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Medusa's Star
A Millennium Cross over Algol
Britain's Foot-and-Mouth Epidemic
The Vivid Algol-Types
The Guillotine
Tesla, the Electrical Wizard
Uranus on Algol and WWII
Two Rock' n' Roll Groups
'I am petrified by ...'
Birth-Data, Notes & References
About the Author


The Gorgon Medusa




ALSO BY NICK KOLLERSTROM:
Galileo's Astrology
Venus, the Rose and the Heart
Astral Portraits of the Seven Metals



 

The Horror-scope of Algol by Nick Kollerstom




The Gorgon Medusa

In 750 BC, the full-bodied image of Medusa in Greece is a central piece on their oldest surviving temple, that of Artemis, one of their oldest gods. She is the Lady of the Beasts who carries with her memories of Crete and Angolia ... Soon the holy image of the gorgon Medusa as an ancient symbol of female power and wisdom became totally unacceptable. By the 6th c. BC her rites were disrupted, her sanctuaries invaded, the sacred groves cut down, her priestesses were violated and her image defiled. Her images, (as well as women) are mastered and domesticated. Her mask was used on elaborate Etruscan lantern fixtures and stoves, probably for her relation to alchemical fire. Although the mask was widely used by country folk, her female wisdom, natural forces, powers of creativity, destruction and regeneration were demonised and made evil. She was made into a horrid, ugly monster (most monsters were female or born of the Earth). Her most popular image became that of her defeat in the Athenian myth of Perseus.
- Alicia Le Van [1]






Medusa's Star


In the constellation of Perseus, at twenty-six degrees of Taurus, there twinkles the binary star Algol, the 'Gorgon's head'. Homer's Iliad alluded to, "the Gorgon's monstrous head, that rippling dragon horror"[2] - a severed head which turned to stone those who beheld it. It was only men, plus a few animals, who met this dire fate, not women. Perseus had to be careful never to look at the severed head. "The Medusa reveals the extent of their death to all who gaze upon her". [3]

Originally, the Medusa was worshipped in Libya as the serpent-goddess. Her dread-lock hair style proclaimed her African origin. Her name translates as 'sovereign female wisdom,' although in another legend where she was one of the three Gorgons it meant 'ruler': the other two Gorgons being 'wanderer' (Euryale) and 'strong one' (Sthenno).

"Beyond all others she [Medusa] was famed for her beauty ... Words would fail to tell the glory of her hair, most wonderful of all her charms - a friend declared to me he saw its lovely splendour"[4]

- wrote the Roman poet Ovid. He told how once-beautiful Medusa was raped by Neptune in the temple of Minerva (i.e. Athena), and was punished for this as if it were her fault by the offended goddess (Athena, as the goddess of male wisdom and science, was taking a dim view of the older, priestess-type of wisdom), whereby her lovely locks turned into hissing serpents. Earlier, she had lost her immortality (of the three gorgons, she was the mortal one) then she lost her beauty through the wrath of Athene, and finally she lost her head, being beheaded by Perseus as she slept in a cave with the other Gorgons.

The Greeks constructed a fine tableau of constellation-images centred around Perseus. Beside Perseus is ebony-coloured Andromeda. Her mother Cassiopeia, Queen of Ethiopea, had boasted that her daughter was lovelier than the sea-nymphs. The indignant sea-nymphs complained to Neptune, and so Andromeda ended up bound and left naked by the sea-shore, an innocent victim. Was Medusa raped by Neptune likewise an innocent victim? These are 'It was all her fault' stories that have come down from antiquity. The Perseus myth contrasts a horrid woman's head, once that of the sage goddess-oracle, with the body of the 'good' girl, who is fancied by Perseus. We are shocked to see his sword in the sky pointing to between her legs. He rescues her and they marry, but her family were not happy about this, and he ends up killing half of the wedding-guests. This Hero leaves a trail of destruction in his wake; we are confident that he will hack his way through to the solution. The story may have been a parable of Greek imperialism in Africa.

