Astrologers knew something was going to blow. With Pluto (destruction) and Uranus (sudden shocks) facing each other off in their first exact square, the energy field felt like it was scattered with gunpowder. Mars (guns) would provide the spark.
Those who follow the US (Sibly) chart have been watching transiting Mars provoke it since 2012 began. Off and on since February Mars in Virgo had been setting off the natal Mars-Neptune square (unconscious acting-out) of the trigger-happiest country on Earth. Clearly whatever violent surprises we were going to get would be larger than life. By early July, Mars in Libra had reached the top of the national chart, the most publicly visible spot on the wheel. Whatever happened would express Uncle Sam’s notorious aggressiveness and would be broadcast globally.
On July 19th Mars followed up the Moon at the degree of the Uranus-Pluto square, which, when combined with the USA’s natal Sun-Saturn square, forms a full-on Cardinal Cross. A few hours later the energy lurched from the potential level to the event level.
The rampage in Colorado last week was drenched with the symbolism of both Mars and Neptune. In the role of the red planet we find a young perp who decided to embellish his already martial persona with flaming red hair. For his homicidal cameo, he chose a movie derived from a comic book (Neptune). In some part of his mind, and for his own unfathomable karmic reasons, he aspired to archetypal status. He wanted to be the Darkest Knight of all.
Then came the orgy of media coverage which follows these events like vultures on the battlefield. This reporting typically focuses on the level of a disaster governed by the social planets: Jupiter (judges and courts) and Saturn (rules and the punishments for breaking them). In the hands of these agencies our wretched young knight appropriately finds himself, with his handcuffs, jumpsuit and court-appointed psychiatrists.
For students of symbolism, however, the interest lies elsewhere, on the level governed by the powerful outer planets. Here we can see fatal (Pluto) eruptions (Uranus) of unconscious contents (Neptune) crashing through the veneer of national self-image. Like many unhinged individuals, Mr Holmes has picked up on the churning undercurrents of the mass mind, funneling our collective insanity into a moment of individual infamy. By means of a process more mysterious than the sociopathologists can explain, he represents us, his fellow citizens. He is our representative, far more truly than our congressmen and senators are.
Holmes is the offspring of a culture that offers unspeakably violent video games to children as entertainment. Far from being an aberration, his act was the logical extension of a national ethos which upholds the right of every citizen to own and use an AR-15 assault rifle. It is not clear to me how this fellow’s taking out (isn’t this the phrase used by our boys in Afghanistan?) his peers in that dark theater was inconsistent with the convention by which upstanding young Americans are paid to kill their peers, equally unknown to themselves, overseas. In the latter context these murders are termed “service,” by means of which hideous euphemism the armed forces has turned the medieval concept of chivalry on its head.
Alongside the news from Colorado last week, the newspaper ran a report that Lockheed Martin, the armaments maker, had annual military contracts that exceeded the budgets of the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Labor, combined.
