The Death of a Rover

While it’s an incredibly literal example of the current planetary transits (Mars = the literal planet and Uranus = a sudden disruption to technical equipment that causes the death of the Mars Rover), it’s also a great example of why we shouldn’t take the cause and effect of transits too literally.

Here are some things to consider:

* The Mars rover has been “dead” or without communication since last June when Mars and Uranus were in a square with each other and a large dust storm on the planet Mars presumably destroyed or disabled the rover.

* Now, as Mars conjoins Uranus and begins a new cycle, Nasa says that the rover is “dead.” They pronounce it dead. But they also say that they will continue to launch more rovers in the years to come, and one spokesperson says, “Rovers resonate with people. It’s as if you were walking on the surface. It has that kind of perspective, and it’s not a particularly alien landscape.”

* Well, we should consider that people like astrology for basically the same reason. The planets are like rovers. Cast a chart asking about whether or not a plane will be delayed and the planets become rovers, showing you the icy weather coming your way. Cast a birth chart, and look at what all the planetary rovers tell you about distant or remote places that you’ve yet to visit, technically called “your future.”

* Just because the future doesn’t appear to exist doesn’t mean that it isn’t already there. It’s also “not an alien landscape.”

* If the past, the present, and the future, are all part of an ever-present circle that never stops turning, that doesn’t have an ultimate beginning or ending, then the planets are like rovers, traveling through the landscapes of too many dimensions to be named, too many times, places, people, and circumstances to be named. They see, and they show, and they speak, and we like that because, then, it’s as if we are walking on the surface of the places that we can’t see but that we know, know deep down in our heart, and in the far outreaches of our mind, to be “already present.”

* With astrology, the world, the cosmos, becomes less alien to us, even as we constantly search, probe, and reach for a feeling of at-homeness.

* Mars/Uranus is the picture of a Mars rover that got blasted by the winds, literally on Mars, but the winds were not literally caused by Mars nor were they caused by Uranus. The etymological roots of the word cause go straight down to the idea of an “origin” or “source.” But what can be said about the origin of an eternal circle? What can be said about the starting point of an eternal round? The word “Om” may be the only and finally real rover available to us when it comes to understanding eternal causes or origins.

* But, we like and need our rovers. We need to get around. We need to move through times and cycles and circles.

* Finally, a rover dies. The roots of the word rover include a sea-robber or pirate, a robber, predator, or plunderer, to spoil or plunder. Then, finally in 1970: a remote-controlled surface vehicle. Just when we start to understand the word’s true meaning, we also start to distance ourselves from it by making it into a machine.

* But let’s not forget. Rovers have been around for a long time. The planets are rovers, and so are we. They rove within us, using us to look out and about, and we use them too for the same basic reason. This has always been our relationship with the gods. When it is a relationship of reciprocation and respect that we share with the gods, when there is healthy differentiation, we find that the cosmos is singing with OM, and all rovers become holy rollers, battery packs glowing by means of the original light.

* The idea that Mars and Uranus “conjoined” and knocked out a robot on Mars, to us, is a message. A spoken word. An utterance. Cause? What cause? We are robber pirates, all of us. We are material rovers, causing madness and looting one another of our essential dignities until we once more hear the sound of our maker. Until we once more start to hum and shake with the primordial cause, hearing it rise once again: AUM…the all seeing Rover whose sole intention is to steal back our hearts and souls from the wasteland of our wanderings.

* As it was spoken in the Gita: Isvarah sarva-bhutanam, hrd-dese rjuna tisthati, bhramayan sarva-bhutani, yantrarudhani mayaya, which means, “The Supreme Lord is situated in everyone’s heart, O Arjuna, and is directing the wanderings of all living entities, who are seated as on a machine, made of the material energy.”

* On a lighter note, one has to wonder whether to use the conception or birth date for the Mars rover when generating its chart…are robots born in the mind of man or in the hands of man? And, then, what kind of awful transit was that poor Mars rover getting when Mars/Uranus decided to end his life. Was it his karma or the karma of his maker? Don’t you go stealing my idea for an amazing sci-fi novel about the karma of robots… 🙂