Constellations Perseus and Andromeda


Embedded in the Milky Way, the Perseus constellation is the source of the 'Perseid' meteor shower of late summer. Meteor showers emanate from a 'radiant,' which is a source-point in the heavens. Other meteor showers have more or less stationary radiants, but that for the Perseids moves during August along the sword of Perseus, and his upraised arm.[5] These meteors are made of iron and burn up in the sky, as their radiant sparkles along Perseus' deadly blade, moving past the longitude of Algol. The latter, a binary star, rotates with a dark companion that almost eclipses it, once per three days, so it grows dimmer and brighter. To find it in the sky, just follow two of the stars of Cassiopea downwards, through the straight line of four stars in Perseus, and it's just to the right of these, above Taurus. In the summertime Taurus remains below the horizon in the UK. Far below, the sea-monster Cetus, coming to get Andromeda, flicks a fin into the zodiac.



A Millennium Cross over Algol


In 1996 the bright comet Hyakutake passed very close to the Earth, nearer than any comet for centuries, and crossed over Algol on April 11th. Then, only a year later, another bright comet appeared, Hale-Bopp, and both of these were totally unexpected. It appeared on a path at right angles to the previous comet-track. It also just happened to cross over Algol, and it did so a mere day earlier, April 10th.

".. it was inevitable the paths of these two comets would cross but why in Medusa's head (almost right between her eyes) and why exactly on the same day, April 11th, one year apart?" [6]

The astronomical world remained silent about this remarkable astral synchrony in time and space, even though April 12th is Astronomy Day. As a millennial portent, it looked fairly dire.

The paths of the comets
Using the 'Starry Night' program, the two comets look more or less identical as they cross over Algol.




Britain's Foot-and-Mouth Epidemic


In the year 2001, the worst-ever Foot-and-Mouth epidemic struck. The burning of British cows began at the end of February 2001, as Saturn in Taurus came within a degree of Algol. Jupiter and Saturn, conjunct the year before, were ten degrees apart and both in the Bull constellation. The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries (MAFF) decision to go for mass extermination as remedy for a mild, temporary disease causing no harm to humans seemed like the reasoning of a head that had become disconnected from the body of British farming. Only a tiny, tiny proportion of the cows slaughtered were ever shown to have been infected. Saturn, always traditionally viewed as the planet of agriculture, remained within a degree of Algol through most of March.

It was a holocaust, with nearly four million farm animals slaughtered. Computer boffins in London (at Imperial College and the Royal Society) advised the government, overruling the advice of the recognised experts on foot-and-mouth who were advocating a very different course.[7] As corpses were shovelled into mass landfills and funeral pyres burned across England, the madly-deranged official logic justifying all this seemed to resemble the writhing of Medusa's serpents. One is haunted by the memories of MAFF officials in Cumbria hunting out pet goats owned by children to kill them. Then MAFF itself dissolved in May, from guilt too terrible to bear, morphing into a more forgettable acronym.

MAFF had no shred of legal right to enter farms full of healthy cows, to exterminate them. There were a very few such farms which had the moral backbone to challenge the legality of this, and in each such case MAFF backed away. The terror they wielded was like Medusa's gaze, which paralysed the will of farmers, permitting the officials to enter. Vets up and down the country betrayed the sacred Hippocratic oath of their profession, to protect life and not take it, as they wrote the 'official' notes permitting the army to enter and kill. There were two phials of Medusa's blood that Athena gave to the physician Asclepius, one from her left side and the other from her right: one would kill, and the other would cure. The first of these was here used.


The Vivid Algol-Types



Algol types


Picasso's cubism The great 20th-century Spanish artist Pablo Picasso had Jupiter conjunct Algol. Cubism began with his famous Demoiselles d'Avignon, an in-your-face grouping of whores with the viewer as client. This new brutalism ushered in the twentieth century, with the female form disintegrating under his torture. His agonising Guernica is a passionate denunciation of the horrors of war. The Existentialist Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre also had Jupiter on Algol: his philosophical conclusions, "Man is a useless passion" and "Hell is other people" seem rather Algol-ish.[8] Around 1940/41 at his Jupiter-Algol return he became a prisoner of war and is said to have experienced his most productive period.

