With the discovery of the second black box from the Germanwings flight 9525 in Digne, evidence is emerging – almost daily – that the pilot of this flight planned this event. Prosecutors have found on the pilot’s computer that he was searching for methods to undertake this act which resulted in the demise of 150 souls. We take a look to this act and to ultimate self harm in general.
The Crash
Germanwings Flight 9525 (4U9525/GWI18G) was a scheduled international passenger flight from Barcelona-El Prat Airport in Spain to Düsseldorf Airport in Germany, operated by Germanwings, a low-cost airline owned by Lufthansa.
On 24 March 2015, the aircraft, an Airbus A320-200, crashed 100 kilometres (62 miles) northwest of Nice, in the French Alps, after a constant descent that began one minute after the last routine contact with air traffic control and shortly after the aircraft had reached its assigned cruise altitude. All 144 passengers and six crew members were killed.
Chart for time of accident of the Germanwings aircraft
Analysis of the aircraft’s flight data recorder confirmed that the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, deliberately crashed the aircraft. It showed that he set the autopilot to descend to 100 feet (30 metres), and that he modified the autopilot setting to increase the aircraft’s speed several times during the descent. The aircraft was travelling at 700 kilometres per hour (430 mph) when it crashed into the mountain.
At the time of the crash, lagna (the rising sign) is in Gemini, ruled by Mercury. Mercury itself is in an air sign – Aquarius – , which does not directly indicate an air accident. Mars aspects Saturn at 100% – however, Saturn is in a water sign. Moon – the ruling deity of the mind, is in opposition to Saturn and receiving aspect of Saturn. We have to ask, “astrologically, what is going on there?”. To get answers, we will need to look to some other charts.
Investigation of Lubitz
On 27 March, German detectives searched properties in Montabaur that Lubitz spent time in and removed a computer and other items for testing. They did not find a suicide note or any evidence that his actions had been motivated by “a political or religious background”. During their search of Lubitz’s apartment, detectives found a letter in a waste bin indicating that he had been declared “unfit to work” by a doctor. Germanwings reported that it had not received any sick note for the day of the flight. News accounts characterized this as “hiding an illness from his employers”. (Under German law, employers do not have access to medical records of employees, and sick notes excusing a person from work do not give information on medical conditions.) Criminal investigators revealed on 2 April that the browser history of Lubitz’s tablet computer shows that his web searches in the days leading up to the crash included “ways to commit suicide” and “cockpit doors and their security provisions”.
Conditions that lead to Ultimate Self Harm
Suicide, self harm, self-loathing, an unbearable stream of toxic thoughts in the mind. When things close down, what do you rehearse in the mind when all the options are closed down and there are no options but pain for the future? What do you do when you are attacked, betrayed, confused or confronted with exposure or a disclosure of an intolerable view of yourself in the public eye? When matters are unbearable, unacceptable, what is there left to do?
Perhaps the most debilitating thing to be told is “You can’t” … do this, you can’t do that, you are not capable of doing this, or whatever you desire. This is what feeling attacked is like, this is the feeling of options being closed down is like, this is what the feeling of betrayal of your basic humanity is something like. You are told, “You can’t” … do this, do that. No matter what you know, no matter what your training is, no matter what your desires are. You are invalidated. Your power as a person is taken away from you. You have no empowerment, no effective choices left. You need a solution to a permanent problem.
We have to keep in mind that the Ego – ahamkara (I, Me, Mine) will defend its territory. It will defend its inner space. It will look for empowerment, it will look for an effective choice. The disempowered ego will seek a powerful act of self-determination. When external choices disappear, the ego will act to regain self control and self-determination of a life path. It will seek a way out of what is unbearable and unacceptable.
Those who close down options and force the mind into a repeating self-instruction loop are predators. These can be spiritual in origin, they can be environmental factors, they can be other people who have executive, ultimate control of your future. Predators of any origin or type – human, non-human, imagined – impose behavioural regimes. Physical or psychological imprisonment is imposed. There is loss of self-determination and control over one’s life, one’s future, one’s employment, one’s reason-to-be. Physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, the fuel tanks are drained, empty.
When the fuel tanks are drained and empty, when predators shut down life and options, when loss of self-determination and control of one’s destiny happen, the ego looks for a way out. The ego looks for a small space to harvest self-control: “Here’s a decision I can make!” When the inner voice of the spirit within is replaced by external factors, social opinion, loss of face, loss of income and property, loss of home, family, security, then annihilation becomes self-preservation. It becomes “save-face” suicide.
Birth Chart of Germanwings Co Pilot set to 11am
Germanwings Co-Pilot, Andreas Lubitz
This chart is set for 11:00am as per inspiritation as the birth time for Andreas Lubitz is unknown. Several issues stand out, all planets fill one side of the chart, between the two nodes, Rahu and Ketu. This is called Karl Sarpa Yoga, and indicates that betrayal will be experienced at one time or another during the life of the native. Another significant issue is sade-sati, Lubitz was born in a period of affliction of his Moon by Saturn. One other issue is the matter of the three weak planets, Moon, Mercury and Saturn. These afflictions in this chart lay the foundations for a weak mind. When Lubitz’s former girlfriend left him, doctors advise that he was distraught. Doctors also advise that he began seeking help for mental issues during 2008, when the 12th Lord, Jupiter, was transiting the 12th house. Jupiter is a malefic for this chart.
