Astrology of the Notre Dame Cathedral Fire, April 15 2019
April 2019
Sorry to get a bit vainglorious with God's name, but if ever there was a news story calling for some attention to spiritual questions, surely this week's fire at Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, a world famous religious and historical site, in which the spire burned to the ground, right at the beginning of the Christian Holy week leading up to Easter, and yet thankfully no lives were lost, nor any of the beautiful religious art was damaged, must be a good contender. If you've read any of my other blogs you'll know that I'm a student of astrology, but if you're new here, and the starry art is a bit strange to you, you might like to read my introduction to the subject as I see it in our current times here, and in my other blog articles about the planets, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.
Perhaps the first thing that people will remember about this sad event is that it was completely unexpected. People all over the world, in their various time zones were shocked to see the story unfold on their computers, phones or TVs. And the evidence so far suggests that the fire was an accident, without a sinister human motive behind it. These two traits are symbolized in the horoscope of the start of the fire, around 6pm local Paris time, by the Sun in late Aries, being widely conjunct the planet Uranus in early Taurus. Uranus is symbolized in astrology by that glyph that looks a bit like a TV antenna, in the 8th house of this particular chart, and astrologers have been studying its spiritual correlations with human affairs in a formal manner for nearly 250 years since the external planet was discovered. It is the planet of sudden change, freedom, electricity and liberation. Uranus is also the co-ruler of the sign Aquarius and the new 2000 year epoch humanity is entering.
Uranus recently entered the Tropical Zodiac sign Taurus, which symbolizes physical, earthly, material things, growth, money, nature, and more esoterically, inner hearing or intuition. Each of the 12 Zodiac signs rules an area of the human body, which theoretically is made/evolved in the image of the Divine, and Taurus rules the ears and throat. Taurus' corresponding Tarot key is The Hierophant, or Pope - which does not refer to any particular man, or branch of religion, but to the Inner Hearing on which all religions are built. In the kabbalah, which is the esoteric interpretation of the scriptures, this concept is related to the fifth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Vav, which means "nail", and because nails join things together, the message is one of unity with the higher consciousness we call Infinite Intelligence, Source, or God. In the New Testament, Jesus tells his disciple Peter to go and found the church on a rock, and this rock or "stone" is the Hebrew word which is the same as "inner hearing". It is significant, in my opinion, that the majority of the stone built cathedral, built by stonemasons using the principles of sacred geometry survived, but the wooden steeple perished.
So as the Sun appears to conjunct Uranus - remember astrology is about our view of the solar system from earth, where we live, not as the orbits are usually portrayed scientifically with the Sun at the center - and the Sun is/was in Aries, a fire sign, we might not be surprised to see surprising events on earth which involved fire and religion, especially the solid, stone built structures which enable religion to be practiced. Today, April 18, the fire authorities in Paris announced that the cause of the fire was a short circuit in one of the electrical cables in the renovation equipment on the roof of the cathedral - remember that Uranus rules electricity. And as I write this today there is another fire in a mosque in Jerusalem, which was quickly put out. This evening's news also showed a foiled arson attack on St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York.
If we now look at the aspect lines to this temporary Sun/Uranus conjunction, we see a triangle made up of blue lines, which are called Trines in astrology, and we see two red lines or Squares, to the planets Saturn and Pluto, which have been approaching their exact conjunction in the sign Capricorn in January 2020. Pluto (symbolized by a glyph looking like P and L, which stands for the discovery of Pluto in Arizona by Percival Lowell in 1930) entered Capricorn, which rules the mechanics of the world - its physical infrastructure, banking, police and governments, in 2008, which most of us remember for the big collapse in banking and ensuing recession. All these structures are being transformed as Pluto continues to transit this sign until 2025, and with Saturn (whose astrological glyph looks like an h) joining Pluto over the next year or so, there is a sense of finality to these transformations. Trines are said to be flowing, and easily integrated into the energy of a chart, whereas squares in astrology are said to be more difficult to integrate, but at the same time they do correlate to great spiritual, psychological, emotional, or even physical power.
That ongoing Saturn-Pluto conjunction dramatically symbolizes the destruction of something which needed to be transformed and renewed. The city of Paris was already renovating this beautiful 900 year old cathedral before the fire broke out, but through this accidental fire, the spire, made of wood which was presumably very old and might have had needed repair anyway, was removed in this dramatic fire, creating extreme anxiety that the cathedral's remaining structure might also be damaged. But to an astrologer, it was those blue trines which "saved" the cathedral. The trines from Uranus to the Moon - the divine feminine, and to Jupiter, planet of protection and good fortune, all combining in a Grand Trine. The Moon was just beginning to transit the sign Virgo, when the fire broke out, and the ascendant of this chart is also the sign Virgo. To the astrologer, this is no coincidence to the fact that Notre Dame means Our Lady, referring to the Virgin mother of Jesus, and the sacred focus of the Catholic tradition. She is not so much a Jewish woman who lived 2000 years ago, but the divine subconscious mind, in comparison to the more masculine concept of God, which psychologically is more self-conscious.
We can also see that powerful, ongoing (it is in aspect for most of 2019) square aspect between Jupiter, in its sign of rulership, Sagittarius, sign of formal religion and philosophy, at the bottom of the chart, and three bodies in Pisces - Neptune, planet of spirituality, which rules Pisces, Venus, planet of love, which is exalted in Pisces, and Mercury, the planet of communication, also in this very spiritual sign Pisces. In other words, we have the two planets which rule religion and spirituality, Jupiter and Neptune, in their ruling signs, Sagittarius and Pisces, squaring off against each other. We can think of Sagittarius, a Fire sign, as teachin' and preachin', whereas Pisces, a Water sign is more about our subconscious mind's reaction to those teachings, and how we express those feelings in art or music. Jupiter recently went retrograde a few day's ago, slowing down to stationary, and astrologers know that when a planet does this, the planet becomes extra powerful, symbolically. However we combine those energies there is an enormous focus on spirituality at this time, with conflicts perhaps arising between formal religion and the inner truths of those religions revealed through the beautiful art and music of the past millennia.