This star makes vivid, intense people. The freedom-fighter Joan of Arc (Algol conjunct Saturn) was burnt at the stake. The dancer Isadora Duncan (Algol conjunct Pluto) died as her scarf caught in the car rear wheel. The ballet dancer Margot Fonteyn (Algol conjunct Mars) had a husband who was shot in the neck, leaving him paralysed: he had to watch her wonderful movements, himself immobile. John Lennon (Algol conjunct Uranus) was shot in the back. Stephen King (Algol conjunct North Node), master of horror, whose books keep turning into films, nearly died after being run over by a truck, and should have died, but somehow recovered. Heart-throb Johnny Depp (Algol conjunct Venus), had to grapple with a headless fiend in Sleepy Hollow, and found out who Jack the Ripper was, in From Hell.

"This star seems to contain immense female passion and power" wrote Bernadette Brady. She added:

"Algol represents a strong consuming passion that may devour you with anger and rage. If one can contain an unconscious compulsion to take revenge, and from that passion return a more productive outcome, Algol is one of the most powerful stars in the sky. Whatever planet it affects in your chart will be charged with strong, intense sexual energy that has the potential to be wonderful, of if repressed, to lead to rage or violence." [9]

Brady's words apply to Picasso, but in a rather unpleasant manner, as (one gathers) he used to give a picture to husbands whose wife he seduced. They also apply to Princess Diana (Algol conjunct Venus) who kept a vibrator sex-aid device as her lucky mascot, which had to accompany her on official visits. [10]

Diana described life with her husband as "real, real torture".[11] She found death with her true love, mangled in metal. She was the 'People's Princess', our 'Queen of Hearts', and her life gave a brilliant expression to that Venus Algol-contact. She chose her stirring wedding-hymn, I vow to thee, my country, sung to Hosts's Jupiter-theme (suitably accompanied by - as they walked down the aisle - the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction just rising above the horizon, at noon of 29th July, 1981). Its words:

"the love that asks no questions, the love that pays the price, and lays upon the altar, the final sacrifice" [12]

were appropriate. She showed a positive way to use this heavy star, by touching AIDS victims, walking through minefields and hugging the disinherited.





Her bodyguard Sergeant Barry Mannakee became too close to her, and did what a bodyguard isn't meant to do, soon after which he ended up decapitated from a motor-bike accident on May 14th, 1987.[13] Prince Charles informed her about this tragic event in a brutally casual manner a day or so later as she was getting out of a car to meet some photographers - close to or maybe on the day of Sun conjunct Algol! Di was distraught and was convinced that Mannakee had been bumped off by MI5. This was the time in her life when mortal fear entered her soul: with Pluto transiting her Neptune, Saturn on her ascendant and the Sun crossing her Venus-Algol.[14] Her longest-lasting affair was with James Hewitt, and ended - he revealed to the BBC - after he received several warnings to discontinue his relationship with the Princess, lest a similar fate befall him.[15] An MI5 agent visited his London flat and warned him, "If you do not stop seeing Diana you will suffer the same fate as Barry Manakee and die in a road accident". [16] He took the advice.

According to Diana Rosenberg, Algol in a chart doesn't necessarily mean that one will inflict or be the victim of horror and mayhem:

"you will not be able to ignore suffering and horror, or brush it aside... The Algol placement on a chart insists upon a confrontation and assimilation of these harsh aspects of human experience in this lifetime. Some of the fixed stars are harsh, yes. But to a purpose. Each defines an area that will be tapped for good or ill; the tests are intense and unavoidable. Algol, like other stars, confers tasks upon us which, if comprehended and accepted, offer great rewards of power and creativity. These stellar challenges are not to be feared, but understood and used in a positive manner." [17]





The Guillotine


The French monarchy in the 18th century had strongly associated itself with solar symbolism - le Roi soleil, and all that - so it seems appropriate that a solar eclipse marked its demise. The eclipse of May, 1790 was on Algol.[18] The French Revolution hinged around it: its ringing declarations of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity came the year before, then the Guillotine followed swiftly after. In June of 1790, the newly-elected government of France abolished nobility and titles. King Louis XVI fled into hiding, but he got caught.