Malefic Jupiter in the third house – conjunct Rahu – both aspect nine houses away, the house of the Moon, 100%. The house of the Moon, Scorpio, is a water sign, a sign of deep, hidden feelings and emotions. We know that Lubitz sought medical and psychiatric help on a number of occasions, and due the Moon sandi (on the border between signs, under 1° in a sign) it is deprived of energy and unable to contribute to matters of that house and sign. Here, Scorpio is the 11th house, the house of relations with peers and with society. Lubitz experienced dual weaknesses in this sign, for Mercury is also sandi, located at the end of Scorpio, at 29°26′, depriving Lubitz of the capacity to externalise deep, inner emotion and feeling. Aspect from Rahu – charakaraka (dispositor of fraud) drives a person to imagine their life and then take fraudulent steps to achieve the desired goal in the social domain (Rahu is desire and causes reincarnation) – this aspect on the 11th house creates a burning ambition to achieve a goal without regard and respect for others nor the rules.
The 1st House – located in Capricorn, has a benefic Venus, is afflicted due aspects from Mars and Ketu. Ketu behaves as Mars, per Kuja vat ketu rule. This affliction places an inner fire within driving achievement and accomplishment. It also places a disconnection from the world. The first house is the brain, the body, the face, the personality, the ahamkara – the embodied ego. The ascendant is located in Shravana nakshatra, ruled by Moon. Shravana is derived from a Sanskrit word sru which means to hear, and more importantly, the ability to hear the tradition, the externalised wisdom. Due affliction from Mars to achieve, and Ketu to ignore and take one’s own (poorly constructed) determination, we have a situation where Lubitz may well have been ignoring all external advice about his medical condition. Investigators found torn-up medical certificates in his waste-paper bin; Lubitz was in pursuit of his own goal of ultimate self-determination, disconnected from all other possible options in his life.
We observed an affliction to Lubitz’s mind called sade-sati. Sade-sati is a seven-and-a-half-years period of affliction to the natal moon. Saturn traverses the chart and takes generally thirty years to go around the zodiac and arrive back at the birth position; this is called Saturn return. At the time of this accident, the Saturn return had commenced and Lubitz’s moon was again under affliction from Saturn. He was in a new period of sade-sati, a period of deprivation, loss, a period of time where one is confronted with experience and the consequences of choices in the past. To boot, Saturn, Langnesha, Lord of the 1st House, is located in the house of losses, the 12th house, and extraordinarily weak, sandi in astrology terms, as it is only 0° 10 minutes into the 12th house. In the normal course of events, this description of being in the sandi location means a deprivation of the energy of that planet in matters relating to the house under discussion. In the case of Saturn, the matter is reversed. The lower the degrees of Saturn, the more powerful Saturn is said to be.
At the time of the Germanwings crash, the Lord of the 12th, Jupiter, was transiting the 7th house, a maraka (death) sign for Lubitz. The Lord of the 2nd House (maraka) – Saturn – was transiting the 11th house – delivering both the transit over the natal moon and the closure of options for choices in the world of Lubitz’s activity and relations with others. Saturn was also aspected by Mars 100% (8th house aspect) with Moon in 6/8 relation to Saturn, a troublesome aspect which does not yield positive results. As the Moon is the presiding deity of the mind, the transit Moon was under extreme compulsion to achieve where Lubitz felt he could save face, in his natal 4th house – sixth from the 11th house which is a house of enemies. He was using a vehicle (4th house object) to defeat enemies he perceived, in his outer world (11th house).
Coda
We have looked at ultimate self-harm, and in this case, an act of self-harm where 150 others lost their lives also. What do we do for one who has lost purpose, lost their options, their choices, and begin following their ego, which wants to force an act of self-determination upon their life and the lives of others? How did the remaining dozens of daily choices upon the path, to which a human being is normally entitled by virtue of rational intelligence, suddenly disappear from the field of human consciousness? How do we help such people?
People who follow astrology – as we do – have a transcending meaning and purpose in life; we have a reason to live, a reason to endure, doubtless fogged from time to time by the ego and antics of the ahamkara which wants to keep things the same, keep the outlook good, to maintain integrity of being able to make choices and craft a path through life. So we have a sense that our lives are part of a greater whole, we have a relationship to that greater whole – call it what you may – Source, Divinity, Rama, Krishna, Jesus, Buddha, Ahura Mazda, whatever name and form we wish to give to that Ultimate Ground of our lives. We live in relation to this ultimate source, ultimate ground, this greater whole.
Where predators, human, non-human or environmental have replaced, taken or exterminated the place of that divinity within, we have to have compassion with anyone who is in this situation, and appreciate that the suffering one is trying to regain self-determination and control in order to forge ahead upon their personal path toward God. At this juncture in the path, one has a feeling of absoluteness. In the mind, there is only “one choice left”.
We have compassion, we give help to step away from a repeating, toxic thought of “I have power”, “I’ll show them”, I can do whatever I like. We have to have mercy and compassion and show there are more choices, there are more options, with live. Love makes space, so we give our time, our talents, our resources to help another friend who is suffering, to open up to new thoughts, to new choices, where they – their ego, the ahamkara – has shut them down. We can always rejuvenate ourselves, we can always reconstruct our lives, we can always rebuild and forge ahead. Love is the key, love is the answer, love is the way. First, we love ourselves, then we love others, then we love the world, for we have a place in the greater plan to become whole and complete, the fullest, most living and loving expression of who we can be. Have mercy, have compassion, make space for the other. Healing takes time.
A stele and flowers laid in memory of the victims are placed in the area where Germanwings Flight 9525 crashed.