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#11
Evolutionary Astrology Q&A / Re: Asteroid Goddesses - the u...
Last post by Rad - Oct 20, 2022, 11:42 AM
Hi All,

Here is the story of Mahsa Amini. This is a noon chart.

********

Iranian woman dies 'after being beaten by morality police' over hijab law

Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurd, dies after 'violent arrest' for infringing hijab rules amid Iranian crackdown on women's dress

Weronika Strzyżyńska
Guardian

A 22-year-old woman has died in an Iranian hospital days after being detained by the regime's morality police for allegedly not complying with the country's hijab regulations.

Mahsa Amini was travelling with her family from Iran's western province of Kurdistan to the capital, Tehran, to visit relatives when she was reportedly arrested for failing to meet the country's strict rules on women's dress.

Witnesses reported that Amini was beaten in the police van, an allegation the police deny.

The news comes weeks after Iran's hardline president, Ebrahim Raisi, ordered a crackdown on women's rights and called for stricter enforcement of the country's mandatory dress code, which has required all women to wear the hijab head-covering since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Amini's family were notified that she had been taken to hospital hours after her arrest. She was transferred to an intensive-care unit at Kasra hospital.

According to Hrana, an Iranian human rights organisation, Amini's family were told during her arrest that she would be released after a "re-education session".

The police later said that Amini had suffered a heart attack. Amini's family disputed this, however, and said she was healthy and had not been experiencing any health problems.

Amini was in a coma after arriving at the hospital, her family said, adding that they were told by hospital staff that she was brain dead.

Photographs of Amini lying in the hospital bed in a coma with bandages around her head and breathing tubes have circulated on social media.

Her hospitalisation and death drew condemnation from Iranian celebrities and politicians. Mahmoud Sadeghi, a reformist politician and former MP, called on the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to speak out over Amini's case.

"What does the supreme leader, who rightfully denounced US police over the death of George Floyd, say about the Iranian police's treatment of Mahsa Amini?" Sadeghi tweeted on Friday.

The interior ministry and Tehran's prosecutor launched inquiries into the case after an order from Raisi, state media reported.

Raisi signed a decree on 15 August clamping down on women's dress and stipulating harsher punishments for violating the strict code, both in public and online.

Women have been arrested across the country after the national "hijab and chastity day" declared on 12 July. One of the women was Sepideh Rashno, a writer and artist who was reportedly beaten and tortured in custody before making a forced apology on television.

Human rights groups have reported that extra security forces have been deployed outside Kasra hospital.

*********

Analysis: Mahsa Amini's brutal death may be moment of reckoning for Iran

Martin Chulov

Signs of groundswell taking shape against state that routinely commits extreme acts of violence against men and women

Mahsa Amini's death in custody is fast becoming another moment of reckoning for the Iranian regime that fears a popular revolt more than it fears staring down the rest of the world.

Four days after Amini died in a Tehran hospital, protests in the Iranian capital show little sign of slowing. Most protests appear peaceful, but some in Kurdish areas of Iran have turned violent.

There are some signs that a groundswell could be taking shape: the first of its kind since 2009, when the death of another young woman sparked days of widespread unrest not seen since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

Even now, Neda Agha Soltan's slow demise from a gunshot to the chest remains a testament to how Iran deals with dissent, and with women. Soltan was shot by a sniper as she attended an anti-government protest in June 2009, in a moment that galvanized a revolt and, for a time, exposed the fragility of one of the region's staunchest police states.

Images of Amini being dragged last Thursday into a van by morality police – reportedly for a perceived breach of the hijab head-covering rules – have stirred memories of Soltan's death, and once again raised the spectre of a state that routinely commits extreme acts of violence against women and men who defy it.

The decade plus between both events has been an era of increasing oppression in Iran, where activists have been confined to the shadows and the state itself has crushed all trace of the Green Revolution that followed the disputed 2009 presidential elections.