Joseph Guillotin was a sensitive young man, who just wanted to take the pain out of dying. One would hardly feel a thing, he explained. The Guillotine, as it came to be called, was agreed upon in December, 1789. It was first used on April 25th, 1792, in Paris, so its construction was over the Algol-eclipse. At its first use, Mercury stood within a couple of degrees of that eclipse-position, two years earlier. The King of France was beheaded on the morning of 21 January, 1793, after the Moon that night had crossed over Algol. The 'Great Terror' descended between June and July of 1794, when heads were a-rolling by the thousand. Saturn (aka the Grim Reaper) reached Algol in mid-June, 1794. On June 10th a law was passed, "establishing the regime known as the Great Terror. In future there will be no preliminary questioning of defendents or witnesses ..."

A mystical mood of ecstasy arose. On June the 8th in Paris,

... the entire country today celebrated what has been termed 'The Supreme Being and Nature'. From early morning, the residents of this city were decorating their houses with flowers and leaves and making their way through the Tuileries to join a procession led by Maximilien Robespierre himself, carrying an ear of wheat.[19]

Indeed, according to the poet William Wordsworth:

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven. [20]

A guiding figure here was Robespierre, the lawyer and diplomat, who said that "Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible". But, in late July even he had to submit to the Guillotine ... facing upwards. "See how nice Saturn can be?" was Diana Rosenberg's laconic comment. The period of Terror ended abruptly, as soon as Saturn had finished transiting over Algol. The French kept their Guillotine, until the 1970s.



Tesla, the Electrical Wizard


Nicola Tesler To discern a more constructive side to this demon-star - which isn't easy - we turn to the chart of Nicola Tesla. As the quintessential mad scientist, his visions set the world a-throbbing with A/C electricity. The problem here is that his chart had virtually no Uranus aspects, except for a rather weak quintile. Its Uranus does however conjunct Algol, to half a degree, and this is, I suggest, a key to his genius. Consider the following account of one of his lecture-demonstrations, in the year 1893, by his most recent biographer:

Extending his fingers like a preening peacock, the electric sorcerer issued flames of lightning as if he were Thor himself. "The streamers offer no particular inconvenience" he assured the audience ... With his coil still charged and flames still shooting from his head, a number of other effects were displayed including the running of motors by way of energy through his body and the lighting of a variety of colourful tubes which the inventor waved about as if they were phosphorescent rapiers... After the lecture, he was shimmering from after-effects and still emitting ethereal flames and fine haloes of splintered light. [21]

Do these effects resemble the writhing snakes around Medusa's head? Tesla's demonstrations always involved coils and mysterious lamps, the latter being lit up from a distance, without wires. Rich financiers begged him to manufacture these, it was what they most desired. The financial nightmares that so undermined his life would have been solved at a stroke if only he could have done that - but, he never could, or at least he never did, and to this day no-one knows how they worked.

At his Uranus-opposition, as Uranus moved into opposition with Algol, Tesla's technology harnessed the power of Niagara Falls, a thing he had dreamed of doing as a child. A celebratory dinner was organised at Niagara, at this apogee of Tesla's career, and America's top engineers and electricians gathered to celebrate and pay homage. Halfway through Tesla's speech, he had to be hustled off the stage with an excuse that he had to leave, because his speech started moving onto bizarre themes of 'free energy' beside which the energy of Niagara Falls would pale by comparison ...[22] Perhaps his unaspected Uranus had this meaning, that no-one could predict or direct the course of his unfathomable genius.





Uranus on Algol and WWII


Uranus was criss-crossing over Algol, during World War II. As London was being battered by air-raids, it stationed there on September 1, 1940. Each night through that month the Luftwaffe bombed London. The raids reached a terrible climax on the night of 29th of December with incendiary terror-bombing:

"During these hours the flames seemed to be roaring and raging from one end of the City to the other; the glare was like daylight, and the streets were filled with driving galaxies of sparks".[23]

"Mars, that terrible night, exactly opposed the Uranus station [two weeks earlier] on Medusa's Head" (Diana Rosenberg).

