hello my dear friends.
i write to you from the midst of mutable season, where we have a gemini stellium overcome by saturn in pisces. gemini is mercury’s sign, and i have a double-sided story for you—to be filed under, “the whales, human relationships with.”
before we get there, i want to let you know about some things i have coming up.
starting this saturday, i’ll be leading a reading circle called AWAKENINGS, on the uranus-neptune cycle. this is a four-week reading circle centered on uranus and neptune, grounded in richard tarnas’ text cosmos & psyche. uranus and neptune are in their sextile now—what does that mean for us? for the world? awakenings, spiritual, relational, imaginal. join the circle.
i am back giving in-person astrology readings at psychic sister in olympia this sunday, from 12:30 to 5:30 pm. i’ll have a new menu of offerings soon, but one big change is i’m adding tarot and oracle cards as part of my readings! i’ve been learning and engaging with card sets for years now, and have finally found decks who feel like friends, and who want to speak with my clients. so moving forward, if you stop by the shop in oly, feel free to ask for a card pull :) <3 love y’all.
i am also offering virtual readings on zoom, with lots of availability this summer. i’m offering birth chart readings for 44% off with the code TAKINGFLIGHT, as well as ancestral constellations, place-based relations, and fertility sessions. you can check the calendar and book a session here. let me know if you have any questions.
finally, i am deep at work preparing my american history class for the local community college. i’m excited to get back into teaching higher ed—and to slingshot into preparing an astrohistory course for you all for this fall. the saturn-neptune conjunction of next spring will occur on the united states’ ic—past, history, land (back). now is a good time to get acquainted with the terrain (before it’s on fire (and flooded (with burning molten rivers (of lava (and sorrow))))).
yes i closed all of the parentheses. you virgos can double-check.
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ok, the whales.
first, scientists are using ai to study whale communications, because of course they are. and they’ve found that sperm whales use a phonetic alphabet and have names.
ai is an aquarius thing, empowered by pluto’s transit through the sign. aquarius is a distant sign, the scientist as detached observer hoping not to influence their subject. ai is a useful methodological tool from this perspective, allowing analysis without direct relationship or influence on the subject. like a voyeur.
that’s one type of relationship humans can have with nonhumans. and it makes sense, from an ethical perspective, to keep one’s distance. because some other ways of relating are more outwardly, actively destructive to the nonhumans involved.
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japan and iceland both announced on tuesday that they would approve permits for their whaling companies to hunt higher quotas of fin whales, the second largest animal on the planet. mars had just entered taurus, and the square to pluto in aquarius. on the day of the announcement, the moon was in leo, overcome by mars in taurus, opposite to pluto in aquarius, and square to uranus. the sextile from the gemini placements (mercury, venus, the sun, and jupiter) empowered those already holding power, facilitating destruction on a global scale.
the only reason these permits were pushed through was because the whaling companies are bankrupt and hoping to recoup their losses. no consumer or industry has great need or want of the products created by these whales’ deaths; the war being waged against them is capitalism flailing in its own death throes.
whales are necessary for our planet to function. they drove up shoals of fish from the deep to the surface, where they feed plankton and birds. their leftovers feed smaller species, of mammals and fish and bacteria, and when they die, they support entire ecosystems. they are the great churning, the engine that keeps our planet functioning.
in may, japan launched their whaling megaship. they’re calling it a mothership, but you know that isn’t right. no mother would do this.
so from this perspective, from the knowledge of the deep ways that humans can harm nonhumans, in this case whales, it makes sense to keep one’s distance. for the scientists who care about the whales to use ai to analyze their language, rather than trying to learn to speak with one.
and in the water, too, we’re told to stay away from them. vessels are required to keep distances from whales in certain waters, like my home of the salish sea. kayaks aren’t allowed to go near, swimmers are prohibited from engaging with wildlife. it’s considered harassment.
and i understand it. if the whales get too acculturated to us, they’ll sidle up to any boat, thinking it’s a friend. even a ferry, or an oil tanker. and that’s dangerous.
but i’m mad. i’m mad that i’ve found myself awake in a world where i can’t swim with an orca because it might make them too friendly too humans, some of whom might murder them.
these are the options we’re often presented with regards to nonhumans called wildlife and referred to as the wilderness: exploitation or distant, disenchanted observation.
but there are still those who hold ancestral relationships and obligations with the whales. whose relationship does involve harvesting, but for subsistence, cultural continuity, and community cohesion. in washington, the makah of the coast have an ancient relationship with the sea, and with the whales.
when native people hunt, the animals give themselves to us. did you know that? before we go out, we pray, and we ask those who are ready to go to give themselves to us to feed the people. and they do!
i’m not makah. i don’t know their ways. but i’m guessing they do something similar.
the animal presents itself to you.
