Bondi Beach shooting – Jewish festival attacked ++ Nessus for vengeance and collective trauma

At least 15 are dead from a shooting on Bondi beach, Australia when 1000 people were in attendance to mark the start of Hanukkah.

 The shooting occurred around 6.40 pm December 14^th with explosive Uranus and destructive Algol in the 12^th house  and Mars in excitable Sagittarius on the cusp of the subterranean 8^th.  

** The asteroid Centaur Nessus was exactly on the Midheaven. According to Ben Belinsky while it is usually associated with deceit it also has a positive role, making us better equipped to deal with the risks and dangers we inevitably face. Nessus runs in an elliptical orbit between Saturn and Pluto, so carries a dark energy.

  Other thoughts on Nessus point to ancestral and collective trauma, the unaddressed pain and unresolved issues passed down through family lines or cultural groups. It points to shadow material that needs to be brought to light.

 The “Shirt of Nessus” story is a powerful symbol for something that slowly poisons or wounds a person, often stemming from a misguided hope or expectation. Despite all this, Nessus also presents the potential for profound healing in breaking the Cycle:. It encourages individuals to stand up against injustice and toxic patterns to ensure the past does not repeat itself, demanding that these hidden wounds be given voice and visibility.**  

On the shooting chart the Mars in Sagittarius square the publicity-attracting Mars in Sagittarius square Neptune in Pisces was activating the recent late Virgo Solar Eclipse. That September Eclipse set for Bondi had the New Moon on the Ascendant opposition Neptune on the Descendant so marking it up as a key location. It was an eclipse hinting at risk and jeopardy ahead with Mars on the focal point of a yod inconjunct Neptune sextile Uranus; and Mars square Pluto.  

  At the moment tr Saturn is exactly square the Australia country chart’s Jupiter for a confidence-denting event with an uncertain tr Saturn square Neptune approaching fast. The Australia Solar Arc Pluto is exactly conjunct the Descendant on the country chart for an intense reaction. The Australians will not take kindly to an event such as this and are likely to respond forcefully.

  The Israel chart was always due a significant shock and jolt with tr Uranus square their Mars exactly this month, repeating next March. The Israel chart also looks deflated with tr Saturn moving to square their Jupiter in Sagittarius in January 2026 and sitting on the Jupiter/Uranus midpoint at the moment. Emotions will heighten through 2026/27 with tr Pluto opposition the Israel Moon.

 With no end in sight to the endless Israel/Palestine bloody stalemate, attacks on Jewish communities elsewhere globally are feeling the effects of hostility towards Israeli government policies.

  Everything has been said before endlessly about successive Israeli government policies towards the Palestinians which does raise legitimate criticism. Sympathy towards the October 7 Israeli hostages and their appalling treatment at the hands of Hamas is to a degree tempered by allegations about torture of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Not to mention the constant encroachment on Palestinian land in the West Bank by increasingly violent settlers.

  The US bears some responsibility for not putting the brakes on sooner, indeed from the start. In recent times Clinton tried, Biden didn’t and Trump is aiming for a lucrative real estate deal for Gaza which is beyond parody.  

  Is there an answer? At the moment it seems not. See previous post: Israel – the roots of ‘a sick and sorrowful conflict’ 10th October 2023. Journalist and world affairs commentator James Cameron wrote in 1976 “The introduction of the Jewish State into the Arab heartland exalted many hearts and broke many more. More than anything in this century it was a triumph and a desolation. Full of high hopes it produced the most intractable conflict of our times.”

   I dug out an old piece I pulled together in 2009 about a previous clash for anyone interested in the historical background of what seems to be an interminable and insoluble problem.

“This is a potted Jewish and Israel/Palestine history partly for my benefit as I try to wrestle with a horribly complex situation where there’s right and wrong on both sides, conflicting sympathies and no obvious solution.

   
The Jews have had a terrible and a tragic history. For centuries and centuries before the Holocaust they were subjected to persecution and forced exile from the countries in which they had settled – England, Spain, Russia, Poland, the Middle East etc etc.

  The astrology of the Jewish diaspora seems to resonate both to Saturn Uranus aspects and to Uranus Pluto. Plus of course Saturn Pluto under which Israel was born and which was the significator on the chart of Theodor Hertzl, who was the first to push for a Zionist state.

