A joint publication of: Astro Logos and Zyntara Publications

ISSUE NO. 35

November  2007

 VAN Archive - www.Zyntara.com

In this issue: 
 Tipping Point People a look at two men and their stars  
The mundane and natal stars of the WWII pilot who was the commander of the mission that bombed Hiroshima and the atomic bomb designer, Robert Oppenheimer - a look into collective star themes.

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                            Special Note from Nick Campion - Lampeter University MA program

It’s all happening at the Sophia Centre at the University of Wales at Lampeter, as we prepare to launch the MA in Cultural Astronomy and Astrology in January 2008. We have moved into our new office and the university staff  have all given us an extremely warm welcome. Filing cabinets are in, shelves are up, and our notice board already has announcements. As most people know by now, the MA will be taught as a distance-learning programme including live seminars on the web, which means that we can take on students around the world. So it doesn’t matter whether you live in Australia, Amsterdam or Alabama, you can study in your own home and still keep your professional and family commitments. The first intake is January 2008. Tutors will include Bernadette Brady, Nick Campion, Patrick Curry and Liz Greene. Numbers are limited to  twelve students. Website: www.lamp.ac.uk/sophia. Further information: n.campion@lamp.ac.uk or ncampion@caol.demon.co.uk.
 

Tipping Point People:
a look at two men and their stars
Bernadette Brady M.A.

On the 1 November 2007 Paul Tibbets, aged 92, died quietly at his home. Paul Tibbets is what I call (borrowing from Malcom Gadwell) a tipping point man. This is a person whose small action changes the history of the world. Such people are markedly different to celebrities who may have more fame, more money and more glamour but they do not change the world, for a celebrity is simply a person who carries projections for the masses; they are our mirrors, not our history-makers.

Some tipping point people are so because of hard, focused work and devotion to an idea while others happen by chance to be at the right, or wrong, place at the appropriate time. Paul Tibbets was such a person. He was selected by the military to be the commander and pilot of the bombing mission to Hiroshima on 6 August, 1945. This bombing mission changed the world and propelled Paul Tibbets into the history books.

His request upon his death made through his will was that he have no funeral service and no headstone to mark his grave. This request came not from personal regret but rather from not wanting either the service or his gravestone to be used as a place of protest.

There were two Paul Tibbets: the first, the personal one, the family man, the successful military officer, WWII pilot and the war hero. Back in 1945 he named his plane Enola Gay after his mother Enola Gay Tibbets and the fateful bomb was called “Little Boy”. This is the land of American apple pie and “mom” and this Paul Tibbets was embedded into his culture doing his part to serve his country and help end the war. However, it is in this capacity that he became a tipping point man and took on the mantle of the second Paul Tibbets, the "other" person. 

Colonel Paul Tibbets with his super fortress plane Enola Gay, named after his mother.	The 4,400 kg atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

We are all born into larger patterns and in astrology we can look for these patterns in cycles. This could be the Neptune Pluto cycle which runs for 492 years or the lunar phase cycle which lasts only 29.5 days. Long or short, we and our culture are the product of such cycles. The stars also have cycles, and just as we are born into planetary cycles and patterns, we are also born into star cycles.

Paul Tibbets was born on 23 February, 1915, in Quincy, Illinois and at that time Regulus, one of the Royal Stars of Persia, (see VAN February 2006) was governing that time and place by being the heliacal setting star. It had taken on this position for Quincy, Illinois, on the 19 February, 1915, just four days before Paul Tibbets was born and it would have held that position of “ruler of the star cycle” until another star became either the heliacal rising or setting star.     So in this way we all have two sets of stars. We have our personal set of star and planet parans which are the combinations which are forming on the day of our birth and we also have the star and planet combinations that were forming on the day of the beginning of the star cycle into which we are born.

Paul Tibbets born 23 February, 1915. Quincy, Illinois, USA. No birth time and born at a time when Regulus was governing the sky.

Now just as in other areas of astrology we do not place too much personal expectation on our outer planet larger cycles, so we do not place too much personal expectation on our collective star and planet combinations. They are collective rather than personal. We belong to them and make up a part of that bigger pattern and we may never personally become conscious of that pattern.

However, there are amongst us tipping point people and, willingly or unwillingly, their personal lives become expressions of their collective star cycles.  By considering Paul Tibbets personal stars we see the man. By considering Paul Tibbets collective stars we see his effect on history.   

 
Paul Tibbets' stars - personal and collective

 
Thus underneath his personal stars which show the hard working successful military hero (above left) we have another set of collective stars (above right) drawn from the greater star cycle into which Paul Tibbets was born. - For those of you who own Starlight, simply select “mundane parans” under the Text1 button to see your own star cycle information.

What we see in Paul Tibbets collective stars is what this person brings to the surface for all of us when he dips into his collective stars. Of course not everyone does touch their collective stars however, we can still consider these stars as our part of a large picture, what we bring to the world if for different reasons we do engage with our particular slice of the collective. The nature of our potential fame or infamy.