Miraculously, amidst the burning city, St Paul's cathedral was spared. Jupiter and Saturn met three times over 1941/41, and then transited Algol a few months later. On May 6th of 1941, Jupiter conjoined Uranus exactly on Algol, as Stalin (Algol conjunct Pluto) became Premier of the Soviet Union. A few days later on May 10th, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter and Uranus all conjoined over it. That night saw a climax of air attacks by over three hundred Luftwaffe bombers dropping incendiaries and heavy explosives on London, igniting churches and public buildings. The House of Commons and Westminster Hall were devastated, to avenge a RAF attack on Berlin.

Seeking for a date connected to the Holocaust, Diana Rosenberg found the 'Wannsee Conference' in Berlin on 20th January, 1942, when the decision to undertake the 'final solution' was made: to build death-camps and to convert existing slave-labour camps into them. Uranus then re-conjuncted Algol and became stationary. The RAF started its deliberate policy of city incineration ('strategic bombing') on March 28th, 1942 (Algol conjunct Saturn) with a night-raid on Lübeck, destroying that historic city.

The first atom bomb had Mars on Algol. A mushroom cloud rose over the sands of New Mexico, produced by a grapefruit-sized lump of plutonium. On July 16th 1945, with Mars within 20 arcminutes of Algol,[24] the desert sands of Alamogordo turned to glass. 'Pluto's element' went critical. The power of the atom was unleashed in this event, codenamed 'Trinity' by Robert Oppenheimer. Albert Einstein (Algol conjunct Pluto) had no inkling of the dire consequences lurking in his equations, until after Pluto's appearance in 1930. He then wrote to Rooseveldt, advising that the Bomb should be built. His advice was taken - much though he regretted this, in later years. (The first controlled nuclear-fission chain reaction took place three years earlier on December 2nd, 1942 when Enrico Fermi's team at Chicago switched on a uranium pile, as the Sun conjuncted Antares, 'Heart of the Scorpion').



Trinity: man's first controlled chain reaction - 16th July 1945, Alamogordo, NM, 5:29 am (Mountain war time).




Two Rock' n' Roll Groups


If there is such a thing as the astrology of rock'n'roll, then Uranus' stationing twice on Algol 1940-42 has to be pretty central. In the 1940/41 war-period, John Lennon and Bob Dylan were born with Uranus on Algol, with six months separating their births. In the late fifties Lennon and Stuart Sutcliffe became friends at art college in Liverpool, and may have been lovers. Born close in time, they had a Uranus-Uranus conjunction over the demon-star. It was Sutcliffe who proposed the name 'Beetle' [sic] for the group that was gathering around himself and Lennon.

In Hamburg, in May 1961, a drugged-out Lennon, "seized with one of his fits of uncontrollable rage", beat up his aesthete friend, who ended up on the pavement being kicked repeatedly in the head by Lennon - wearing his pointed 'winklepicker' shoes.[25] Sutcliffe lost consciousness, and Lennon ran off in a panic.[26] It gradually became evident that the former was somehow afflicted, and then alas that he was dying, which happened on 10th April 1962. The post-mortem ascertained the cause of death as a brain tumour, and revealed an indentation below the ear, next to the brain injury, the result of a traumatic incident.



Stuart Sutcliffe and
John Lennon in 1960

Within months of this death, the Beatles as we know them had come together: they could only form, once Sutcliffe had departed. Only years later did Lennon confess his haunting secret: his inner torment he expressed in Cold Turkey, his terrible guilt in Instant Karma. His career was framed between the death of his best and closest friend in 1962, and himself being killed in 1980, under equally spooky circumstances. If the lunar nodes are concerned with fate and destiny, their 18.6-year cycle measured out the interval between the death of 'fifth Beatle' Stuart Sutcliffe by Lennon on 10th April 1962 and Lennon's death by Chapman on 7th December 1980 - to within one degree. Instant karma came and got him. I guess the Hamburg fight was in mid-May, as the Sun transited Algol, and the two natal Uranus positions of Sutcliffe and Lennon. Without Lennon's terrible act, the Beatles could not have existed.



