I don’t want to imagine what it’s like to be a parent of one of the children killed on Utoya… my daughter is coming home from a movie at the mall and that environment has a similar “illusion of safeness”. But nonetheless, I am sending prayers and Reiki light as much to Norway as to myself to cope with this level of madness.

Parents whose children serve in military war zones or who work in other high-risk fields continually feel stress, but we never really know when people dear to us will leave us or how. I in no way want to minimize the horror that has occurred in Norway, and as an astrologer I have no symbolic “pat” answer as to the why.

I have looked at the horoscope of Anders Behring Breivik, from Wikipedia (pulled off a Norway tax roll- date 2/13/1979) and he’s an Aquarius. Whether or not this is his correct birthdate, it is nonetheless chilling, because I know Aquarians think the world would be a better place if everyone did things their way.

Aquarians don’t slaughter people any more than many zodiacal signs, but they can be detached from emotion. There visionary Aquarians like Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and Oprah Winfrey… oh yeah, and I’m an Aquarius… but for the record, so is Sarah Palin.

I’m acutely aware that there is a perception of the Aquarian archetype that feels right and logical and wants to be totally untethered. The Aquarian aligns perfectly with adolescent energy. That sense of self-importance, ability to stay up all night and change the world. Unbelievably tragic that this energy was what Breivik wanted to snuff out with robotic precision.

As we lean towards 2012, we must embrace the mandate of change and there is no doubt that youthful energy sparks the catalyst. My sense is Breivik, whether or not he was working alone, had an instinct that he needed to eradicate it. He wanted to tamp out the idealistic fervor that is a hallmark of youth. There is no doubt he has terrified his country by unearthing a horrible Shadow.
The strongest connection I see when I look at Norway’s horoscope with the July 22 massacre in Utoya is a Node/Mars/Pluto picture. Ebertin writes of this configuration: “The demonstration of violence or brutality in the presence of other people. The desire to make others amenable to one’s own wishes, the misfortune to be placed in somebody else’s hand and power.”

But what comes of such willful carnage? Fear, heightened xenophobia? Obviously that is not a solution, and the Swedish part of me suspects that is not going to be the posture of most of the Viking stock. Today is a time for prayer and connecting with love.

One thing very clear about our high technological age, we are all continually in a state of post-traumatic shock; how we deal with it is going to make all the difference going forward to 2012 and beyond.