The Ancient Dance Between Eros and Thanatos

 

The Ancient Dance Between Eros and Thanatos

Several years ago I came across a news article which shook me to the core. It was about a highly accomplished 104-year old British-Australian botanist, David Goodall. He travelled from Australia to Basel, Switzerland, to self-destruct by taking advantage of the liberal Swiss law which allows suicide on demand. Aug 22

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/08/22/the-spirit-of-thanatos-haunts-moribund-west/

 

In his essay The spirit of Thanatos haunts a moribund West Stephen Karganovic discusses the death of British-Australian botanist, David Goodall using him as an example of how the modern West scornfully rejects transcendence and disdains its gifts. 

The reason I thought Goodall’s story was extraordinary is that his desire to end a long and apparently rewarding life by assisted suicide was for none of the reasons one would normally suppose. He was successful and honoured in his profession. He was not suffering from a terminal or excruciatingly painful condition that might have explained his ardent desire for oblivion in preference to an intolerably agonising life.

 

The academic died "peacefully" at 12:30 (10:30 GMT) at the Life Cycle clinic in Basel, from an infusion of Nembutal, a barbiturate, said Philip Nitschke, founder of Exit International, the group which helped him take his own life. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-44069885

 

In Freudian theory, Thanatos represents the death drive, while Eros represents the life drive. Where Thanatos leads people to experience aggression, engage in risky behaviors, and re-experience past traumas, Eros helps promote survival, reproduction, and social cooperation.

Eros was the god of love, fertility, and passion in ancient Greece while Thanatos was the human manifestation of death.

 

A chart drawn for the time of Goodall’s death has an exact Moon-Neptune [16pi04] in the 8^th house of death. It is quite appropriate that the star here is Achernar, alpha Eridanus - the last star of the celestial River of Life where it meets the sea. And the reason why this chart has come alive now is Saturn transiting over the radix Neptune. 

In a previous post I wrote about the challenge this presents: 

More specifically, Saturn is conjunct the star alpha (α) Eridanus, Achernar, that marks the end of Eridanus, the River of Life and Ankaa, the Phoneix. The phoenix in mythology is said to live for 500 or 1000 years [1]. Symbolically, this area marks death and the regeneration into new life as the river meets the infinte sea symbolizing immortality. 

On the Ascendant [18le] are stars of the Lion about which Diana Rosenberg writes: 

feeling trapped in their bodies,...a few of them in their haste for heaven become seriously derailed indulging in gotterdammerung impulse for self-destruction, even self-immolation. She lists both “suicide” as well as “possible major turn-arounds after crises. 

For Jupiter [18sc] which squares the Ascendant and is trine Moon/Neptune [16pi] Diana Rosenberg writes: 

battle over brooding depression and despair but always with the regenerative, renewing potential of the healing serpent. 

The lesson we need to recognize in Pisces, is that all beings are collectively part of a federation, that separation is a false reading of life and that the perpetuation of consciousness requires us to surrender selfhood for transcendence to a new life. 

The Sabian symbol for the degree of Moon/Neptune conjunction in Pisces is:

PHASE 347 (PISCES 17°): AN EASTER PARADE.

Clearly suggesting some kind of self-renewal in response to the Christ mythos and not self-destruction. 

So why has this issue of a struggle between Thanatos and Eros been brought up now? If we draw a chart for the current Full Moon of Aug. 19 at Basel, Switzerland we find that it very significantly straddles the horizon with its T-square to Uranusit [27ta11].

 

The Sabian for Uranus is: 

PHASE 58 (TAURUS 28°): A WOMAN, PAST HER "CHANGE OF LIFE," EXPERIENCES A NEW LOVE. 

KEYNOTE: Man's capacity to rise in consciousness and feelings above biological limitations.

The indication is that man should freely open his or her mind to the possibility of always new REBEGINNINGS. 

And as if that was not enough Uranus [27ta] is exactly trine the asteroid Eros [27vi]. Martha Wescott defines the asteroid Eros as: 

EROS: the history, experience and behavioral repertoire of eroticism; joie de vivre; what “turns you on;” the Will to Live (the “passion” for life.)