Lennon's Moon is opposite Pluto and his Sun is in a close quintile to it, appropriate for his Plutonic fate. He was born and killed on Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions, in trine to each other, the first of which squared a lunar-node axis present symmetrically at both of the deaths. There are profound geometric structures in this chart.


Sir Mick Jagger has his Moon on Algol. This is relevant to his songs about women, for example: She was skilled in the arts of deception, I could tell by her bloodstained hands, or Help me, please doctor, I'm damaged/ There's a pain where there once was a heart/ The girl I'm to marry is a four-legged sow ... and the brutality in his treatment of them. Matter, mater.

Rivalry existed, in the early Rolling Stones group, as Brian Jones (Algol conjunct Uranus, the latter stationary) kept getting more fan mail than Jagger. The creative power of this group came from a Mars-Moon synastry between these two, right on the demon-star - for the seven years that Jones was in it. Their first number one hit It's All Over Now (blaming Her for everything) was produced at the start of their first American tour in June 1964, just as Mars was crossing over Algol. They were staying at a studio with blues singer Muddy Waters, where, they felt, the very sound of rock'n'roll had been born - a suitable venue for this Algol transit. Its vibrant Mars-energy made everyone get up and dance.



Brian Jones and
Mick Jagger in 1965

Brian Jones became increasingly dissolute and unreliable from excess drugs and drink, until eventually the group had to get rid of him. Or, in another version, he was discovered reading the Bible to his grandmother, and viewed as being not 'bad' enough to be a proper Rolling Stone. Either way Jagger told him that he had to leave, as was announced on June 9th, 1969. Weeks later, Jones was held underwater in his own swimming-pool by an irate builder (at ten o'clock at night on July 2nd), who afterwards sloped off and eluded prosecution.[27] It was in A.A. Milne's house at Ashdown Forest in Surrey, surrounded by statues of Christopher Robin etc., that the lone Stone sank. The death at twenty-seven years of the talented young man who had brought the Rolling Stones together was made to appear as some kind of consequence of his dissolute lifestyle (Like Jimi Hendrix, he died at his Uranus-trine return). Venus was then conjunct Algol to within the arcminute, Neptune was in opposition within half a degree, and Venus was conjunct the IC. Astral symbolism doesn't come better than that! Jones and Jagger had a joint Algol-transit on that night, terminus for The Stones' sitar player. A free Hyde-Park rock concert scheduled for July 5th could not be cancelled: butterflies were released, and some lines of Shelley's Adonais were read out by Jagger in memoriam, to a crowd of half a million.

We can now see what the two greatest rock-and-roll bands of all time had in common! Their lead singers had direct Algol contacts to their natal charts, and each group had an artist who drew it together in the beginning, both of whom also had direct Algol contacts - and both of these were mysteriously bumped off in their prime: the horror-scope of Algol. Astral philosophers may here wish to exhume those early Rolling Stones records. The macabre demise of these rock icons has been in each case documented in not one but two books published on the subject. [25-27]



'I am petrified by ...'


Medusa/Algol is what petrifies us. Saddam Hussein, torturer, has his Mercury on Algol. Iraq's war with Iran was the longest of the 20th century, in which over a million died. The Ayatollah Khoumeni of Iran had his Sun on Algol, so a dire Algol Sun-Mercury synastry was present between the two implacable war-leaders. How different things would have been, had those neighbours, formerly Persia and Chaldea, not fallen out! Here was the myth born: as Perseus in the story (named after 'Persia') flew over the desert sands, drops of Medusa's blood fell and writhing snakes sprung up. Andromeda was supposedly tied up at Haifa, in Israel. Two of the Rivers of Paradise run though Iraq, where astrology was born (Tigris and Euphrates: Genesis, Ch.2). Mercury concerns writing and communication, and in Baghdad people queued to see a six hundred page copy of the Koran written with Saddam's own blood. He donated it, a half-litre at a time, over three years, by way of expressing thanks to Allah for reaching his 60th birthday.

