October 8th & 9th, 2022, brings us the peak of the Draconid meteor shower.
Predicted peak: October 9, 2022, at 1 UTC (evening of October 8 for the Americas).
When to watch: There’s no dark window for watching the Draconids in 2022. If you want to watch in moonlight, try the evening of October 8.
Overall duration of shower: October 8 through 9.
Radiant: Highest in the sky in the evening hours. See chart below.
Nearest moon phase: Full moon is 20:55 UTC on October 9. In 2022, the full or nearly full moon will drown most Draconid meteors from view.
Expected meteors at peak, under ideal conditions: Under a dark sky with no moon, you might catch 10 Draconid meteors per hour.
Note: The Draconid shower is a real oddity, in that the radiant point stands highest in the sky as darkness falls. That means that, unlike many meteor showers, more Draconids are likely to fly in the evening hours than in the morning hours after midnight. This shower is usually a sleeper, producing only a handful of languid meteors per hour in most years. But watch out if the Dragon awakes! In rare instances, fiery Draco has been known to spew forth many hundreds of meteors in a single hour. That possibility keeps many skywatchers outside – even in moonlight – during this shower. https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/everything-you-need-to-know-draconid-meteor-shower/
Draco in Greek mythology has an interesting history.
An ancient constellation which represents nearly every dragon mentioned in history. The most famous story involving Draco tells that he was the dragon that Hercules had to defeat in order to possess the Golden Apples of Hesperides. Draco is also regarded as the dragon who guarded the Golden Fleece, and the dragon that the goddess Athena defeated when the Olympian gods fought the Titans. Athena grabbed the dragon’s tail and threw it into the sky, where it became twisted around the northern pole of the sky. Draco is a long constellation, but contains few bright stars. It is located between Ursa Major and Ursa Minor (Big and Little Dippers). Its location makes it circumpolar, so it never sets below the northern horizon. https://tinyurl.com/2hb5dkpt
Though the Greek texts enjoy conflating all dragons into one, it seems, at least to this astrologer, that the Drakons existed as a separate race, that there existed more than one, and that their specific roles were as guardians for the gods.
So trusted were the Drakons that Demeter, the Goddess of Agriculture, brought her “unsmirched daughter” Persephone to them to protect. Aphrodite (Venus) had laid a spell on all the Olympian male gods to lust after Persephone, and the resulting chaos over the competition for this barely teenage girl threatened to tear Olympus apart.
Even Zeus was not immune to the spell:
The ruler of the universe, the charioteer of heaven, bowed his neck to desire–for all his greatness no thunderbolts, no lightnings helped him against Aphrodite in arms: he left the house of Hera, he refused the bed of Dione, he threw away the love of Deo, he fled from Themis, he deserted Leto – no charm was left for him but only union with Phosphine.
Demeter was so alarmed by this attention directed towards her daughter, she sought the advice of an astrologer…
She hastened with quick foot to the house of Astraios the god of prophecy [or more specifically astrology] . . `Fond mother Demeter, when the rays of the Moon are stolen under a shady cone and her light is gone, guard against a robber-bridegroom for Perephoneia, a secret ravisher of your unsmirched girl, if the threads of the Moirai can be persuaded. You will see before marriage a false and secret bedfellow come unforeseen, a half-monster cunning-minded: since I perceive the western point Ares the wife-stealer [the planet Mars] walking with the Paphian [the planet Venus], and I notice the Drakon is rising beside them both . . . ’
Concerned and alarmed by this prophecy she bore her daughter away in a chariot drawn by dragons to a secret cave and tasked them to protect Persephone. All seeing Zeus however, found the hiding place, and transformed himself into a dragon, seducing Persephone with cunning. He lured the girl to sleep by surrounding her with his soft coils and sweet kisses. Their union produced Zagreus, who by virtue of his father’s deception, was born in the snake-like shape of a dragon. [excerpted from: https://astrologyexplored.net/?p=1251]
Thus Persephone suffered her first rape.
Zeus, as the king of heaven, was the law-giver and the law-enforcer. Other gods came to him for judgments on their suits against each other. His Roman name is Jupiter, and this is how we know him in astrology. Thus, I call Jupiter by sign and position in our personal charts our sense of social justice.
In the story of Persephone, the Drakons failed to protect Persephone, and the girl suffered rape by Zeus who was either her father or her uncle. (Accounts vary) and she got pregnant. Later in the story, Zeus stole the newborn from Persephone at the time of birth and took him to Mount Olympus. In all cases, the safety and rights of Persephone were totally ignored in favor of the men who were supposed to protect her.
One has to ask, how did these Drakon, trusted guardians of the gods, get so corrupted that they bowed to the powerful instead of honoring a sacred trust?
Did they bow to powerful Zeus and give him the wink and nod to ravish their protectee, regardless of their duty to her?
We might as well ask the same of our Supreme Court, who, it appears, are the final arbiters of our rights and not the will of the people.
Once vaunted as the protector of rights, with recent rulings that favor the most conservative viewpoints shrouded in the mantle of Christian orthodoxy, the legitimacy of the entire court is called into question.
Judge Kagan said at Northwestern’s Pritzker law school:
Precedent, she said, is a “foundation stone of law,” a doctrine of stability that “tells people they can rely on the law.” But if, “all of a sudden everything is up for grabs, all of a sudden very fundamental principles of law are being overthrown … then people have a right to say, ‘You know, what’s going on there? That doesn’t seem very law-like.
Or as she put it at Salve Regina University in Rhode Island: “The court shouldn’t be wandering around just inserting itself into every hot-button issue in America, and it especially shouldn’t be doing that in a way that reflects one set of political views over another.” https://www.npr.org/2022/10/03/1126041958/supreme-court-new-term
Though meteor showers are not prophetic, they are a sign to look up and listen to the heavens, who have warnings for those who can read them.
At the peak of the Draconid Meteor shower, we see our United States chart with these transits:
The transiting Sun in Libra sits on the 10th house US Saturn in Libra, highlighting the law and legal issues. Make no mistake. The world is watching and judging us closely for the decision that our lawmakers and law keepers make.
Transiting Mercury in Virgo sits over the US Natal Neptune in the Ninth House, the significator of the Supreme Court. With Transiting Pluto sitting on top of the US Pluto in ultra-conservative Capricorn, making a trine to that Neptune, you can bet money, that the court continues unabated in its current streak to turn power into the hands of the powerful.
So not only will we continue to see stories like this:
https://www.kold.com/2022/10/01/teen-girl-denied-medication-refill-under-azs-new-abortion-law/
We’ll face new restrictions on voting rights and new reversals in personal rights and liberties.
But hey, teenagers can still purchase weapons of war, so it’s all good, right?
The Draconid Meteor shower points out the guardians’ corruption while the rape of Persephone continues unabated.
