NYC at 8:46 AM, 9/11/2001 (When the First Plane Hit the Towers)
Just like every person has his or her own birth chart, each event also has its own chart. The 9/11 chart paints a very specific portrait of what happened that morning.
Ketu and Mars are within a single degree of each other in Sagittarius, located in the 4th house, which is the portion of the zodiac that represents one’s innermost feelings and sense of home or belonging.
Every planet has the potential for a positive, life-affirming representation or a challenging, dark representation, and Mars directly connects to action, whether in the form of an athlete winning a gold medal, somebody committing a murder, or just a working man finding the energy to get through the day. Notably, Mars also represents soldiers, who at their best exemplify bravery and heroism, yet at their worst may follow destructive orders without questioning them.
Ketu, which is depicted without a head in Vedic mythology, represents the part of us that is pre-critical thought. That’s a beautiful thing when it relates to meditative states and the sort of spiritual understanding that goes beyond words, but not so great when it relates to primitive feelings and habits that remain unexamined. Ketu also specifically represents traditional cultures.
On 9/11, Ketu-influenced feelings, i.e. a sense of “connection” to the traditional beliefs of a primitive, radical form of Islamic extremism, combined with the Mars-influenced action of violence committed while loyally following orders. This was done in a manner that connected with the terrorists’ innermost sense of who they were (4th house), located in the sign of Sagittarius, which is often idealistic and concerned with justice and fairness, but when in its darkest element potentially quite overzealous.
Located 180 degrees from Sagittarius and the Mars-Ketu conjunction is the sign of Gemini, symbolized by “the twins” (representative, quite literally, of the twin towers, in this instance) and containing three planets of its own (Rahu, Moon and Jupiter). Five out of the nine planets that are traditionally used in Vedic astrology are located on the 4th-10th/Sagittarius-Gemini axis, thus aspecting each other by either conjunction or opposition. This axis, which also includes the notoriously volatile nakshatras of Mula and Ardra, forms the central identity of the 9/11 chart.
Rahu-Moon conjunctions are often challenging, as they combine the Moon’s emotional nature with Rahu’s tendency to take things to extremes, a dynamic that leads to mental health issues in some instances. Add Jupiter, the planet that specifically represents organized religion, to that mix and it suggests how a prominent expression of mental instability connected to religious extremism was possible at this time. Once the indications of that morning’s extremely close Mars-Ketu conjunction, which aspected Moon, Rahu and Jupiter by opposition, is factored in, a vivid and potentially alarming image begins to emerge.
As far as how the terrorists managed to actually pull of this complex, multi-faceted attack, an exalted Mercury is almost exactly on the Ascendant, suggesting the indications of Mercury (communications and travel) and Virgo (analytical, detail-oriented thinking) were working at close to maximum capacity during that time. In other words, the terrorists lucked into timing that kept them from making the sorts of small mistakes that foil the vast majority of attempted terrorist attacks in modern times.
Ultimately, the 9/11 chart is a tragically precise storm of influences all pointing to a single violent outburst with reverberations that will be felt throughout our lifetimes. It’s also a striking example of astrology’s ability to explain the “energy” or “mood” of a given time and place.
