fish species is found in a dark lake within the cave of Jiu Xiang (a member of the International Cave Association) near Kunming in Yunnan.

When I visited Jiu Xiang in July 2007, I found the underground water cave to be heavily muddy and sheltered away from light. What you see in the photograph are fish that have been captured by the local marine biologists and put on public display in an aquarium. It is a species of blind mackerel and the scientific name is "Golden Thread Fish". The eyeballs are vestigial and completely covered by eyelids that are permanently glued down and that no longer retract. The local specialists name the rare species as "Mang Yu" meaning "blind fish" and have put them under provincial protection.

Giving Up and Letting Go

I bought a card from a gift shop several years back, because I found the verse on the card very motivational. Today I discover that it still lying on my table. The verse reads as follows:

Letting Go

Giving up is merely quitting,

Letting go is sweet release.

Giving up is cries of anguish,

Letting go is perfect peace.

Giving up is simply failure,

Letting go, success in sight.

Giving up is very human,

Letting go is most divine.

Letting go I trade my blueprint,

For a a perfect, pure design.

Giving up is death at sundown,

Letting go, the rising sun,

Giving up is "There, its over."

Letting go, "I've just begun!"

- Suzanne Marshall Lucas

Dr. Steven Covey's 4th Habit

For those of us who are not familiar with Dr. Steven Covey's book: "Seven Habits of Highly Successful People" it is a self-improvement book that writes about principles of successful living that he has personally crystallised from his research and which he call as habits:

Habit One: "Be Proactive",
Habit Two: "Begin with the End in Mind,
Habit Three: "First Things First",
Habit Four: "Think Win-Win",
Habit Five: "Seek First to Understand, Then be Understood",
Habit Six: "Synergise",
Habit Seven: "Sharpen the Saw".

I want to reflect on his Habit 4 in particular. I followed a friend's blog the other day where the author voiced her views about recommending or not recommending customers to competitor shops when your own shop does not sell a particular product. The theme behind the write-up is essentially on the "Scarcity Mentality". It is a mentality of economics, where people feels that things are scarce and therefore not to be shared. It is a view that there is only so much money out there to be earned. So do not recommend your customers away.

The opposite of the "Scarcity Mentality" is the "Abundance Mentality" which Dr. Steven Covey teaches as the basis of Habit 4 ("Think Win-Win"). It is only when people feels that there is enough for everyone would they start sharing ideas and start thinking along win-win principles.

For those of us who are familiar with the Tarot, the "Scarcity Mentality" is represented by the 4th of Pentacles. Pentacles is the symbol of money or finances. In the Rider-Waite Tarot deck, the 4th card of the Pentacle suit of the Minor Arcana shows a misery man stepping on two pentacles with both hands clutching one and with a fourth one on top of his head. He is unable to let go of his material wealth.

It is enlightening to realise that this "scarcity mentality" has already been described in medieval times, but in pictorial form.

Movie: "Escape from Huang Shi" - some astrological Musings

As I was watching the movie this evening, it striked me that the story content resonated with very rich astrological themes, especially theme of the outer planets, i.e. Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.

It is about a British journalist George Hogg who narrowly escaped death during the Massacre of Nanjing and fled to a neighbouring village, Huang Shi, where, under the recommendation of a Communist Guerilla, Jack (Chow Yuen Fatt), managed to take shelter in an orphanage (Plutonian in theme). Each and every boy in Huang Shi was a survivor of the Japanese war and had their own nightmares through the loss of their family members. George befriended them, helped them to repair the orphanage and get them back onto a more healthy way of living. Ms. Lee a Red Cross volunteer was there to help and encourage him.

Soon the Nationalist officials eyed the orphanage and wanted to draft all the children into their army to fight the war. In the critical moment he decided to lead and bring all the children across the Silk Road, over the snowy mountains and across the Gopi Dessert to a place called San Dan where the children would be safe from both the Japanese and the Natonalists. Just as the group was about to leave, one of the orphans hanged himself (Uranus/Pluto in theme) and shocked George. Jack explained to George that their instruction to the group "Let us leave this place" had probably triggered and drawn out the boy's nightmare memories of how his parents perished when he last heard the same sentence spoken to him. Hence, in despair the boy took his own life.

The party left eventually and George was assisted by Lee and Jack. George noticed that Lee suffered from morphine withdrawal along the way. Jack explained that, unlike himself and George who both had noble ideals (Neptune/Jupiter in theme) to live on, Lee had none. So she has to share the pain of each and every orphan in the group and numb her own pain with morphine (Neptunian in theme).

Eventually they struggled and travelled more than 500 miles and reached their destination after 3 months. This feat was thereafter known to the local Chinese as the "Miniature Long March" (Saturn/Pluto in symbolism). Unfortunately on the way, the party encountered a twister in the desert and George suffered a subcutaneous injury. Shortly after he reached his destination, he developed tetanus from the wound and perished.

The orphans who survived the Miniature Long March and have grown up as adults all said George Hogg was the one who gave them the fighting spirit and glued them together on the journey (Saturnian in theme).

The Last of the Matriarchal Society

In June 2007 I visited a near-extinct minority tribe in in the north-western part of Yunnan. They are called the Mosuo People and stay around the Lugu Lake. They can not get the formal government status of a Tribe because they have less than 30,000 population in total. Apparently this tribe has come to be known by the outside world only about fifty years back, and has a matriarchal structure in their society. What does this mean?