because they know, in a spiritual way, that it is their time, and they are ready to go, and they want to help the humans continue.
because of that relationship, the way the animals love us and give themselves to us, we have an obligation to care for them. to protect their environments, to safeguard their prey. so that the circle can continue and life can go on in this place.
the makah have this ancient relationship with the grey whales. the makah are interesting in that they’re not salish—they’re there at the northwestern tip of the olympic peninsula, and on both sides they have salish people: quileute and quinault to the south, and s’klallam and straits salish to the east. but the makah aren’t salish; their language is wakashan, related to the tribes of the western shore of vancouver island.
because they are a seafaring people.
but like i said, that comes with obligation. the makah have been hunting grey whales for thousands of years. but when the grey whale became endangered, at risk of total extinction, the makah stopped their ancient practice and put a community-imposed moratorium on hunting grey whales. the grey whales are relatives, and they needed respite.
it wasn’t the makah who hunted the grey whales to near extinction, by the way. but it was the makahs who saw their relatives were hurting and who, of their own accord, stopped the hunts.
this was in the 1920s, when pluto was in cancer.
seventy years later, uranus and neptune made a conjunction in the opposite sign of capricorn. this conjunction brought a spiritual and cultural revitalization to indian people; many of my language teachers began learning their languages during this period. it was a time of spiritual awakening and coming together, a time when the children of survivors of residential boarding schools started talking to their elders. we have flourished since then.
our fate is tied to the fate of the world. like native people, the whales of the planet earth reached a nadir in the early twentieth century, after centuries of exploitation by capitalist interests. but by the early 1990s, they had rebounded. in 1994, the grey whales were taken off the endangered list! and the makah applied for a special permit to harvest one.
now, whaling is a treaty-protected right for the makah. in the 1855 treaty of neah bay, the makah reserved the right to fish, hunt, whale, and seal in their usual and accustomed places. this is actually the only treaty in the entire history of the united states to protect an indigenous nation’s sovereign right to harvest whales! that’s how important whales were and are to the makah nation.
that chart is really interesting actually:
there’s this aquarius stellium, which pluto is about to be all over in a few years, and saturn there in gemini, where jupiter and that entire gemini stellium is now. this is a treaty-protected right, their right to harvest a whale. and of course we’re in the neptune return of washington’s treaty time right now.
so in 1994, the makah applied to harvest a whale, and there was a ton of controversy. of course, right? like, greenpeace is on it! save the whales!
grey whales were taken off the endangered list on june 16, 1994. the moon was in virgo, opposite saturn in pisces, while the uranus-neptune conjunction was active.
the makah tribe notified the united states government of their interest in resuming the harvest of grey whales on may 5, 1995—when the sun was in the middle of taurus and conjunct the position of the fixed star menkar on the ecliptic. menkar is the whale of the deep, the monster, the sea beast.
jupiter was in sagittarius ruling saturn in pisces. i have really personally felt the difference in the flavor of saturn in pisces as jupiter as moved through the signs—in aries, taurus, and now gemini. jupiter in each case is responsible for saturn, but only capable of rendering support within the environment he has access to.
in this case, in 1995, jupiter in sagittarius allowed the makah tribe to envision a culturally unified and fed nation, to return to the water to harvest food for the people. jupiter in sag dreams big.
now...honestly, in my opinion, the makah tribe shouldn’t have had to apply for anything. they are a sovereign nation, who reserved their right to harvest whales as their ancestors had since time immemorial. but the treaty language did specify that they retained the right to harvest in common with the citizenry of the united states; since the whale fishery is closed, that means applying for a permit. a permit that, likely, no other type of citizen would be able to get.
being indigenous in the united states is about culture, family, kinship, land, ancestry, connection, history. it is also about legal status, and power.
so they went through the legal process, and it took its time. jupiter slipped through the signs, then saturn. and finally, they participated in their hunt, and they harvested a gray whale.
live news coverage places the final moments of the hunt around 7 AM on the morning of may 17, 1999. the moon was in gemini and rising, ruling the second house. food from the sea, to be dispersed among the people as a show of connection and social relation.
uranus was in aquarius, on the south node, and culminating on the midheaven at the time of the hunt. uranus in aquarius always brings new technologies, and this hunt involved the use of military-grade harpoon weapons and motored vessels, with cameramen in helicopters filming the entire spectacle.
on the south node, uranus in aquarius is the utilization of technology for the remembering of ancient ways of being, of the saturnian traditionalism of being on the sea and harvesting large mammals with reverence and respect for communally-imposed limitations.
mercury is conjunct the position of menkar on the ecliptic and ruling the ascendant from the twelfth.