But now let's look at the planet at the top of this chart, Mars. Even if the chart is set up for a bit later in the evening, after the fire had gotten underway, Mars would still be in the 9th house, because the angles of a horoscope move slowly, usually one sign or house every two hours. And let's also look at the aspects that Mars make to the Moon and Neptune, indicated by the red lines. As most people know, Mars is the planet of war, aggression and anger, and in this chart it is in the sign Gemini, the sign of opposites and of discrimination. Mars is also widely opposing Jupiter, which we discussed earlier as the sign of formal religion. Gemini is ruled by the planet Mercury, and the discrimination that takes place in our intellects is always between pairs of opposites. Remember that Jupiter-Neptune square we discussed earlier, well Mars was "triggering" it during this time period, further aggravating the conflict between formal religion and the more receptive, artistic and non-physical expression of spirituality. It is no secret that the Catholic church, still run by men, has been going through some conflict recently, involving abuse of dogmatic and ritualistic power, but a secret which many refuse to believe, even though the evidence is not hard to find, is that there is a very thin line between the images and symbolism used by the Catholic church and what we are discussing here - the occult, astrology, and kabbalah - which is the psychological root of all three Abrahamic religions. Any intimations of divine wrath might be linked to the fact that it was the steeple of the cathedral which burned down, thankfully not the main stone structure. The steeple of a church symbolically represents our yearning to connect with the Higher, and as a symbolic funnel to concentrate our prayers upwards towards heaven. Could it be that the destruction of this particular world renown steeple means that we have to renew how we do this? With our current knowledge of psychology (note that the Greek letter Psi, connected to words such as psyche and psychology is the letter used to symbolize the planet Neptune) we can no longer go on thinking that religious imagery refers to historical people. It is time for the whole world to see Christianity as spiritual psychology.
And remember how we earlier discussed the square from the transiting Sun to Pluto and Saturn? Well, this is a double, if not a triple whammy of Mars energy, because 1. squares are Mars like anyway 2. the transiting Sun was in Aries, a Fire sign ruled by Mars, and 3. Pluto is like an inner version of Mars, ruling Scorpio rather than Aries. We see how Mars is represented in Tarot in The Tower key, which corresponds to the 16th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Peh, which means "speech". Our words define our thoughts, and if these words come from our ego, or sense of separateness, we can find ourselves building false edifices, like the Tower Of Babel.
In 1977 astronomers working in S. California discovered an asteroid orbiting between Saturn and Uranus. It was actually part comet and had been noticed for decades until the men with telescopes actually gave it a name. They decided to name it Chiron, who, in Greek mythology was a healer, musician and astrologer. Unfortunately he sustained a wound himself which he could not heal. As astrologers have studied Chiron over the past 40 years we've found that it does indeed seem to represent wounding and healing, but also as a symbol of holistic knowledge. Chiron seems to represent the link between science and spirituality, as its orbit between Saturn and the outer planets Uranus, Neptune and Pluto would suggest. In the Notre Dame Cathedral chart, Chiron, who's glyph looks like a key, or a K with a circle underneath it - rather like one of keys on the dais in the Hierophant tarot image, is in Aries, the sign ruled by Mars. So this is another indication that the universe would perhaps like us to pay attention to Mars linked and holistic topics; what are we actually doing in the world to reflect all the spiritual things we talk about. Do we really want peace on earth? If so, why are we still destroying it every day with convenience and ego-based actions? Aries is about our physical bodies. Are we in control of our physical bodies? Do we give our bodies wholesome nutrition or do we go running off to doctors who fill us full of drugs?
Don't forget that our Solar System is an exquisitely ordered system, whether it was designed or came together by chance - or perhaps these are the same thing - so that the position of one planet or asteroid is intimately linked with the positions of everything else. So Chiron's holistic messages also include the other concepts discussed earlier. Without any personal ethical judgement from me, some of these topics might include: secrecy in government (Pluto in Capricorn), Brexit (Uranus independence and Pluto control concerns), Climate Change, poverty, housing, drug use (Neptune in Pisces is teaching us all about that), break down of the family, immigration/refugees, gender confusion, gun and knife crime, abortion, lack of morals etc, and can all be represented by various outer planetary combinations, as outlined in my introductory article in this series Turning Of The Age. As outlined at the bottom of this page, a big one, in my opinion, was the 2011-2015 Uranus-Pluto square, and because this event happened in April, when the Sun is in Aries, this separating aspect was triggered. The message of the Outer Planets, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, is always to transcend the physical plane, and sometimes we have to learn how to do that; but the mass-mind of humanity is a different kettle of fish. In the political world, transcendence takes much longer, and with the sign Capricorn involved, sign of earthly materialism, we have seen the complete breakdown of values which we might have once thought eternal. In my opinion, it is as if all our worldly concerns, whether we are religious, or believe in God, or not, from this three dimensional world have been funneled up that symbolic steeple on this world renowned and world-visible cathedral and the universe's answers is, get back to wholesome control of our lives, not fragmented half baked ideas based on materialism.
The steeple and roof of Notre Dame will take years to rebuild and millions of Euros to accomplish - another correlation to Uranus in Taurus (money) in the chart's 8th house of other people's money, taxes, legacies. Donations will I'm sure be procured over the internet, correlating to Uranus' link with technology. The process will also stimulate a test of faith for not only Catholics, but anyone who has ever thought about religion, history, art, the passing away of the old order and what sort of belief will replace it in these changing times.
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