The the state's henchmen, known as basiji, whose members were responsible for killing Soltan, and the Revolutionary Guards, who enforce the values of the Islamic Revolution, have had the run of the streets, especially since the election of Ebrahim Raisi as president.

A hardliner with deeply conservative views, Raisi has further narrowed the margin for dissent, empowering the morality police and entrenching an inflexible interpretation of Shia Islam across all corners of the country.

Iran's leaders have so far blamed "conspirators" for Amini's death even thought it took place in one of the regime's own cells, and also claimed that riots and protests were the work of foes, such as Saudi Arabia. The playbook is familiar, and so too are platitudes.

At the same time, semi-official state media has flagged an inquiry and claimed that senior officials, such as Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, were likely to have felt sympathy for Amini's death, which had been earlier blamed on a heart condition, or epilepsy, neither of which the 22-year-old Kurd suffered from, according to her parents.

Iran's hardliners have learned lessons from 2009, when a broad uprising nearly escaped the state's control. The country now has some of the best and most pervasive digital security in the region and a firm hold over communities it has terrified into silence.

But it also finds itself up against a formidable expatriate network who want different things for the country and its people, and a strong homegrown activist push that knows how to organise. Whether Amini's death will become another seminal moment in the pursuit of self determination by so many Iranians, or an ember that eventually cools, remains to be seen.

However, Iranian leaders fear a street they can no longer contain. The brutal death of another young woman is the recipe for more unrest. The regime has found itself in tricky waters.

*****

Her natal Lilith is 1 Pisces, N.Node 4 Sagittarius, S.Node 17  Cancer. Her natal Amazon is 28 Virgo, N.Node 10 Gemini, S.Node 11 Scorpio.

Goddess Bless, Rad


#12
Evolutionary Astrology Q&A / Re: Asteroid Goddesses - the u...
Last post by Rad - Oct 12, 2022, 03:20 PM
Hi All,

Here is the story of Robina Courtin a Buddhist nun. This is a noon chart.

*************

'Honey-child, listen to me': a radical Buddhist nun on how to be happy in a crazy world

Robina Courtin is a Buddhist nun in the Tibetan Buddhist Gelugpa tradition and lineage of Lama Thubten Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. In 1996 she founded the Liberation Prison Project, which she ran until 2009.

'Our problem is we think the outside world is the main cause of our suffering – and our happiness,' says Buddhist nun Robina Courtin.

From a Catholic convent school in Melbourne to death row in America, Robina Courtin has learned a few things about happiness, suffering ... and Donald Trump

Bronwyn Adcock
Guardian

It's a Tuesday evening in the small country town of Milton on the south coast of New South Wales, and the scent of the freshly brewed chai and homemade soup about to be served is wafting through the draughts in the Country Women's Association hall as discussion veers between death, killing, war, abortion, prison and suffering.

Around 50 people, some longtime members of the local Buddhist group, others curious newcomers, are seated cross-legged on the wooden floor or on plastic chairs, a portrait of a young Queen Elizabeth II looking down, listening to a Buddhist nun. The topic for the night: "How to stay positive in a negative environment."

"Our problem is we think the outside world is the main cause of our suffering – and our happiness," says Venerable Robina Courtin, an Australian, now 77, who was ordained in the Tibetan Buddhist Gelugpa tradition in the late 1970s.

"We understand that when it comes to becoming a musician, that you program yourself and that you are the main cause of becoming a musician – the work is in your mind, you need precision and clarity and perfect theories and then you practise and practise. We know we create our own selves in that sense," she says.

"But when it comes to turning ourselves into a happy person we do not believe we have this capacity. But the Buddhist approach is that we produce ourselves, whether it's a musician or a happy person. We're the boss."

But what about all the extra suffering of the past few years, asks a woman, citing Covid, floods and war in Ukraine. Courtin relays the story of two imprisoned Tibetan women who were tortured and sexually assaulted, yet were able to "interpret this experience" in a way that "allowed them to bear it".