 
The first Jewish diaspora occurred under a Uranus Pluto conjunction in 70 AD when their revolt against the Romans failed and they were dispersed away from their homeland. In 691 AD on another Uranus Pluto the great mosque was built in Jerusalem. The first of the European Crusades to take back Jerusalem for the Christians was launched on a Uranus Pluto in 1095; as was the fourth failed Crusade in 1204. There were two significant Jewish massacres on Uranus Pluto conjunctions – the first in Rhineland 1095; the other in 1348 when Jews were blamed for the 25 million deaths from the Black Death plague. The Six Day War against Israel in 1967 was also a Uranus Pluto event.
Saturn Uranus oversaw the persecution and expulsion of the Jews in France in 1206; and was in place when Hitler decided on the ‘Final Solution’ in 1942.

 
 It is not surprising given their history that the Jewish people wanted a homeland of their own where they would be free of persecution. Since they had always regarded Judea as their historic homeland that seemed the place to be. The Russian pogroms of the late 19th century stepped up Jewish immigration to what is now Palestine. The First Zionist Conference in 1897 was under a Saturn Uranus conjunction in Scorpio. After the Balfour Declaration of 1917 (Saturn Uranus opposition) and under the British mandate in Palestine (Saturn Uranus opposition) there were increasing Arab attacks on Jewish settlers – and the British failed to protect them. The original Haganah (defence) party under Ben Gurion did not believe in retaliation. So the more militant Irgun split away in order to defend themselves more pro-actively.
Jewish immigration stepped up in the 1930s and 40s because of Fascist persecution of the Jews in Europe. The Arabs become more incensed leading to the Arab Revolt of 1936 (tail end of a Uranus Pluto square) in which 5000 Arabs were killed. The Jewish militia aided the British in quelling the revolt in which the Arab leaders were killed and their weaponry depleted.

  A UK policy of partition of Palestine was in place by 1939, followed by a similar UN mandate in 1947 which would have led to a Jewish State and a separate Palestinian state.
  There was a Palestine Civil War between the Jews and Palestinians in 1947 when the British were still nominally in charge – this was after Irgun bombed the British Military Command HQ the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946 killing 91, many of them British secretariat staff (Uranus trine Jupiter sextile Pluto, Sun Saturn in Cancer). There was then a further Israel versus Arab war in 1948 with the Arabs at a disadvantage having been de-weaponised in the late 1930s. Because of indiscriminate and violent Jewish attacks pursuing a policy of expulsion on the Arab population between 1947 and 49 many Palestinian Arabs fled believing they would be able to return at some point.
  And it’s been pretty much downhill all the way since then. There have been Jewish atrocities – the massacre at Deir Yassin in April 1948 in which over 100 neutral Palestinian villagers were murdered by Jewish militia (New Moon in Aries trine Mars, Saturn Pluto in Leo sextile Uranus); the Sabra Chatila Palestinian refugee Camp Massacre in Beirut in 1982 for which direct personal responsibility was laid on Ariel Sharon (Saturn Pluto conjunction, Sun square Neptune); the Qana massacre in 1996 in Lebanon.

  As one journalist remarked Israel is like an organ transplant into a body whose immune system is determined to reject the intruders. He compared Israel to the Crusader Kingdom which lasted for 100 years in the Middle East before being destroyed by the Arabs.

What could have been done differently? The international community having decided to interfere in the region should then have policed its decisions – reined in the Jewish violence and the Arab anger – and found a humane, workable formula for a viable Palestinian State with adequate water supplies for agriculture. Instead of which the victimised Jewish nation, boosted and funded by USA sympathy for its tragic history, turned into the aggressor, playing decades-long dirty tricks games which only worsen with time. In 2009 they rained white phosphorus on Gaza. And the international community stumbled along doing not very much about constant Israeli breaches of UN Resolutions, their building of illegal settlements and the massively restrictive barrier, trying to starve the Palestinians into submission etc etc.

   All that is clear at the moment is that neither side is winning. The Jewish people do deserve a home and freedom from persecution but they knew by insisting on their historic homeland that they were picking a fight as they deliberately and knowingly displaced the Palestinians. They of all people should have known better.

  And here we are 16 years on from the above piece and fifty years on from James Cameron – with no viable solution any nearer.