Well, the mother heads the family to start with. The Chinese literature describes them as the "female kingdom". Secondly, their traditional marriage style is unique. The boy comes to the girl's house in the night after dark to mate with her and leaves before sunrise. After the lady conceives and gives birth to a child, the child adopts a family name that follows the mother. The identity of the biological father will be formally made known to the child when he/she grows up and gets initiated in a formal ceremony at the age of 11.

Among the Mosuo People, the mother makes all the decisions for the family. The child's maternal uncle will be the "father image" for the child. If the child has a maternal aunt, then she will play the role of a second mother for the child. In the meanwhile, the child's biological father will stay in his own home and will play the role of the "father image" for his own niece/nephew.

The Mosuo People have their own primitive religion and worships gods associated with the natural forces such as the Wind, the Fire, the Earth etc. Some of them worships Tibetan Buddhism in addition, as they find no conflict between the two.

With the opening up of these people to city life and modern schooling, their culture is being fast eroded. When interviewed, they admit that they are facing a turning point in their cultural history. Their children face problems with school registration when they are asked for their parents' identities. From the Chinese government's point of view the current generation of Mosuo People are allowed the option of following conventional marriage rites and procedures like everybody else.

No one knows how long more will the cultural identity of the Mosuo People will last before they merge culturally and completely with the Han Chinese.

India's National Horoscope & the Mumbai Tragedy

As the television news and the newspapers give their account of the attacks in Mumbai over the past three days, many of us follow it in a state of shock. With a major event in its capital city, India as a country seems to be under a major attack. Instinctively, I looked up Nicholas Campion's book on "World Horoscopes" to search for India's national chart.

Understandably it is not easy to obtain for a country the horoscopic equivalent of the birth chart in an individual. We simply do not know when a country is "born", so to speak. According to Michael Baigent's hypothesis, "the beginning of the period of taking of power" is the critical moment for which a national horoscope should be set.

India was under British rule for many years and it achieved independence from the British at 0:00 hr on 15th August 1947 in Delhi. Apparently, according to Campion there is evidence that the midnight moment was elected as the most auspicious time for the occasion. The chart for Independent India is therefore set for the above data.

The national Ascendant is in Gemini and Mercury as the Chart Ruler is in the 3rd house. Immediately what comes to my mind is the ability and agility of its people in mastering languages. What strikes me however is the presence of a Saturn-Pluto conjunction with the IC (Imum Coeli). It brings to mind that this is a nation that is very much tied to its roots, origin and traditions.

I next decided to use this National Chart for an analysis of the Mumbai attacks, which, according to the media started around 9:20 pm local time on 26th November 2008 with the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus Railway Station. And, as I cast a bi-wheel chart with the transits for the above timing, I stared at it with awe. Several astrological significators of a catastrophe are clearly present on the chart.

Firstly, transit Pluto is exact oppostion to India's Mars. Pluto is a planet of forceful, hidden power often accompanied by transformational change. Mars on the other hand is a planet of aggression, drive and often symbolises war. With the two planets in opposition, it suggests a major conflict accompanied by a major act of violence.

Secondly transit Pluto is at the verge of moving from Sagittarius to Capricorn, in fact, this happens only 3 hours later. In Astrology this is called an ingress and generally signifies a significant event.

Thirdly the Moon is moving into a New Moon Phase while transit retrograde Uranus is turning direct, both astrological phenomena being mirrors of outer world events.

Fourthly, the Nodal Axis, which is often used in Astrology to time events, is seen to be in exact conjunction with India's Saturn-Pluto-IC conjunction. It seems to tell us that this is a moment when India's sense of innermost self or identity is under serious attack.

Cornerstone of the Horoscope

Most of us are aware that the Sun Sign is the cornerstone of Pop-Astrology and has captured the imagination of the masses and media for decades. What may be less well known by the public is the fact that horoscope readings in Natal Astrology attach far more importance to the Rising Sign. Whenever someone asks me why, I explain it through historical roots.

The word "horoscope" is derived from two Greek words: "hora" meaning the hour, and "skepios" meaning to watch. In the old days, the astrologer would literally watch the skies to identify the rising sign at the moment of a child's birth. Hence, the horoscope was identified with the rising sign itself, once upon a time.

Today, the rising sign continues to remain prime in importance, but the professional astrologer needs to examine all the signs and houses of all the planets in order to do a proper horoscope reading.

Flow with the Tide

There is a quotation from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar which I studied in secondary school, and which has stayed in my memory since. The passage is so descriptive of the philosophy of Astrology that I would like to share it with others:

"There is tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune,
Omitted, all the voyage of their lives,
Will be bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea we are now afloat,
That we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures."

Human affairs exist in cycles. In studying these cycles, Astrology helps us to flow with the tide and make the most out of our lives.

In Search of Meaning

Worldly phenomena are cyclical. The sun rises and sets daily. The four seasons come, go and return. The tide rises with the moon. Human civilisations rise and fall. So does the stock market indices. Heroes rise to fame and then fade away. Academics like economists talk about Kondratieff long waves. The more pragmatic people like entrepreneurs look at business cycles in relation to their investments. At the individual level, the female gender have monthly menstrual cycles to grapple with. Few knowledge areas deal with the understanding of natural in the way Astrology does. It is through the study of Astrology that we are able to bring together our wisdom to make meaning of the cyclical events that happen around us every day. As cycles come and go, they show up a recurring pattern, and as we follow the recurring pattern of events, we can anticipate what things may possibly happen, and when. Therein lies my fascination and passion with Astrology.