Thad Allen's Saturnian Dilemma And Mermaids On FAR Sunday

Now raise your arms in the air just like a crab!

The level of strangeness regarding the Gulf is reaching epic proportions. One day it's "the top kill" the next it's "the bottom kill." Charges have been levied that BP is using ROV footage from some other well, rather than the capped top and bottom killed Macando well. All this talk of tops and bottoms is all too close to the seamier side of Craigslist if you know what I mean. I guess in this situation, BP is definitely the top.

Did I mention that supposedly, all that oil is gone as well? So is Tony Hayward, taking his anaretic grin back to his manse, now paid off thanks to cashing out all that BP stock. But there has been one constant throughout it all. Do you know who or what I am talking about? It's retired Coast Guard Admiral, Thad Allen. Don't you feel safer now?

So just who is this Thad Allen anyway? And more importantly, what does his solar chart have to say about him?

In an ironic sort of twist, when searching for "Thad Allen" another related name comes up, author, Michael Thad Allen, who wrote The Business Of Genocide: The SS, Slave Labor And The Concentration Camps. A quick perusal of a brief summary of Michael Thad Allen's work provides this distilled and potent paragraph from H-net.org;

"The major question driving Michael Thad Allen's The Business of Genocide is what motivated mid-level SS bureaucrats in their pursuits of industry, slave labor, and murder. Allen rejects Hannah Arendt's theory of the banality of evil, as well as the explanation that SS bureaucrats were simply cogs in a machine that operated beyond their control. Instead, he argues that mid-level SS managers in the WVHA (Wirtschaftsverwaltungshauptamt, or Business Administration Main Office) were driven primarily by a "plexus of ideologies." In doing so, he challenges the supposition of many studies, that Nazi bureaucrats were repulsed by their actions. Rather, he argues they were committed to the leadership principle of "productivism," modernization, racial supremacy, and the goal of creating an SS "New Order" throughout Europe. SS ideals shaped the bureaucracy and provided it with enough ideological consistency. Allen believes that rather than factional disputes, far more cooperation within the SS leadership was possible than other historians have portrayed."

Pretty interesting eh? It's even more interesting when I found out that Admiral Thad, retired Admiral Thad, only just retired back in June. Admiral Thad now works for Homeland Security. I also find it pretty interesting that he didn't slide into FEMA, but DHS instead. It dawned on me that it's not the EPA or any other dept. associated with the environment or energy, but DHS that is large and in charge in The Gulf.

Seems as though Thad is no stranger to strangling bureaucracies and failed fed efforts, since he was the point man for both Katrina and Rita in the Gulf. Nothing like falling upward. Not a lot is out there on him. He's from Tucson, has a wife and three kids. In a recent, fairly white bread interview with Wolf Blitzer, Allen said something strange and potentially noteworthy;

ALLEN: Well, Wolf, when they are doing this procedure, they are pumping mud into the well bore and there's always going to be a mixture of some hydrocarbons and the mud. I haven't been watching the plume all day long because I have been on a helicopter going up and down the Louisiana coast nor I have got an update from Tony Hayward, because I was been unavailable.I just know that they are pumping the oil in -- excuse me, the mud to replace the oil and some point you could have a mixture, I probably wouldn't comment on it I haven't had an update in the last couple of hours."

Would that be considered seepage?

Thad Allen is widely praised for his career and leadership efforts and yet, when interviewed by Jake Tapper of ABC news back on June 11th, Tapper responded to BP's claims that they cannot get enough Boom with Allen. Here is how their exchange went:

TAPPER: I talked to a guy who runs a company in Maine that offers boom, and he has – he says – the ability to make 90,000 feet of boom a day. High quality. BP came there 2 weeks ago, looked at it, they are doing another audit today. He is very frustrated, he says he has a lot of high quality boom to go and it is taking a long time for BP to get its act together. Don’t you need this boom right now?

ALLEN: Oh we need all the boom wherever we can get it. If you give me the information off camera I’ll be glad to follow up.

