2012: The Shift

Black hole at centre of the Milky Way Galaxy. Image Source: ESO via Wiki.

Happy New Year! 2012 will be a year filled with wild stories about cataclysm and renaissance.  Pop culture is going to have a field day. I'll follow these paths on this blog, but I want to be clear about one thing right at the beginning: just because I discuss this stuff does not mean I literally believe in it. Enormous amounts of information available online don't constitute facts, even if they look like they do.  Several facts can be strung together to form many amazing non-facts. They may indicate something else, fears, fads or conspiracy theories. I consider these things largely to be cultural phenomena, reflecting mentalities of the times in which we live. I suspect that 2012 will be a year when the tension between fact and fiction will be pretty relaxed. If you already have a highly developed metaphorical sense, this should be a great year.

To open the New Year, I bring you a nice word from the realm of astrology: the Yod. One thing I like about astrologers is their love of geometry, a mathematical field that lies at the heart of human civilization.  They take that geometry, read it astronomically, and endow it with mythical, narrative, imaginative and fantastic meanings.  The validity of this correlation is sort of irrelevant when you consider it is an expression of the profound human impulse toward making sense of chaos, of the unknowable, of completing the incomplete. This need to find the ultimate Gestalt may be laughable for some, but it is the basis of how our brain allows us to see the world, construct societies, and communicate through language. It also is the cerebral root of memory and thereby builds our awareness of time. As a species, we are universally driven to make the imperfect and fractured make sense.  This concerns the puzzling jump from the biomechanics of the brain as a bodily organ to the metaphysical and philosophical evolution of consciousness. Whether or not we should be anthropomorphizing the unsolved mysteries of perception and cognition and projecting them onto maps of the night skies is a subject for another post.

Anyway - the Yod. Right now, astrologers are fixated on a great big black hole in the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy, which they think symbolizes rebirth. In December of this year, they believe that this black hole, sometimes confused with the Galactic Great Rift, will either align or intersect with the plane of the ecliptic, the plane on which the planets revolve around the Sun.

Plane of the ecliptic "of the Earth's orbit around the Sun in 3d view showing Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and Jupiter making one full revolution. Saturn and Uranus also appear in their own respective orbits around the Sun." Image Source: Lookang via Wiki.

For critical debunkings of this idea, regarding the ecliptic intersection with the Great Rift go here, regarding the December Solstice alignment go here, and regarding the Black Hole alignment go here. Proponent of the idea, astrologer R. de Looff, writes:

In 2012 the galactic equator cuts the ecliptic at 0 degree of the Western zodiacal sign Capricorn. 0 degree Capricorn is the point of the zodiac where the Sun is during the December solstice.

At December 21, 11.12 GMT during the December solstice the Sun touches the Dark Rift, which is located near the Galactic Center. According to the Mayas the Dark Rift is the cosmic womb: the place of dead, transformation, regeneration and rebirth. This moment shows the end of their calendar. ...

[Above] you see a picture of the center of the Galaxy. ... Th[e] dark part is a gigantic black hole which is the center of the Galaxy. This dark hole is a region of immense spiritual power.

A Quincunx

De Looff refers to the planets' apparent alignment with this thing as a Yod. A Yod is a letter in the Hebrew alphabet. It also refers to a rare astrological aspect when one planet forms a triangular shape (a 150 degree angle, also known as a quincunx) with two other, mythically incompatible, planets in the heavens (the latter have to be 60 degrees apart, also known as a sextile). On the Winter Solstice 2012, a Yod will appear in the skies (see a picture of it by scrolling down at this site).

Quincunxes are thought to be tough because you have to go through a change whether you like it or not - no retreat, no contemplation, no introspection - you have to act.  You have to go forward.  Quincunxes can feature in death charts or signify loss, crisis or fate. A Yod compounds the bottleneck idea because the triangle is created through two quincunxes, overlapping each other: it's incredibly hard, but you have to do whatever it demands in order to make further progress. To astrologers, it means: 'expansion through sacrifice.' De Looff remarks that the Yod is also known as the 'Finger of God,' a celestial angle that channels or points to huge painful metamorphoses, especially changes in our spiritual beliefs and philosophical systems.

A Sextile

Wiki on the Yod: "This aspect activates either a powerful conduit of energy, or a deeply-felt block, in the direction of the quincunxed planet." In 2012, there is a Yod - pictured in the chart below - formed on December 21 between Jupiter (expansion), Saturn (painful learning) and Pluto (radical change, death, rebirth).  Jupiter is the focal point of the strain.  There are other astronomical events and astrological theories that have 2012 watchers stirred up, such as galactic alignments, solstices, eclipses, and planetary transits, which I'll talk about in later posts. To understand the chart's astronomical and astrological symbols below, go here.

Image Source: Living Astrology Blog.

Romanian astrologer Dan Ciubotaru has checked how often this aspect has appeared in the past 400 years:

Once excepting 2012. In May 1989 when Jupiter was still focal point but Pluto was in Scorpio and Saturn in Capricorn. I’ve used [the] Configuration Hunter tool to perform the search – see here. This means that the 2012 Yod is a mirror [of the] Yod of 1989: Saturn and Pluto switch places. In 1989 the Yod took place on 13th degree while in 2012 will be on 8th degree. ... In my opinion the 2012 events are linked with the 1989 events – at least from political point of view. And 1989 was quite an important year for world politics: end of Cold War, end of Communism regime in Eastern Europe, Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 (took place on exact Yod configuration) etc. See Wikipedia for 1989 for full details.

Ciubotaru thinks the planets in the Yod represent the USA, Russia and China.

For 2012, De Looff has also drawn up a Chinese Four Pillars of Destiny chart, with the Four Pillars representing the Year, Month, Day and Hour.  To him, this chart speaks either of environmental disasters or of an analagous emotional struggle in the collective unconsciousness:

A meteorite falling in the ocean would be one expression of this chart. Or a vulcan (fire and earth) exploding and causing a tsunami (water). It could also indicate floods. Water and Earth the strongest elements of this charts are enemies to one another. Since Water is more powerful in the chart, this may indicate large-scale floods. Therefore of all the events possible large-scale floods are the most likely. ...

In my opinion what this chart indicates is that the polluted energy of the collective unconsciousness will turn against humanity. Whatever happens, it will be an expression of the energy that is radiated by a humanity that is unable to live in peace and to make the right choices (for peace, welfare, health and inner spirituality).

Below the jump: astrological predictions for 2012, from astrologer Diana Garland, ending with a video entitled 'The Shift.' In this video, she anticipates the mood for this year. She, too, draws from the symbolism of the Black Hole as womb of the Galaxy and assumes it translates into a story of 2012 birth - or rebirth.

2012 Part 1 (uploaded in 2008). Video Source: Youtube.

2012 Part 2 (uploaded in 2008). Video Source: Youtube.

2012 Part 3 (uploaded in 2008). Video Source: Youtube.

2012: The Shift (uploaded in Dec. 2011). Video Source: Youtube.

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