The questioning woman looks dissatisfied. "What is it?" Courtin asks. "Come on, say it, it's important." Courtin can be at once warm and piercingly direct – when a questioner interrupted her mid-sentence at the previous evening's event she responded, "Can't you hear I'm trying to answer your question!" – and it takes a moment for the woman to reveal what she's thinking. "It just doesn't seem practical," she finally says.

"It is practical when you are being sexually abused in a prison," Courtin says. "We have the power to change the way we interpret our lives, and they were able to do that. And they were even able to have compassion for their torturers. The result of this? They didn't lose their minds. It's not moralistic; it really is practical."

"Honey-child, listen to me," says Courtin, softening. "Our trouble is we can't cope with our own suffering or the suffering out there, so we just want to make it all go away. We can't. All we can do is do our best in this crazy insane asylum called planet Earth."

From convent school to death row

Earlier that day, over lunch, Courtin explains: "I've always been involved in the world. I like the world and I like crazy humans." She's a "newspaper and news junkie"; her favourite publications include the Financial Times, the Economist and the Washington Post.

    I think I'd exhausted all options for who to blame for the suffering of the world

Robina Courtin

Courtin grew up in Melbourne, one of seven children in a rambunctious, poor, Catholic household. The "naughtiest kid in the family", at 12 she was sent to board in a convent school. "I was in heaven, it was bliss," she says. Not only did she finally have her own bed, but "there was no chaos around me, I had discipline. I went to mass every day. I was in love with God and Our Lady and the saints. It was perfect for me."

In her late teens, she discovered boys. Realising she "couldn't have God and boys at the same time", she "very consciously" decided "goodbye God, hello boys". A secondhand record, picked up for sixpence, led her to jazz. "I got this seven-inch LP that said 'Billie Holiday'. I had no idea, I wondered who he was! That opened me up. Just blew my mind because it opened me up to this Black American experience, of suffering human beings."

In the late 1960s, Courtin made her way to London, "rough and ready for revolution". There she joined "radical left" demonstrations and supported the Black Panther movement. In 1971, she started working full-time for "Friends of Soledad", a British political activist group supporting three Black American prisoners charged with the murder of a white prison guard. Then, she moved on to the radical feminist movement. Shedding her taste for men, she became a "radical lesbian feminist", learned martial arts and moved to the US into a lesbian-run dojo in New York City.

In 1976, back in Australia, in Queensland, with a broken foot that stopped her martial arts practice, 31-year old Courtin spotted a poster advertising a talk by two Tibetan Buddhists – Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche – and decided to go along. "That's when I found my path," she says. "I was always looking for a way to see the world, why there is suffering, what are the causes of it? And I think I'd exhausted all options for who to blame for the suffering of the world."

Since she was ordained, 44 years ago, Courtin has worked as an editor of Buddhist magazines and books. In 1996, after receiving a letter from a young Mexican American former gangster serving three life sentences in a maximum security prison in California, she founded the Liberation Prison Project, a nonprofit that offers Buddhist teachings and support to people in prison.

Courtin ran the program for 14 years, assisting thousands of inmates, and still stays in touch with her "prison friends". Recently, she visited one who has been on death row in Kentucky since 1983. "He lives in this garbage dump of a prison, no sensory pleasure whatsoever, the food is just horrible, no freedom to do much at all, he's seen as a monster, and he's this happy guy," she says. A practising Buddhist, "he's fulfilled and content. He's worked on his mind, accepted responsibility for his actions, and although he would love to be released from prison, he accepts his reality. 'I'm ready for that electric jolt,' he told me."

I ask Courtin if she feels any sense of anger about this man's plight. "No, I don't. I try to help him where he's at. That's it," she says. "I remember when I was a radical political activist in London in the early 1970s, that was when I was angry. That was when I was in a rage. Racism, sexism, injustice are just as bad now, if not worse – the prison system in America's fucking outrageous – but I work differently now.