It's an odd exchange, because it illustrates at least two things. The first is that BP and Allen apparently weren't communicating all that well. Secondly, if Allen was such a leader, don't you think he would have known about said company and simply had the Boom trucked down to the Gulf? One thing we do know; Allen is no Patton of the sea.

Now, to be fair. dealing with BP has got to be one of the worst gigs in the world right now, but Allen could have walked away. He didn't. And, he has been incredibly compliant with BP, allowing them a multitude of exemptions to dump dangerous levels of Corexit into the Gulf. There's professionally compliant and then there's bend over.

So what would a chart for a man like this look like? Glad you asked! Unfortunately, I don't have his full chart, but I do have his solar chart and there are enough goodies in there to make some astral connections.

Pluto and Saturnalia

Allen was born on January 16th, 1949, which would make in a Capricorn. In my best Gomer Pyle drawl, "surprise, surprise." Remember, Capricorn's earliest symbol was that of a sea-goat, so it would be a fitting sign for an ambitious admiral that would leave the ocean for a position on land. Not only is his sun sign in Capricorn (25 degrees) but his Venus and Jupiter are as well. Thad profits from relationships in high places. I don't think it's any coincidence at all that transiting Pluto is right on top of his natal Venus at 3 degrees Cap. He is working the channels of power in his sphere of personal relationships/connections.

We've seen this convergence of the government and corporations during the brief reign of Pluto in Cap and Thad Allen is a fairly good, individual symbol for this type of convergence.

Mars and Mercury are both in Aquarius and form a conjunction separated by six degrees. This conjunction can give him an incredibly objective and detached perspective--perhaps too detached. Certainly, he is bright and can be innovative if he needs to be. With his Leo Moon, he can display leadership if needed, but in the case of the Gulf, it certainly seems like that Leo Moon has been declawed. His Saturn, at five degrees Virgo, is getting a major boost from transiting Pluto. If anything, his ability to pay attention to details with things like Boom, should be given more focus.

I'm not going to use this platform as a complete bitch session, so assuming that Thad Allen does have our best interests at heart, Thad, if you're reading this, pay attention to the little things, mind the details, have a dozen small victories and you'll tap into the transpersonal power of Pluto. Now if you don't well, here comes the whopper.

Transiting Saturn is about to catch up to Mr. Allen's Neptune (the sea) in Libra (balance. scales, justice). If there is anything that he had any hand in, in regards to being negligent or withholding info, it will come out by November. Thad has to tread carefully here, for the scales of justice are drawing ever closer to Neptune and all of it's watery illusion and slippery states.

Lastly Admiral Allen has Black Moon Lilith in Pisces. Ironically, it is thee only aspect/planet in a water sign in his chart. An odd detail for someone who had made a career out of the sea. Black Moon Lilith in Pisces, would, if Allen were open to it, provide him with a deep channel of information, tapping into the soul of various situations, like having an Anchor Steam with Poseidon, or something like that. If he is not involved and evolved when it comes to channeling BML, he will seek to retreat and not confront situations. He would disappear and try to find refuge by dissolving into the back drop of the narrative. He would apply some personal version of Corexit and disperse from the scene. There is an elusive quality here, one that lends itself to the seamless transition from The Coast Guard to DHS without most of us even knowing it had occurred.

Decades from now, when the last of the Corexit has been dutifully absorbed by the mother, Thad Allen, if he is lucky, might be merely a footnote, but if Saturn has it's way, he could be known far and wide as a "sailor who fell from grace with the sea."

Mermaid Tales

Turning our attention to something more spritely and incandescent, I will have William Mistele, photographer, author and Undine tracker on FAR Sunday. Mistele is questing for the mermaid in modern culture. His book, Undines: Lessons from the Realm of the Water Spirit on North Atlantic Books is quickly becoming one of the definitive books on the subject of the mermaid throughout history, including our modern era. Please join me at 7PM, this Sunday on FAR with William Mistele.