The massive killing of concert goers in Las Vegas is in the news, and since an exact time the shooting started is available, I had expected to write about the chart for this incident. But just to expand the scope of this entry, I decided to cover the charts for two other recent mass shootings.  There are so many it was an embarrassment of riches, so to speak, but I finally decided on two more very famous incidents: the shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado and the Sandy Hook shootings in Connecticut.  Then we are looking at an incident from the East Coast, one from the center of the country, and one from the West.  But mass killing didn’t just happen recently.  There were many massacres of Native Americans throughout American history, but they are not well timed.  But one early incident occurred in the Twenties involving school children that we have a date and time for and I will look at this also.

Looking at the chart for the first shot at the crowd, we see the long lasting transits Uranus semisquare Neptune, which goes in and out of orb over the next three years, and only sets the background to the craziness of the world during these years, and Uranus opposite Jupiter, not nearly as long lasting as the previous aspect — Jupiter moves through one sign per year — and indicates an excess of unpredictability.  But the most obvious aspect is Saturn just above the Descendant, about half a degree.  The exact opposition to the Ascendant would happen about four minutes later, in the midst of the shooting.  Saturn has a bad reputation, called the “greater malefic”.  Saturn opposite the Ascendant says that something bad is coming into your environment from the outside, which is exactly what happened.  Notice also the Venus-Mars conjunction trine Pluto.  The Mars trine Pluto is quite close, orb about nine minutes.  Mars-Pluto suggest great violence, but this aspect is a trine, not a square.  Most people think a trine is soft and easy, unlike a square.  But this is not quite true.  A trine indicates action that goes on easily, without causing an upset which is noticeable.  In the case it is now known that the shooter amassed a huge supply of weapons and carefully planned his action.  The whole operation appeared to come about without difficulty, indicative of a trine.  Of course this aspect was long lasting, whereas the Saturn on the Ascendant was very brief, since the Ascendant changes at the rate of approximately one degree every four minutes, so this aspect was only valid for several minutes, exactly the time of the shooting.

And here is a chart for the transits at that time in the US chart.  We notice that both Neptune is square the US Ascendant and Uranus is sesquiquadrate that Ascendant.  This occurs because of the Uranus semisquare Neptune aspect mentioned above, but in this case we see that that aspects is so situated that both planets aspect the US Ascendant, meaning that the craziness mentioned about directly impacts the US.  Transiting Saturn is opposite the US Mars — frustrated energy.

The next chart is for the shooting at Columbine High in Colorado in 1999.  Among other things, this shooting highlights the hypocrisy of American leaders in regards to mass shootings and gun control.  Bill Clinton, President of America at the time of the shooting, spoke out against the stupidity of this shooting at the same time that he was bombing Serbia and killing many civilians.  I suppose very few of his listeners at the time noted the extreme conflict between what he said and what he did.  The old saying “Do as I say, not as I do” was never more useful.  In this incident, two high school students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 13 students and teachers and wounded 24.

In this chart we find Mercury exactly — less than a quarter degree — on the Midheaven. This event was communicated – Mercury — fairly immediately to the populace at large. Everyone knew about it.  To further accentuated the people’s knowledge of this event, we have the Moon (people) square mercury and the Midheaven.  What is most noticeable is the T-square involving Saturn opposite Mars square Neptune.  It is hard to imagine three planets with a more negative reputation.  Mars square Neptune, also seen in the US chart, show misapplied or confused energies.  Saturn and Mars shows frustrated energies that do not come out the way expected (the two lads involved had expected an explosion from bombs they had planted, but that explosion never happened) or are frustrated.  Saturn and Neptune have been discussed before, simply indicated the disillusion with what had once been thought to be a good idea.  Notice that the orbs in all three of these aspects are tight; the Mars Saturn opposition is within 20 minutes, and Mars is retrograde, adding to the underhanded nature of actions at this time.

The third chart here is for the shooting at Sandy Hook School in Connecticut.  In this incident 20 year old Adam Lanza shot 20 students all of whom were under eight years old, and six adult at the elementary school.  He had earlier killed his mother and at the end of the killing at the school he committed suicide.  The chart is not very impressive; the tightest aspect is in the Sun-Saturn semisquare, which is about seven seconds of arc.  But let us look a little deeper, at the fourth harmonic chart.  The fourth harmonic chart, like any other harmonic chart, shows nothing that is not already in the primary chart, just like a microscope shows nothing that is not already in the thing being observed.  But the fourth harmonic chart shows things that aren’t easily noticeable in the primary chart, things that can be very important.  And in this chart we see that there is a T-Square involving some very interesting planets.  Now realize this is not a T-square, involving an opposition and two squares, in the conventional sense.  The “opposition” in this case is the exact semisquare between Sun and Saturn pointed out above.  In the fourth harmonic chart a semisquare or a sesquiquadrate appear as oppositions, since they are based on one-eight of a circle and eight times one half (opposition) is four.  The squares in the fourth harmonic chart are actually semi-octiles, multiples of 22.5 degrees, but important hard aspects.  Here we have Sun, Saturn, Neptune, showing a difficult day, one where things do not turn out as expected.

And just to show that large scale mass murders are not just due to guns, here is a crime that occurred in the (Roaring) Twenties involving dynamite.  This took place in the Bath Township of Michigan.  This incident still remains, even after Sandy Hook, the deadliest school massacre in American History.  At the time dynamite was a relatively new explosive, having been invented by Alfred Nobel 60 years earlier.  Bath was a small village near the capital of Michigan, Lansing.  An initial explosion at 8:45 in the morning was from a cache of dynamite that had previously be laid.  Not all of the dynamite planted exploded.  A member of the school board named Andrew Kehoe drove up to the school with a dynamite filled pickup truck which he blew up by shooting the truck, killing himself and several bystanders.  Forty-five people died as a result of his actions, including 38 students.

So here is a chart for the main explosion at the school, from dynamite which was on a timer.  There was also an explosion at the same time at Kehoe’s house, which killed his ill wife, and explosion later at the school when Kehoe shot his truck, killing himself, the school superintendent, and some others.  There is a square between Sun-Mercury and Neptune — confused communication and a day (Sun) of deception.  But notice Mars conjunct Pluto with Mars less than a degree off the Ascendant– violence, bloodshed in the environment.  Jupiter is right on the Midheaven, and  Jupiter is considered the “greater benefic”.  Perhaps the deaths would be much greater if all the dynamite planted at the school went off, so there was some luck involved.  Also, many students were on a break and so avoided the blast.  But Jupiter also suggests the magnitude of this killing, which as I said before is still the deadliest in US history, and it was at a small school.  And Jupiter is conjunct Uranus (see Richard Tarnas for other meanings of the conjunction involving discovery) which reflects the opposition of the same two planets in the Las Vegas shooting chart.