"The trouble is, we conflate seeing a bad thing with being angry. We feel if we give up anger, we chuck the baby out with the bathwater." Courtin says she's "still an activist", but maintaining anger is like stabbing ourselves with a knife – "it just paralyses you". Instead, she practises what she calls courageous compassion. "There's a saying in Buddhism, a bird needs two wings, wisdom and compassion. Wisdom is the internal, putting yourself together. Compassion is when you put your money where your mouth is and help the world."

Living in this world without losing your mind

Since the late 2000s, Courtin's lived out of a suitcase, teaching in Buddhist centres around the globe, only coming to a halt in March 2020 in Sante Fe when the pandemic hit. She started teaching over Zoom – "I adore Zoom" – and a friend set up and runs her social media. Her TikTok account, which has 85,600 followers, has short videos, sometimes responding to current events, with titles such as "How to live in this world without losing your mind".

    There's not a single damn delusion Mr Trump has that I don't have as well

Robina Courtin

"There's a way of using the world to develop your practice," she says. Take former US president Donald Trump, for example. "I'd watch Mr Trump and, instead of ranting and raving about how bad he is, I'd go, 'Well, that's lies, I recognise that. That's anger, I recognise that. That's vanity, I recognise that. That's arrogance, I recognise that'. There's not a single damn delusion Mr Trump has that I don't have as well. The Buddhist view is that we all have these states of mind; we're all in the same boat. So then I go, 'Thank you for showing me how not to be.'"

Recently, Courtin shared on social media that her sister, Jan, had died after an accident at home. She says the huge response to her post "touched me deeply, because people were so kind". She got on a flight from the US as soon as she heard about the accident. Alongside her siblings in a hospital room in Melbourne as Jan's life support was withdrawn, Courtin whispered the Buddhist mantras that accompany death while the rest of the family boisterously sang the Sydney Swans team song.

Robina Courtin is a Buddhist nun in the Tibetan Buddhist Gelugpa tradition and lineage of Lama Thubten Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche.

Once Courtin finishes this current Australian teaching tour, she's moving to New York City, where she plans to settle "for the last years of my life". She plans to write and edit, continue her personal study and Buddhist practice, and teach via Zoom. Maybe "I'll go out to a jazz club in the evening," she says, before adding, "I'm just joking, I probably won't go to the jazz club.

"I'm going to try and not waste my life. Try and stay useful. Be useful before I drop dead."

More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robina_Courtin

************

Her natal Lilith is 11 Libra, N.Node 22 Sagittarius, S.Node 15 Gemini. Her natal Amazon is 27 Pisces, N.Node 8 Taurus, and the S.Node is 0026Sagittarius.

Goddess Bless, Rad
#13
Evolutionary Astrology Q&A / CHANGES TO OUR MESSAGE BOARD: ...
Last post by Rad - Sep 21, 2022, 04:30 PM
Hi All,

As many of you know our message board has been under attack from hackers that has caused many problems. As a result of this we have had to make some necessary changes for the time being. We are no longer able to accept new members, existing members as well as anyone will be able to read the existing and new posts from the administrators but will not be able to respond to them, or make post themselves. The search engine is still is use and anyone can use it to search for all the topics that have ever been posted to this message board.

Soon we will be setting up a way for anyone to ask questions again that will be answered by the administrators. When we have this set up I will modify this post and let all of you know how to do that.

God Bless, Rad
#14
Evolutionary Astrology Q&A / Re: Asteroid Goddesses - the u...
Last post by Rad - Sep 17, 2022, 05:49 AM
HI All,

Here is the story of Vanessa Nakate. This is a noon chart.