Ariel Sharon, Israel's Prime Minister, has his Moon on Algol and conjunct the Sun of Israel (the latter being two degrees away from Algol). He is known for comments like, "The Palestinians must be hit and it must be very painful: we must cause them losses, victims, so that they can feel the heavy price"[28] - a propos of the March 2002 re-invasion of the Occupied Territories.

The name of the star derives from the Arabic, ghoul, reflecting its near eclipse every few days; and the medical term Algology (from the Latin) means 'the study of pain'.[29] It has been viewed as "the most evil, violent, and dangerous star in the heavens"[30], but maybe we ought today to try and appreciate more the vivid and intense creative power that it can bring to those touched by it. One could say that it awakens us to the darker chords of life's symphony, and if so May 16 is a day to ponder such matters, as the Sun crosses its longitude.

... when the Gorgon
Arrived and ripped her face off
And threw it to the floor.
Such a shocking Beauty born.
Ted Hughes [31]



This essay has been inspired by the section on Algol in Diana Rosenberg's Fixed Stars and Constellations website. I stayed within 1½° of orb, and have only used conjunctions and not other aspects (eg, the 'Ripper' murders began on 31 August, 1888 the body being found at 3.45 am with throat cut: Algol opposite Mars to ½° orb - would you count that?) Can we face the petrifying truth? Or will Athene's mirror that Perseus used enable us to reflect upon it?




Birth Data
With proximity of natal planet to Algol (+ means greater long. than Algol):

Joan of Arc 6.1.1412 (SA -1°1')
Joseph Conrad 3.12.1857 (UR +54')
Isadora Duncan 26.5.1877 (PL -23')
Bob Dylan 24.5.1941 (UR +1°6')
Albert Einstein 14.3.1879 (PL +1')
Margot Fonteyn 18.5.1919 (MA -50')
Joseph Guillotine 28.5.1738 (N.NODE +1°39')
Brian Jones 28.2.42 (MA +30', UR +1°5')
Stephen King 21.9.47 (N.NODE +36')
John Lennon 9.10.1940 (UR +2')
Pablo Picasso 25.10.1881 (JU -1°11')
Jean-Paul Sartre 21.6.1905 (JU -48')
Joseph Stalin 18.12.1878 (PL +14')
Stuart Sutcliffe 23.6.40 (UR -1° 14')
Nicola Tesla 10.7.1856 (UR +30').

With Algol-conjunctions to faster-moving planets:

Saddam Hussein 28 April 1937 4 a.m. BAT Tikrit. (ME -1°17') Times given range from 3 to 10 am (Rhodden:XX)
Sir Mick Jagger 26.7.1943, Dartford UK. Holliday quotes Scavullo on Men 6.30 am 'from an interview with him' GDWT (MO +30'); but the doctor who delivered him told A.Bagley 2-3 a.m., (MO -1°20'); Rhodden:A
Ayatollah Ruh. Khomeini 17.5.1900 13 hrs Khomeyn, Iran; (SU +1°00') Rhodden:DD
Ariel Sharon 27.2.1928 07.36 EET - 2.00, Kafr Malal, Israel (MO +12'). His mother recalled 'about one hour after sunrise,' which was then at 6.36 am.; Rhodden:A
Lady Diana Spencer 1.7.61 19.45 BST - 1.00h, Sandringham (VE -1°23'); Rhodden:A
Johnny Depp 9.6.63 9h CST +6h, Owensboro, KY (VE +14') Rhodden AA.

