Eclipse Over Easter Island

Molly Hall About.com
Eclipse Over Easter Island
Friday July 9, 2010

Easter Island, the remote island South Pacific with the big head monoliths, is intriguingly on the astro news radar lately. With the approaching eclipse (July 11th), NASA tells us, it's one of the few places where the Moon's shadow will make landfall. Imagine watching the darkening shadow falling over these great Moai (the giant heads)! Check the NASA site for a map of eclipse visibility - basically, it will be seen as a partial eclipse in the South Pacific and the southern part of South America.

Astrologer Maurice Fernandez has written a fascinating article on Makemake, a dwarf planet named for an Easter Island god, a deity of the Rapa Nui culture. Makemake orbits beyond Pluto and was discovered in 2005. In The Warnings of a Dwarf -- Makemake and the Gulf Oil Spill, Fernandez explains why its discovery is timely, since it's associated symbolically with ecological balance and humanity's longterm survival.

The Rapa Nui people of Easter Island went through times of near extinction, when the small island's ecosystem was thrown out of balance. Living so far from other resources, they needed to learn self-sufficiency. Maurice Fernandez writes, "As Makemake reemerges into our consciousness the symbolism is palpable: the microcosm of the Rapa Nui tragedy reflects the macrocosm of our entire existence on the planet. The original story is one without a happy ending, no savior arrived in time to kill the villains, protect the innocence, and restore order. In our current reality, we too are threatened by a point of no return and the consequences of severe resource mismanagement and power struggles. "

Maurice also looks at Makemake in the chart of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Disaster (April 20th). Makemake was at 25 degrees Virgo, aligned with Saturn and in opposition then to Uranus-Jupiter in Pisces. He writes on this configuration, "the results are plain to see: a massive ecological disaster mainly caused by negligence that primarily affects birds, nesting areas, and marine life--the whole Makemake combo."

I find it a spooky metaphor, since these Moai of a mostly lost civilization are of deified ancestors. At this crossroads, humanity is looking deeply at what legacy we're leaving as stewards of the Earth. The aggrandized heads as their revered icons reminds me of our culture, which has favored the head over the heart, the material over the spiritual. They're carved from compressed volcanic ash (fire and earth), and Easter Island itself is volcanic. All the dramatic elements are there and about to be overshadowed by the Moon -- of a civilization that rose and fell, and left a warning in its monuments.