                                                              ***********

'Africa is on the frontlines but not the front pages': Vanessa Nakate on her climate fight

The new Unicef goodwill ambassador would like to see reparations from nations most responsible for climate crisis

by Nina Lakhani
Guardian   
Sat 17 Sep 2022

Vanessa Nakate knows what it's like to be Black and overlooked. In January 2020, an Associated Press photographer cropped Nakate from a picture of youth climate activists at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, leaving her friend Greta Thunberg and three other white young women in the shot.

It triggered widespread outrage, rightly so, but Nakate regards that very personal experience as a symbol of how the voices and experiences of Black – and Brown and Indigenous – communities are routinely erased.

"Africa is on the frontlines of the climate crisis but it's not on the front pages of the world's newspapers. Every activist who speaks out is telling a story about themselves and their community, but if they are ignored, the world will not know what's really happening, what solutions are working. The erasure of our voices is literally the erasure of our histories and what people hold dear to their lives," said Nakate.

Nakate is a 25-year-old, thoughtful, smart and quietly spoken climate activist from Kampala, the capital of Uganda – one of the countries most at risk from climate disasters caused by global heating.

Two climate disasters have struck Uganda this year so far: at least 29 people died and thousands were displaced in the city of Mbale in eastern Uganda after heavy rainfall caused two rivers to burst their banks, submerging homes, shops and roads, and uprooting water pipes. And in the north-east about half a million people are facing starvation due to drought in Karamoja, where hundreds of people – mostly women and children – have already died.

Nakate recently travelled to neighbouring Kenya with Unicef, the UN aid and development agency for children, as its new goodwill ambassador, a role also held by household names like Serena Williams, Amitabh Bachchan, David Beckham and Katy Perry.

The experience in Turkana, one of the areas in north-west Kenya most affected by a prolonged drought that has left more than 37 million people in the greater Horn of Africa on the brink of starvation, was life changing. "It hasn't rained for two years. To experience what that means in a community, to see how much people are suffering and how much help they need, I really got to see how the climate crisis is affecting so many lives and destroying so many livelihoods, and that it's mostly women and children who are suffering the most."

It was Nakate's first time experiencing such extreme climate suffering first-hand. At one hospital treating children with severe malnutrition, she met an emaciated little boy who died the following day. According to the World Health Organisation, an estimated 7 million children under the age of five are acutely malnourished in the region, which is experiencing the worst hunger crisis in over 70 years. "I've always said that climate change is more than statistics, it's more than weather, but in Turkana I really got to understand those words."

Of course most people will never witness such catastrophe first-hand, which is why it's crucial that the voices and experiences of those most affected are amplified on the international stage – through the media and at decision making events like the UN climate talks.

Last year in Glasgow at Cop26, very few African activists were able to attend due to challenges with accreditation, funding and Covid vaccinations, which at the time were available to less than 5% of people across the continent. Pledges on loss and damage for developing nations most harmed by global heating were once again shelved at the behest of rich polluting nations.

Cop27 takes place in November this year in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, which will be Nakate's third climate talk, but getting access for most activists is proving to be just as difficult this year. "Many people are calling it an African Cop but it won't be an African Cop if the communities, the activists are not there."

Countries from across Africa – and the wider global south – will be looking to secure billions of dollars of climate financing for adaptation and the green energy transition, as well as separate funds for loss and damage and reparations.

On the recent Kenya trip, Nakate met a young man who asked her why countries in the global north contribute the most emissions but places like Turkana suffer the most. "He thought they must have done something wrong ... it was really hard to explain to him why those being impacted the most are the least responsible, and that's one of the horrible realities of the climate crisis.

"There are people who are looking for answers to a question that needs to be answered through much needed reparations and responsibility from the global north."

The 54 countries in Africa combined account for 15% of the world's population but contribute less than 4% of global greenhouse emissions – in contrast to 23% by China, 19% by the US, and 13% from the European Union.

Nakate, a born-again Christian, said: "Having dominion over the Earth is about responsibility and service to the planet and its people, because God is not a God of waste and exploitation."