the makah have a unique navigation system, a knowledge that is not mine to know. but i do know they have some way of understanding property lines, reading the topography of the open ocean’s surface to understand boundary. territory is passed down family lines, inherited. like fishing spots on the rivers further inland, each family has their ancestral place. but out here, to know those places and to harvest from those places is being at home far, far outside what we usually consider home, as land-dwelling mammals. to be out there is to be home, for the makah.
during the treaty negotiation, the makah chief caqawix said, i want the sea. that is my country.
what a homecoming, this harvest. for mercury to be ruling the ascendant in taurus, in the twelfth.
i wonder about our dispossession, as native peoples, from our ancestral lands. i’ve visited ojibwe lands a handful of times, but only for short periods, never to stay or settle. i’ve lived in other peoples’ lands my whole life. and even here, the land is divided up and privatized. you can’t go on most of it, and access to other places is limited to certain hours of day or certain activities. we, as a society, are dispossessed of the lands. we are enclosed into smaller and smaller boxes, yards offices cubicles apartments identities.
there are places we inherit. homes. graves. harvesting sites. and sometimes we inherit obligations to those places. indigenous people today carry familial inheritances to places that go back thousands and thousands of years, that go back to the creation, to the beginning of time; we are obligated to fulfill our responsibilities to these places, to their spirits, to their beings, in order to be who we truly are.
and yet, for many of us we cannot access those places in the ways we are obligated to.
what does it mean to inherit the right to harvest food from a particular place (which is what the makah “ownership” of the ocean is, by the way—a right to claim the food harvested in that place) when you are not allowed or able to access that place? or when you are prevented, due to threat of violence, from harvesting food from that ancestral place?
venus is in the second house of this chart; the honorable harvest continues. life goes on.
the united states government was inundated with lawsuits after the harvest, mostly from settler environmentalists and conservationists. saturn went into gemini, and the treaty of neah bay experienced a saturn return—during the saturn-pluto opposition that brought 9/11.
the makah laid low for a few years, then submitted another request in 2005 for a waiver on the moratorium of hunting marine mammals for the purpose of harvesting grey whales.
what a day! mercury was in the heart of the sun in aquarius while venus was conjunct neptune a little earlier in the sign, with the aquarius placements receiving an overcoming trine from jupiter in libra.
the mercury cazimi was conjunct mars from the treaty chart—an affirmation, yes, the makah would like to continue to hunt. the 1999 harvest was not a one-off occurrence, but the start of a reclamation of ancestral ways.
i have the treaty chart here set for sunrise. i don’t know when the treaty signing would have begun during the day, but i often use the sunrise chart as the standalone chart for The Day for events like this, events that start and last all day and often go on for many days after. as sunrise is the start of the day, anything that happens during that day occurs under that chart, under the influence of this moment of beginning.
when viewing the treaty chart from a sunrise perspective, one is drawn to saturn’s rulership of the ascendant (the sun, the season) from the fifth house, from the ic. the point of this day is to secure their aboriginal right to the sea and to harvest food from the sea, as the makah and their ancestors had always done, for their descendants on down through the generations, in perpetuity.
that saturn had been tested in the wake of the 1999 whale hunt, when saturn had transited through gemini and reactivated the root agreement. by 2005, saturn was in cancer, and going over the moon from the treaty day.
now, since the treaty chart is technically untimed, we can’t say for sure where the moon was when the signing began. but the moon stayed in cancer until 5:32 pm that day, and i’m sure they would have started signing before then, so it’s probable we have the moon somewhere in the final five degrees of cancer.
where saturn was transiting when the makah requested another hunt.
saturn restricted the makah from openly exercising their treaty rights in a way the colonizers would accept. the bureacratic process dragged on, with time for public comment, environmental impact statements, forms going between governmental agencies at all levels.
in the meantime, the elders were passing on. the ones who remembered hearing stories from their grandparents, of how to go whaling and how to harvest the animal in a good way, how to process the meat and blubber and oil, how to navigate out in open water. the connection to that knowledge was passing on.
non-natives often only go to the funerals of their own family, their grandparents or immediate aunts and uncles or siblings... if that. but in native communities, everyone goes. everyone goes to every funeral. so when the elders start passing, it is obvious, everyone sees it. and they talk about it.
one of my language teachers tells the story of hearing the call to learn her language. her uncle had passed. he had been a fluent speaker, one of the last first language speakers, and one speaker at the funeral stood up and said, who will take his place? and my teacher felt the call and knew it would be her.
the times when the spirits transition from body to untethered spirit, and the times when the living gather together to honor them, are sacred times. they are times of coming together, of figuring out what to do next, of how to honor and continue the work in the absence of those who have gone on.
the elders carry our knowledge. our traditions are living traditions. sometimes when i share stories, folks ask for citations or where to read the story in a book. the stories aren’t in books. or sometimes they are, but you need to read five different storytellers accounts to get it. our traditions are living traditions; they are not codified in books; our knowledge is held in our elders and in the land and waters and air and spirit, and in us.