Paul Tibbets stepped into his collective stars when he agreed to fly the bombing mission, what he bought, therefore to our consciousness was how the world can change in an instant (Uranus with Al Rescha). He also clarified how a people can suffer, not just the population of Hiroshima but as a result of the end of the war, a door was flung open to the horrors of Nazi Europe. The end of WWII awoke in us the implications of Neptune with Zuben Eschamali - human loss and despair. We also became aware of Pluto with Alkes, for as a result of that war, now many perpetual flames burn in many different places. These are the stars in Paul Tibbets' slice of the collective which he brought to consciousness for all humanity.
 

Paul Tibbets felt it was an honour to be chosen for the mission, so this is not a personal matter for him. Indeed he often said that he never had any regrets, for to step into such a place of regret lies madness and  personal nightmare without end. He was a soldier caught up in a collective fight for survival and simply flew a plane named after his mother to drop a new and untested bomb named “Little Boy”, a simple act of which no-one really understood its full implications. We can however see from his personal stars that he was a man who could handle pressure (Mars with Rukbat), we can understand that he was someone willing to risk his life to save his country (Mars with Antares), and we can see he was a man who could hold his personal views even when society slowly turned against the bombing (Mars with Acumen). This was his personal conscious journey, his personal narrative, separate from his collective role and his collective stars. But this is not how history will remember him, he will be remember as the pilot who flew over Hiroshima on that fateful day.

Paul Tibbets, 2003

We also see this double message in Robert Oppenheimer, the brilliant theoretical physicist who was the scientific director of the Manhattan Project, the team which created “Little Boy”. This is the other type of tipping point man, the sort that changes the world through devotion to an idea and a dream. Robert Oppenheimer was born 22 April 1904 in New York, NY at 8.15 am [1] and when we look at his personal stars we see an obsessive researcher, (Mercury with Mirfak)  and a man with a vision (Jupiter with Vega) who is not afraid of reaching for the impossible or the improbable.
 

Robert Oppenheimer's stars - personal and collective
 

Some of his personal stars  (Starlight's natal paran meanings)	Some of his collective stars (Starlight's mundane paran meanings)
Sun with Rukbat To be persistent in your aims, to be unswerving in your goals.                       Sun with Hamal   Assertively following one’s own path.          Sun with Facies A piercing focus to the point of ruthlessness, or prophetic vision.   Sun with Thuban One who finds, collects, or gives a treasure.          Mercury with Mirfak To be verbally assertive, and a lover of mental challenges.     Jupiter with Hamal   The independent, successful pioneer, or the headstrong individual. Jupiter with Vega   Obsessive problem solver, or obsessed with a grand idea.	Uranus with Diadem  The sacrifice of the innocent.    Neptune  with Fomalhaut  Ideals and dreams fall into despair.     Pluto with Antares  A life and death experience, intense focus and drama.
	Robert Oppenheimer and part of the  Manhattan Project at Oak Ridge, TN

But he to is a tipping point man. Robert Oppenheimer was born with Fomalhaut as his heliacal rising star (see VAN November 2006) which gives him a life path of the idealist. However, as he works towards his ideals and his dream, he also steps into his collective stars and writes his name into history as the creator of the atomic bomb used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Oppenheimer was part of the generation born with Uranus opposite Neptune. For his time and place (22 April 1904 New York city), these two collective shaping planets were both linked via parans to sacrificing (Diadem) and the potentially  delusional star, Fomalhaut, respectively. Thus as Oppenheimer stepped into his collective stars (shown above right), he brought to the awareness of humanity, the concept of the sacrifice of the innocent and a sense of loss (Uranus with Diadem). Coupled with this he also revealed to us the implications on human culture of not taking responsibility the combination of Fomalhaut and Antares.

Robert Oppenheimer 22 April, 1904 New York, NY 8.15 am.

Robert Oppenheimer was horrified by the power of his creation and turned against the further development of nuclear weapons. Such was his stance that the McCarthy era in the USA labelled him a Communist and removed his security clearance, only restored many years later by Lyndon Johnson. Oppenheimer died in 1967 of throat cancer, still struggling with the impact of his invention. Paul Tibbets, the pilot and commander of the plane did not, as far as he would tell anyone, suffer the same torment as Oppenheimer, yet he is the man who requested no funeral service or place marking his existence.

In conclusion...

We are all born into a large star and sky narrative. Our natal stars and their myths through the parans and fixed stars represent a layer which is beginning to take shape in the collective conscious. Yet there is another layer of fixed star work in society. This other layer may never be ours personally, as not all of us become "tipping point people". However, it is worth exploring these collective parans of those who have changed history in order to begin to understand the roles these people play in the story of our world.

References:
[1]  www.astrotheme.fr/portraits

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