The Fog of War, the Image of Peace
by Jean Hinson Lall

At this season when the natural world is new and green, the Full Moon eclipse reminds us of decay and death and the darker aspects of human nature. This year’s Scorpio Full Moon, like last year’s, will be a lunar eclipse, with the Sun’s shadow touching the Moon. Sun and Moon fall in the fifteenth degrees of Taurus and Scorpio respectively, while Neptune will be halfway between them in the sixteenth degree of Aquarius, forming a T-square at the powerful midpoints of three Fixed signs.

The Fixed signs hold and concentrate the energy of the four Elements and thus motivate us to exert power and attain mastery. Where they are highlighted we confront questions about what is and what matters. Taurus shows what we value and aim to hold, possess, enjoy and cultivate, how we inhabit our bodies, claim our ground, and sustain ourselves. The values of Taurus are constructive. Scorpio shows what we gain by joining our resources with those of other people, how we invest, and what we are prepared to sacrifice, either to further selfish aims or for the common good. Scorpio breaks down or metabolizes substance and transforms or eliminates it, for good or ill. These two are the wealth signs, related to having and holding, earning and investing, spending and making profits. Taurus’s desire for security leads to investments and business ventures which can be profitable but also risky. And where we have a lot invested, we may have to risk further funds or even human capital to protect our investment. Hence the pursuit of economic objectives through international politics, diplomacy and warfare.

Eclipses bring things to a head. During the two weeks since the solar eclipse in the last degree of Aries, Scorpionic themes have dominated the news, among them energy, secrecy, intelligence-gathering, deception, sacrifice, death, and the use and abuse of power. Let’s review just a few of the events preoccupying the U.S. media, just to get the flavor of the Aries-Scorpio eclipse sequence.

Petroleum and other energy sources (especially those extracted from underground) are associated with Scorpio; in Washington, the U. S. Supreme Court has been hearing arguments regarding the Government’s right to withhold from the public information about the Vice President’s secret meetings with energy company officials prior to setting federal energy policy. The Court also heard opening arguments regarding the right of the Government to detain United States citizens in secret, indefinitely, without charges, legal representation or trial if it suspects them of being involved in terrorist activity. Top officials of the Bush administration were questioned by the special commission regarding what the Government knew about terrorist plots prior to September 11, 2001.

A year after the President declared major combat over in Iraq, war casualties reached a new high in the month of April, and public support for the war dropped significantly. Spain pulled out of the "coalition of the willing" in the war effort. U. S. forces faced a major insurgency in the Baath stronghold of Falluja costing many Iraqi and coalition lives, and eventually pulled back. In a particularly surreal development, one of Saddam Hussein’s former Republican Guard generals was brought in, dressed in his old uniform, to take charge.

Photographs of the flag-draped caskets of U. S. servicemen and women were published for the first time since the war began. ABC’s Nightline program devoted a special broadcast to the names and photographs of the fallen, and one large media corporation refused to run the program on its stations in the belief that this homage to the dead was actually a protest against the war and an attempt to influence public opinion. Meanwhile appalling photographs were published of Iraqi prisoners being humiliated and tortured by American servicemen and a major investigation was launched into the nature and extent of such abuses.

New books by former government aides accused the administration of lying about the grounds for going to war and of punishing a dissenter by revealing the secret intelligence identity of his wife. Several foreign engineers, including Americans, working at a petroleum plant in Saudi Arabia were shot dead by attackers thought to be religious fanatics. Presidential politics in the U. S. focused on the long-ago military records of the contenders, whether they were accurate or deceptive, and who would be a stronger wartime leader.

An eclipsed Scorpio Moon thus shows its dark side as a "death Moon," representing those who make the ultimate sacrifice but also those who are prepared to sacrifice other people’s lives and the truth in pursuit of their goals.

Neptune in Aquarius, at the critical midpoint between Sun and eclipsed Moon, can aggravate or ameliorate these darker tendencies. Aquarius is the Fixed Air sign in which clarity of thought and objectivity can be cultivated. Neptune, planet of mysticism, imagination and illusion, can either contaminate thought with deceit and delusion or deepen its insights through mystical or imaginative reflection. Neptune’s imaginative vision can combine with Aquarius’s intellectual concepts to produce demagogic rhetoric and delusional policies (e.g., the Vietnam War commander who said "We had to destroy the village in order to save it"). Neptune in square to Scorpio reflects "the fog of war," the unconsciousness that grips everyone involved and obliterates the historical memory that might save us from repeating the tragic errors of the past. However, Neptune also rules photography and the power of images to reveal the human truth of our situation.

Neptune is also a healer, and this past week saw the addition of ten new countries to the European Union, bringing to an official end the postwar split of Europe into East and West. The twenty-five nations making up the EU are seeking security not through dominance and conquest, but through trade and cooperation, investing their future in international organizations. The healing waters of Neptune flow over the scarred body of Europe and her peoples now begin to create new memories. Millions still alive recall only too vividly the horrors of Twentieth Century European wars. May this new image of peace be healing for them and for us all.

Look for the Gemini New Moon
on May 18, 2004.