Astrology of the Hyderabad floods

 

In the middle of October, people across India were startled by horrific videos of flooding in Hyderabad. One video from the Falaknuma area showed a man being swept away by the gushing water. Others showed cars bobbing around like rubber ducks in a bathtub. The city’s administrators said that the rainfall between October 14 and October 21 was so intense, the city’s drainage system did not have the capacity to handle it. That would have been a credible claim if the waterlogging had been a one-off phenomenon. But Hyderabadis complain that the city has begun to flood routinely over the past decade, irrespective of the quantum of rainfall. Among the key reasons for this regular waterlogging is the rapid concretisation of the city, as buildings take over open spaces, nalas, tanks, ponds and lakes. This concretisation is the result of municipal policies relating to development, roads, transport, buildings and real estate, dictated by the Telangana government, without public debate and consultation. https://bit.ly/3jDNDql  

In mundane astrology, a national chart contains clues to the key issues that its people must face. India’s national chart is based on its independence from  Britain (Aug.15, 1947: 0:00 hrs IST, Delhi). Currently, the most important transit in this chart is Saturn in Capricorn moving opposite India’s radix Moon (27cn) in Cancer. 

Opposing signs in astrology represent contrasting approaches.  The pair of Cancer and Capricorn share a theme of parenting.  Just like their rulers Moon and Saturn, each of them approaches the matter from a completely different standpoint. Cancer represents the mothering, nurturing side and Capricorn represents the fathering, disciplining side of our personality.  In mundane astrology the Moon stands for the masses while Saturn represents the rulers. Anybody following recent news from India will immediately recognize how the masses feel alienated from their rulers. The complete indifference of the rulers to the problems faced by the masses during the COVID crisis has created a major divide. 

Much like the aloof parent (father), the sign of Capricorn, and its ruler Saturn, describes the structures and boundaries which separate us from others. It demands the development of emotional self sufficiency, self reliance and self control, ambition and achievement in the world. However, an overemphasized Capricorn or Saturn can place too much reliance on structures.  Think of the buildings, roads, infrastructure that make up the concrete jungle that we call cities as ruled by Capricorn (Saturn) while the families that live in those structures bonded by feelings as ruled  by Cancer (Moon).

  Capricorn polarises by cutting off its own neediness from consciousness, withdraws from the presumed threat or danger of emotional contact, and judges, criticises or punishes any dependency needs in themselves and in others. People living on the Capricorn end of this axis tend to deny themselves the basic comforts - feelings, contact with nature and the body (maternal water sign Cancer). Out of touch with their feelings, they tend to gravitate towards environments which are themselves harsh – e.g. concrete jungle cities  (Capricorn) that have devoured mother nature (Cancer) . For them, the only safe relationships are contextual – based on familial, social and professional roles (Capricorn) – as long as these do not require or force the need for emotional intimacy (Cancer). 

Shown here is India’s October lunar return chart drawn for Hyderabad. Notice the Moon-Saturn opposition aligned very significantly with the horizon. With Moon in the water sign Cancer is it at all surprising that the streets of Hyderabad were flooded and the reason is simply an overemphasis on the earth sign Capricorn ruled by Saturn described in the article above as “the rapid concretisation of the city, as buildings take over open spaces, nalas, tanks, ponds and lakes”. 

Finally, I leave readers to ponder over the Sabian symbol [1] for India’s radix Moon [27cn06]. 

PHASE 118 (CANCER 28°): AN INDIAN GIRL INTRODUCES HER WHITE LOVER TO HER ASSEMBLED TRIBE. 

KEYNOTE: Inner rebirth through a total acceptance of the primordial values manifest in the human body and its natural functions. 

Even as this symbol was formulated in the clairvoyant's mind, a few individuals belonging to the American intelligentsia were trying to find in their absorption into the culture of the Indian pueblos of the Southwest a solution to their intellectual artificiality and personal emotional emptiness. Fifty years later this process has gained great momentum, especially among the disenchanted youth of our affluent middle class. The soul — or in Jungian terms, the "anima"— is leading the sophisticated and colorless (white!) intellect to a level of consciousness at which man can again operate in tune with the vast process of the biosphere and recover the simplicity and the inner peace which city life and business deny. 

At this third stage of the twenty-fourth five-fold sequence the situations presented in the two preceding symbols can be seen combined and projected into a possibility of dramatic transformation. What is shown here is an emotional and warm commitment to the RETURN TO NATURE which today appeals so strongly to the new generation, but which Jean Jacques Rousseau, many great Romanticists and Gauguin long ago advocated and exemplified. 

[1] https://bit.ly/3jM0ZAB