Nakate was drawn to climate activism in 2018 after learning about the erratic rainfall and extreme heat affecting Ugandan farmers and food production – including members of her family. Agriculture is the backbone of the country's economy, accounting for a quarter of its GDP. About 70% of people rely on farming and raising livestock.

Inspired by Thunberg's school strikes in Sweden, Nakate launched her own climate movement and for several months in 2019 protested outside the gates of parliament against the government's inaction on the climate crisis. She then founded the Youth for Future Africa and the Africa-based Rise Up Movement, and is now one of the world's most celebrated youth activists.

But her celebrity means that some organisations and journalists regard her as the go-to African voice, which she finds problematic.

"Across the continent many activists are doing incredible work, and there were many before us and the climate strikes in 2018. When the focus is just on one person it erases other experiences and stories. The solution is not to put faces on the climate movement, it has millions of people who are doing incredible work and organising in their communities."

In Nairobi recently, Nakate met young people making briquettes – a cheap, alternative cooking fuel made from waste taken out of rivers – for a grassroots green energy company called Motobrix, creating sustainable local jobs. "It's people and stories like this we really need to listen to," she added.

Making sure activists and impact communities from across Africa can attend – and meaningfully participate – in Egypt is crucial for negotiations on loss and damage – and solutions. If these stories aren't heard, the solutions that are being financed risk being unacceptable or even harmful to affected communities.

"NGOs and governments need to listen and engage with communities about what they want, what works for them, and not dump solutions on them ... We need to have communities at the negotiating tables in Egypt."

More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanessa_Nakate

**********

Her natal Lilith is 19 Virgo, N.Node 14 Sagittarius, S.Node 10 Cancer. Her natal Amazon is 19 Pisces. N.Node 22 Taurus, and the S.Node 22 Scorpio.

Please feel free to comment or ask questions.

Goddess Bless, Rad
 
#15
Evolutionary Astrology Q&A / Re: Venus Pluto square
Last post by Rad - Sep 16, 2022, 11:19 AM
Hi GoldLeaf,

This would be a first quarter square that is progressively moving towards the trine that follows this initial square in the first quarter phase. Thus, these two Souls are evolving, moving towards, that complete objective of the issues involved between them.

God Bless, Rad
#16
Evolutionary Astrology Q&A / Venus Pluto square
Last post by GoldLeaf - Sep 16, 2022, 05:18 AM
Hi.... Is Pluto at 27 Libra squaring  Venus at 1 Aquarius in a synastry chart? Would the fact that these planets are trine by sign ( air) correlate to an ability to objectify the issues symbolised by the potential square aspect? Or correlate to having worked through some these issues? Thanks
#17
Evolutionary Astrology Q&A / Re: New Book on EA: The Moon a...
Last post by Kristin - Sep 15, 2022, 11:23 AM
Congratulations, Deva!!

This is a MUST have on everyone's EA book shelf.  :)

Goddess Bless,
Kristin
#18
Evolutionary Astrology Q&A / Re: New Pluto Series
Last post by Rav - Sep 15, 2022, 10:08 AM
Hi all,

I am just following on from what Ari has said, please do reach out if you have any more questions regarding the association, the classes etc.

We are all really excited to be able to do this work in this way and to help build this EA community further.  :)

Namaste,

Rav.
#19
Evolutionary Astrology Q&A / Re: New Book on EA: The Moon a...
Last post by Rad - Sep 15, 2022, 07:53 AM
Hi Fukumen

If you click on that link about the book you will see a line that says 'This sounds brilliant and unmissable. Please add me the list to be contacted when available to order!'. Fill that in and Wessex will notify you about when the book is being released, and where to purchase it.

God Bless, Rad
#20
Evolutionary Astrology Q&A / Re: New Book on EA: The Moon a...
Last post by Fukumen - Sep 14, 2022, 06:56 PM
Oh, I'm excited for this book! Any word on where it will be available for purchase once it's officially released?