Saturday, February 18, 2006

An Astrological Tribute To Coretta Scott King

An Astrological Tribute To Coretta Scott King
mumin_bey@yahoo.com

3:50 PM 2/11/06 Sat

Earlier this week, the widow of Martin Luther King, Coretta Scott King, was finally laid to rest beside her husband at the monument she had built for him and his life's work in Atlanta, GA. Her funeral, which was attended by no less than four Presidents, luminaries and the like, has been the topic of much conversation accross the country, both in memory of what Mrs. King stood for, and as well, for the many comments made by the VIP attendees at her homegoing service. The following is what the online resource, Wikipedia, had to say about the affair:

"Over 14,000 people gathered for King's six-hour funeral at the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Georgia on February 7, 2006 where daughter Bernice King is an elder. The megachurch whose sanctuary seats 10,000 was better able to handle the expected massive crowds than Ebenezer Baptist Church where King had been a member since the early 1960s up to her death and which was the site of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s funeral in 1968. Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, their wives and numerous other political figures attended the service. In addition to the presidents, speakers included former FBI director William Sessions, chairwoman of the National Council of Negro Women Dorothy Height, poet Maya Angelou, Dr. Joseph Lowery, Atlanta mayor Shirley Franklin, Attallah Shabazz, daughter of Malcolm X, Bishop T.D. Jakes and former Ambassador Andrew Young. Music was provided by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and vocalists Stevie Wonder, Michael Bolton, BeBe Winans and CeCe Winans. Bernice King delivered the final official eulogy with Dr. Robert Schuller providing the closing benediction.

Some conservatives expressed dissatisfaction with remarks made by several of the speakers, including President Carter and Rev. Lowery, who were accused of injecting current politics into the affair. Lowery, referencing King's vocal opposition to the Iraq war, noted the failure to find WMDs in Iraq. Carter, referencing King's lifelong struggle for civil rights, noted that her family had been the target of secret government wiretapping. Their comments were met with thunderous applause and standing ovations, as President Bush looked on and smiled weakly."

We'll let others hash out the rightness or wrongness of the remarks made by certain attendees; in the meantime, it's very useful to consider some of the following questions astrologicallly:

1. Can we see Mrs. King's widowhood astrologically?

2. Can we see the infidelity in Mrs. King's marriage to the late Dr. King?

3. Can we chart Mrs. King's passing astrologically?

4. Finally, what is the astrological legacy of Coretta Scott King, whom many have dubbed "the First Lady of the Civil Rights Movement"? Where do African Americans in particular, and America as a whole, go from here?

To answer our first three questions, we enlist the aid of Vedic astrology...

Coretta Scott King Apr 27 1927 4PM Marion AL; Lahiri 13 Vir 36, Rodden

1. Mrs. King's Vedic chart does indeed answer our questions. First, we can see that her 7th House of marriage and the husband is considerably challenged. Lagnesh Mercury is placed in the 7th in its debilitation Sign Pisces, and associates with Jupiter, also in the 7th/Pisces. However, Jupiter is weakened by degree (00:13) and therefore is unable to render much assistance to Mercury. Although Mercury is technically Neecha Bhanga Raj Yoga (a combination that is said to lift the status of a "fallen" planet to that of a royal) what help it got by way of this celestial exception is not enough to turn back the tide of Mrs. King's marital woes, pain and eventual witnessing of her husband's passing. Indeed, it is well known in Vedic astrological circles that benefic planets that are in some way greatly weakened can and often do serve as malefic forces which can bring discomfort and pain into the native's life. So we can see that Mrs. King would get "name and fame" from the death of her husband, it is still death by any other standard. Jupiter is also to be taken as the planet of the spouse in a female chart, and again, in this case, Jupiter is weakened by degree, a confirmation of the overall 7th House scenario. Rotating the chart so that the Moon is now the Asc (what is called Chandra Lagna) we see that the Sun is now the 7th lord; from the birth Asc the Sun is exalted in the 8th, and from the Moon Mercury now becomes the 8th House lord...the 8th House is that of death, particularly of the spouse. Finally, we can check the Navamsa chart for final confirmation of Mrs. King's marital life; in that sub chart, Saturn and Rahu are both in the 7th, in Scorpio no less. Note how MLK passed away in the Jupiter Dasa (Aug 1959-Aug 1975; Vimshottari Dasa calculated from Lagna position).