References:
  1 ] www.perseus.tufts.edu/classes/finalp.html - 'The Gorgon Medusa'.
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  2 ] Homer, Iliad, 5:841-50, Fagle's translation.
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  3 ] D. Tressemer et. al., Signs in the Heavens at the End of a Millenium, CO 1999, p.148.
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  4 ] Ovid, Metamorphoses, 4:1181-95, Thomas More translation.
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  5 ] Elizabeth Vreede, Astronomy and Anthoposophy, 2001 Anastasi Ltd., UK, p.279.
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  6 ] website www.eaglestation.com/medusa.html, by Bill Hutchinson
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  7 ] C. Booker, Not the Foot and Mouth Report, Private Eye Special Report, London Nov. 2001.
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  8 ] Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness 1943 (L'Etre et le Néant) had the concluding words: "L'Homme est un passion inutile", (32nd Edn Paris 1949 p.708); his No Exit 1944 had "L'enfer c'est vous autres".
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  9 ] Bernadette Brady, Brady's Book of Fixed Stars (New York 1998), p.190. N.B., the star-comments in the 'Solar Fire' program are also by Brady.
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  10 ] Ken Wharfe, Diana's Closely Guarded Secret (Michael O'Mara Books, London 2002), p.201.
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  11 ] Wharfe, Ibid, p.174 (phone call to James Gilbey).
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  12 ] K.Kelley, The Royals (Warner NY 1997), p.285..
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  13 ] http://dc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/65743/index.php No UK newspaper breathed a whisper of this event, until years later: I first saw this date in the Daily Express 9.12.2004.
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  14 ] This happened 'on the way to the Cannes film festival' (Kelley ref.13, p.347) which was May 7th-19th that year.
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  15 ] The Times 3.6.98, on the interview with Hewitt in that evening's Panorama program, 'Diana-Secrets of The Crash.'
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  16 ] Express 9.12.2000
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  17 ] Diana Rosenberg website http://pw1.netcom.com/~ye-stars
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  18 ] Within 7': Algol was 23° 37', the eclipse of 14 May 1790 was at 23° 30' of Taurus.
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  19 ] The Millenium Year by Year Doring Kindersley, 1999, p.1793
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  20 ] William Wordsworth, French Revolution, as it appeared to Enthusiasts (1809) and The Prelude bk. xi, l.108
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  21 ] Marc Seifer, Wizard: The Life and Times of Nicola Tesla (N.J. 1998), p.112.
According to the website http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/96jul/tesla.html (July 2005) : Tesler was "born at midnight on July 9, 1856, in the village of Smiljan, in the province of Lika, Croatia".
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  22 ] Ibid.
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  23 ] Front Line 1940-41, The Official Story of the civil Defence of Britain, 1942, HMSO
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  24 ] For this Mars-contact to Algol, see Ernst Troinski, Das Horoskop des Atom-Zietalters, Munich 1975.
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  25 ] Pauline Sutcliffe, The Beatle's Shadow, Stuart Sutcliffe 2001 p.133.
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  26 ] Albert Goldman, The Lives of John Lennon, Bantam London 1988, p.137
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  27 ] Terry Rawlings Who Killed Christopher Robin? The truth behind the murder of Brian Jones, Bextree 1994 p.190 (Thanks to John Etherington for advice); also G.Giuliano, Paint it Black.
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  28 ] Mark Curtis, Web of Deceit Britain's real role in the world Vintage, 2003, p.124.
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  29 ] Stedman's Medical Dictionary, 27th Edn.
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  30 ] Manley Palmer Hall, Astrological Keywords (LA Phil. Res. Soc, reprint).
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  31 ] Ted Hughes, Birthday Letters, 1998, p.130.
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Nick KollerstromNick Kollerstrom has a Cambridge science degree and has worked as a physics schoolteacher. He is recognised throughout the astrological community for his pioneering studies that have brought his scientific background into exciting fields of research on planets, plants and metals. He has been actively involved in the study of planet-metal associations and other matters of a Hermatic nature for 30 years, and has lectured on these subjects since 1975. His work in medical research resulted in his book Lead on the Brain - a plain guide to Britain's No 1 pollutant. His investigation of lunar effects upon plant growth led in the 1980s to his gardener's guide Planting by the Moon and the popular annuals Gardening and Planting by the Moon. Nick Kollerstrom's latest title, Crop Circles: The Hidden Form, published by Wessex books, offers a new way of experiencing the crop circle mystery, through the geometry of the forms revealed in crops.





© Nick Kollerstom, 2005. Published in Astro-Logos, July 2005.



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