Beltane Fires Up the Underworld: Corpse Bride, Corpse Priest/Pope, and Corpse Warrior

This year the spring festival of Beltane brought in some very interesting themes around death -- apparently in a corpse trinity: bride/bridegroom, priest, and warrior.

Corpse Bride/Groom

The Royal Wedding of William and Catherine appeared to be a fairy tale romance come true. Although the May Queen and May King had a picture perfect wedding that points to a return of Camelot, there were also strange undercurrents of apocalyptic and death themes or necro-nuptials that accompanied the grand global event. As Tracy Twyman writes in her essay, Necro-nuptials: The myth of the Virgin Queen/Corpse Bride embedded in the Royal Wedding:

In other words, by virtue of the fact that both of the spouses are really marrying and breeding with the god or goddess of the underworld, it negates the taint of the human sexual congress. It is instead a heiros gamos, the sacred marriage of the gods. . .While the king and queen are possessed by the god and goddess, their souls are down in the underworld, dead, holding the places of the god and goddess as substitute sacrifices. In alchemy, this is spoken of as the chemical wedding of the king and queen. They represent opposing universal energies which annihilate one another when they unite in marriage. Out of this, the new king, the “gold,” is born. . . Because of these connections, the specter of death hangs over the royal wedding.

Thus the union of the May Queen and her consort the May King symbolize the fertility and rebirth of the world, or death of the underworld represented by winter. The Beltane Fire Festival in Edinburgh is a modern adaptation of this ritual drama loosely based on some aspects of the pre-Christian festival of Beltane. During this ritual the May King is killed by the Queen's handmaidens, then brought back to life by the May Queen resembling the ancient Egyptian myth of Isis and Osiris on which it is based. In the ancient myth, Isis collects the torn up pieces of Osiris, but must fashion his phallus out of gold in order to restore him for proper burial. As she brings him back to life to rule the Underworld, she also magically conceives his heir, Horus to rule over the physical world. As I pointed out in my last post, there are many symbols linking the Royal pair to Isis and Osiris. The world media went gaga over the event, and followed every move and celebrity detail. Most of all they praised Kate Middleton for breathing new life into Britain's outworn Monarchy.




Corpse Priest/Pope

Not to be out done, on the same day the Vatican exhumed the coffin of Pope John Paul II as part of his beatification that was viewed by millions of devoted Catholics in the biggest event since his funeral in 2005. This beatification was held yesterday, May 1st, on the day the church celebrates the movable Feast of Divine Mercy. As we know May 1st also marks the fire fertility festival of Beltane as well as the communist holiday of May day. The coincidence is ironic, given that many believe the pope played a key role in the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and in the cover-up of the global sex scandal in the Church. The ceremony, the last step to sainthood, included exhuming his body from below St. Peter's, parading a vial of his blood, and presenting a virginal French Nun, Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, believed to have been cured of Parkinsons by his miraculous grace.



Corpse Warrior


And to complete this corpse-filled weekend, last night President Obama announced that US forces had killed Osama Bin Lauden -- on the 8th anniversary of Bush's famous "Mission Accomplished" announcement. The disturbing celebrations in the US of crowds cheering Bin Lauden's death speaks to the repressed rage and fear of our collective. Like the burning of a "straw man" Osama Bin Lauden has been sacrificed in this brilliant political publicity stunt. There have been many reports that Bin Lauden has been long dead, perhaps as early as 2001 (click here for more). But he is continually held up and used as public enemy number one, the big bad, the boogie man for both sides of the US political system. So now that Bin Lauden is officially dead and gone, killed in Pakistan, after spending trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives fighting the war on terror where he was not located, what is next?

President Obama made the announcement last night, May 1, 2011 at 9:35 EDT which gives an event chart a Scorpio rising ruled by Mars. At this time Mars was exactly conjoined Jupiter in Pisces, a configuration that was also repeated in the navamsa chart. When the planet of war conjoins the planet of wisdom, it suggests a justified or philosophical purpose for the action taken. Moreover, this powerful conjunction fell in the 27th and last nakshatra of Revati indicating this action could indeed mark the final chapter of the modern myth created on 9/11. However, this rising sign in Scorpio falls in the nakshatra of Anuradha just degrees from the 2012 election chart that has a stationing Mercury (to retrograde) on the horizon that pointing to a more manipulative explanation -- a political move punctuated on the 8th anniversary of the failed "Mission Accomplished" propaganda of the Bush administration. As we saw from Obama's re-election announcement, he may be the cleverest trickster of them all.



Moreover, Mercury rules the 8th house of death in this event chart from its debilitated position in Pisces in the 5th house of creativity. It is aligned between the Mars-Jupiter conjunction and an exalted Venus opposite Saturn in Virgo. This powerful alignment of planets in the house of fertility and romance are linked to the house of death and transformation. It remains to be seen what this apocalyptic corpse trinity will manifest -- perhaps we will get a glimpse on the Summer solstice when the Sun reaches its height of power.