Astrology of Now: Carnage on Everest
Chortens and Mount Kailash
Mountains house the gods — Shiva on Kailash, Zeus and the fam on Olympus, Ruwa on Kilimanjaro, Salcantay and Veronica in the Andes.
To go to the mountain, to climb the mountain, means getting closer to god. Athos and Ararat, Kailash and Kanchenjunga are places of pilgrimage.
What does it mean that the world’s highest mountain, Everest, the Holy Mother in Tibetan, becomes a playground for the wealthy? Another trophy to bag? Another brag? Another rich person’s goal?
Apparently, it costs between £50,000 and £90,000 to make the ascent.
Once upon a time, there was a kind of romance to mountaineering. The image of a pair of climbers crunching over glaciers, clawing up sheer rock; the solitude, the silences, the wild. But maybe that was just an illusion. Maybe mountaineering has always been about ambition and conquest.
Today there are queues on Everest. Climbers describe passing by the dead as they make their way to the top, shuffling in a long line, unable to turn back because of the press of the people. The holy mountain is covered with climbers’ detritus.
This year 9 people have already died up there, and there will be more.
The sign Capricorn rules the mountains. Capricorn: part goat, part serpent or fish. In some legends, for example, The Mistress of the Copper Mountains from the Urals, a goddess lives under the mountain. She has an affinity for salamanders; in Near Eastern tradition this is snakes. So above there’s the climbing goat and below is the reptile. A strange creature indeed, but perhaps descriptive of the mountain with its crystal caves and rushing water at the bottom, and its mysterious cloud-encircled peaks.
Currently, Pluto is in Capricorn, along with Saturn and the South Node. These are the planets of death aligned with the point of oblivion. You couldn’t pick a worse year to climb the mountain, because even if you make it, you will be climbing with death as your partner. Climbers describe the dead bodies they pass with a curious detachment though. Perhaps seeing death is becoming part of the “experience”.
One mountaineer has described Everest as “the greasy pole of Asia”, and that also is a curiously Capricornian expression, for this is the sign of vaunting ambition, and Saturn is, of course, the planet of ambition. To say that you have climbed Everest (apparently the term is summiting?!), or walked to the North Pole proves that you are a person who has achieved something — if your mind works that way. You have literally reached the highest peak, climbed the mountain.
The photograph of that queue of neon parkas crawling up the narrow ridge to the summit is a vivid reminder of loss of the wild, of the sacred, of proportion and value. It’s a photograph of purest folly.
Spot on – the thoughtless and selfish desecration of the sacred – and of the sacred feminine, as Everest is known as the Mother Goddess of the Earth. I’m so sad.
Great Insight! Never thought about that way.
“And with a line-up pushing you up the mountain there nothing you can do. You really have no choice but to carry on.” (from Guardian article)
That describes modern life perfectly. People can’t see outside of themselves that maybe the rat race just isn’t worth participating in.
Some people have more money than sense. What a surprise rich sociopaths have no compassion for others, least of all the dead. Greed and stupidity seem to go hand in hand.
I’m struck by how the image of the line of climbers resembles a line of supplicants on pilgrimage. The window of good weather this season was apparently only 3 days compared to 3 weeks in the past. The mountain shut it on them and is forcing them crawl up past their own dead to look upon her holy face. The pace they are forced to ascend is the slow pace of a pilgrim. The climbers are simultaneously honoring of the great mountain by needing to climb it, yet desecrating the very thing they value.
The government of Nepal and the illegitimate outfitters are literally milking the Holy Mountain for cash. Capricorn opposite Cancer: cynically and ambitiously using something sacred to make a profit from it.
Also the idea that by summiting the climbers increase their own virility — yet another expression of toxic masculinity that desecrates and degrades the feminine mountain who is seen by them as just another notch on their bedpost
Very well put.
“Maybe mountaineering has always been about ambition and conquest.” – interesting line, the way I see history and mythology – it has always been about ambition and conquest – from Gods to great kings!