2. We can answer our next question by assessing again Mrs. King's 7th House, and then turning to MLK's chart in comparison to hers. First, we have to consider that whenever a weakened planet exists in the 7th House of someone's chart, it is an indication that the person's spouse is "weakened" in some way, be it educationally, healthwise, mentally, emotionally, financially, etc., and that this weakness will almost certainly manifest itself over the course of the union between the two people. Because Mercury is Mrs. King's Lagnesh, we could suggest that perhaps MLK found her to be "weak" in the sexual department in someway, and since Mercury again is in the 7th House, also representing MLK himself, we can also say that he gave in to his weakness in this regard. Turning now to his chart (Jan 15 1929 11.21AM EST Atlanta GA; Lahiri 7 Ari 43, Lewis) we can see even more signals of trouble in marital/sexual bliss for this couple. For one, his Asc is in Aries, Coretta's in Virgo; they fall 6 and 8 Houses away from each other. This causes misalignment not only in terms of who they are as individuals (the respective Asc's) but also in every other area of life (represented by the following Houses in both charts). In Vedic astrology a concept known as Planetary Relationships is vital, because it assesses how well (or not) planets work together; the resulting relationship between any two planets, will spill over into the House they rule. This concept is extremely important and helpful when matching two charts for marriage. In this case here, we can see that MLK's 5th lord is the Sun, while in Mrs. King's case it is Saturn - in the Vedic planetary relationship scheme of things, these two planets are dire enemies. It means that they will get along only begrudingly. In that the 5th House is one of the main Houses to consider in terms of Sexuality in a Vedic chart (the other being the 12th) this alone sends up red flags. One would think that the infidelity, found out by way of wiretaps and other forms of surveilliance on the part of the Hoover Era FBI, would break the King Marriage, but it did not. We can surmise that the reason for this lay at least in part due to Mrs. King's chart, where we can see that while weak, the Mercury-Jupiter presence in her 7th House forms both Bahu-Stree Yoga and Satkalatra Yoga, combinations that promise marital stability and love. It's difficult for people with such combinations to break away from a spouse, even when they've done wrong.

3. Mrs. King fell ill to a stroke in Aug 2005; at the time this happened, she was having Mercury/Rahu, which ran from Feb 2004 till her death last week (it would have ended in Aug 2006). Very often Rahu plays a hand in cases of stroke, and both planets, Mercury and Rahu, represent the central nervous system. As noted earlier, Mercury, which is Mrs. King's Lagnesh, is considerably weakened; it was hard to see her recovering fully from the stroke, if at all. We can also consider the transit of the sub lord Rahu, passing thru Mrs. King's 7th House. In the System's Approach method, the sub lord of any Dasa is the main timer of events, especially when their transit passes over key areas in the chart. The 7th House is a Maraka, or Killer House (being 12th from the 8th, the House of Longevity), and both Mercury's Dasa running, and sub lord Rahu's transit going thru there at the same time, augured the time of Mrs. King's passing.

4. Finally - where do we go from here? With the passing of Rosa Parks and now Coretta Scott King, it is truly the End of an Era, the Civil Rights Movement. African Americans have made great strides in American society and life: home ownership by married African Americans is at all time highs; a burgeoning Black Middle Class is becoming more and more prevalent; and Black folk from Oprah to Russell Simmons to Condoleeza Rice are becoming more and more a part of the American mainstream. But, on the other hand, the rift between the haves and have nots in Black America continues to grow, exacerbated by the recent Katrina tragedy; out of wedlock births in the Black community are at 70% with no end in sight; and, as my hometown Philly shows, gun violence claims hundreds of lives each year, by Black, on Black - in most instances, young males. Many of these questions will not be answered by government alone, and indeed, many pundits and observers on both sides of the color line suggest that Black America is facing a significant moral crisis.

The key horoscope for the African American people - the moment when the first African slaves were offloaded onto what would become American shores - may provide some clues as to where we go from here. We need to switch back into "Western" astrology mode in order to properly analyze this map:

American Slavery Aug 30 1619 10.15AM LMT, Jamestown VA; Placidus 4 Sco 21, Penfield

At the time of Mrs. King's death, in the AS chart, Solar Arc Sun=Pluto, a fitting symbolism of the occasion, as well as soul searching, discovering a new power within oneself (in this case, the Black community realizing that it's time to continue the next leg of the great task at hand that the Kings put into motion); and in the year ahead, exact in Oct 2007, SA Moon=Sun and SA Mars=Sun, perhaps an energetic new start to address the many social ills that have afflicted the Black community for decades? The long and painful Neptune transit, in square to the AS Moon-Pluto conjunction from the 4th House (soul searching again) has finally moved on, with transit Saturn coming about for more hits later this year. No matter what happens, we can be sure to hear about Black America in the major national headlines in the aforementioned target time of Oct 2007, as the major arc pictures come into sharp analytical focus.

Hmm...

Salaam,
Mu

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