and so, with the gears of colonizer bureacracy grinding agonizingly slowly, the makah exercised their treaty rights, their ancestral rights in the lands and waters of which they are the true sovereigns. on september 8, 2007, five makah hunters went into the strait of juan de fuca and harvested a grey whale, without authorization by colonial governments.
a grand cross in the mutable signs: jupiter in sagittarius square to uranus in pisces, activated by mars in gemini and finally the sun in virgo. each piece clicking into place, just in time for the unauthorized harvest.
this mutable grand cross hits the saturn-neptune square of the treaty of neah bay—saturn at 8 gemini and neptune at 14 pisces.
on the day they took the whale, the moon was in leo, conjunct venus and opposite the treaty’s sun-jupiter conjunction. the hunters were motivated to exercise their treaty rights, and to engage in their traditional culture.
the federal government prosecuted the five whalers, indicting them for unauthorized whaling, unauthorized take of a marine mammal, and conspiracy to engage in unlawful whaling. they were also brought before the makah tribal court for violating the tribe’s grey whale management plan, violating state and federal laws, and reckless endangerment.
i’m not makah. i’m not close to the community. i do wonder how the whalers were treated, after all this. was the trial a show, something that had to happen to save face for the tribal government, to maintain their relations with the federal and international authorities? or did the community actively scorn their hunters?
did they eat the meat?
the feds did a draft environmental impact statement on the makah’s 2005 request to commence whaling again, and then... sat on it, it seems. in 2012 they canceled that draft environmental impact statement and commissioned another, released in 2015.
2015. a full decade after the makah requested to take another whale, eight years after the last one was harvested and sixteen years after the last one who was harvested legally. an entire generation grew up (and passed on) in the interim.
the story continues in the same way, with paperwork bouncing back and forth. environmental impact statements, waivers, reports, decisions.
in november 2019, the issue made its way before an administrative law judge, who held a hearing which produced documents which informed noaa’s ultimate decision on the makah whale catch. saturn was applying to his conjunction with pluto in capricorn, opposite the neah bay treaty’s moon in late cancer.
as the judge was reviewing the evidentiary documents, venus and jupiter were both in sagittarius, with venus directly sextiling the treaty chart’s mars from the superior position. mars is the hunt, and the hunter, the predator and the prey. we saw this mars activated when they requested a whale in 2005, that mercury cazimi that was on the treaty chart’s mars. and as the judge reviewed the documents in the case (fourteen years, a saturn opposition, after the initial request), the treaty’s mars, the right of the makah nation to hunt and fish and whale and seal, is being supported and boosted by both benefics from far-reaching, insightful sagittarius.
the process ground on during the early days of the pandemic, with the most movement during the saturn-uranus square of 2021-22. that was a uranus return for the treaty of neah bay, and saturn transiting through aquarius was activating the treaty chart’s sun-jupiter conjunction.
finally, on april 16, 2024, as jupiter finally made its conjunction to uranus, noaa issued a “record of decision,” indicating that it had decided to grant the makah tribe’s request for a waiver. the jupiter-uranus conjunction squared the treaty chart’s mercury and venus, and the entire aquarius stellium by sign. a final affirmation of the uranus return of the treaty chart; a revolutionary return to traditional, treaty-protected foodways for the tribe.
but apparently recording the decision is different from announcing it? because the official announcement came this last thursday (which is why this has all been in the news now)—the moon was in virgo, opposite saturn in pisces. jupiter applies to the treaty’s saturn in gemini, and the entire gemini stellium in the sky right now trines the aquarius stellium in the treaty’s chart. there is a way forward, hope.
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the treaty of neah bay’s chart will continue to be lit up in coming years, in the short-term this summer as jupiter makes its only conjunction to the treaty chart’s saturn, and then at the end of the decade as uranus in gemini makes its conjunction to the treaty’s saturn and pluto makes its conjunction to the treaty’s sun-jupiter signature.
with the involvement of saturn and pluto, we can be sure the whales (comma, controversy around) will feature prominently in the story.
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the makah harvest whales to continue their ancestral ways, to feed their communities, and to keep their nations together.
japan, iceland, and norway slaughter thousands of whales for profit. and it’s not even profitable.
i hope you can see the difference, and i hope you can understand that, at its core, the issue is not necessary death, but respect for and love of life.
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i have been pretty unplugged since i started traveling this summer. i want to thank jonathan thames for sending me the story announcing the makah’s victory.
thank you for listening, miigwetch bizindawewiyeg.
until next time,
alex
Thank you for taking the time to write this. Also loved:
"the only reason these permits were pushed through was because the whaling companies are bankrupt and hoping to recoup their losses. no consumer or industry has great need or want of the products created by these whales’ deaths; the war being waged against them is capitalism flailing in its own death throes."