Chinese Astrology: The Fritzl Case

Sometimes stories so unreal surface one wonders whether the archetypes - form-lending forces preceding the birth of every phenomenal thing - have themselves descended to earth to move about independently of any human control or moderation... What better material could there be to contemplate the old Chinese theory about formative powers inherent in Time itself than the dysfunctional (to put it mildly!) Austrian family Fritzl? This article will cover the birth symbols throughout the day the father Josef Fritzl was born. Close to the bottom of the page is a link to part II which covers the day of the daughter Elisabeth.

The western world do not even admit to such a thing as qualities inherent in Time itself. The positivistic children of this civilization vehemently rejects any such idea, referring to the even more unfounded myth of the last decades that Time is uniform and that all are born equal (however much 100 years of intelligence testing and all practical experience has invalidated this particular myth that all are born equal). The Chinese of antiquity and the middle ages, on the other hand,invented methods to graphically represent the fluctuations exhibited by Time from one hour to the next!

A perfect illustration of the idea of an "archetype" (the ancient concept was popularized by depth psychologist Carl Jung during the 20th century) is seen in the fact that both father and daughter Fritzl was born in the astrological sign of Pisces (the Fish) according to the astronomically correct calculation. It so happens that Pisces is the symbol for closed areas, like asylums, convents or prisons.

It is obvious to anyone with an eye for Gestalts how the life of both came to revolve around the theme of seclusion - the pattern behind that nightmarish prison below ground level was the sign through which both father and daughter embarked upon this life cycle... May we call that underground apartment both a temporary retreat or haven for the father, and a prison for the permanent residents? And don't forget the crucial piece of information that the hometown of this family, Amstetten, housed two concentration camps for women during World War 2! The symbol of Pisces is all over the place.

The sign of the Fish also encompasses what has been termed the secret pleasures of the bedroom - yet another pointer to the main symbolism of closed, private areas, or the private parts as the genitalia used to be called... Newspapers world-wide have written about Josef Fritzl's frequent visits to a whore house, and this too, fits hand in glove with this particular facet of the sign Pisces. Furthermore, in western tradition the Fish is associated with martyrdom (in the inexact public sense of the term). In India it is rather connected to "loss," perhaps in a more materialistic sense.

In the normal case wherein no single archetype takes full control over a human being, this star sign of course shares many traits in common with the others. But what is interesting is how well the father Josef has exhibited all the worst aspects of the sign of the Fish separating it from what is common to mankind.

Note. "Astronomically correct": from an individual born in 2008, subtract 22°31' from the position of each planet. This corrective value - "ayanamsha" - is the suggestion offered by Indian astronomer/astrologer B.V. Raman. Almost 2/3 of all westerners have memorized the wrong "birth sign" since books, magazines and daily newspapers all perpetuate a mistake the Europeans committed in late antiquity - strangely enough about the same time Rome fell and the west plunged into the "dark" middle ages! It's all a bit embarrassing - the Indians apparently never lost track of how to calculate an astronomically correct horoscope. Keyword: sidereal astrology.

Some consider the Chinese hour symbols to present an even more enigmatic riddle than conventional horoscopes since they are so compact and leave so much implied. It was therefore with some trepidation I proceeded to calculate all 13 "hexagrams" for the day Josef Fritzl was born. Would any one hour in particular stand out and sound a warning about the newborn child? Yes, in even thinking along this archaic lines [a child being born "in sin"] we are already politically incorrect! But who would ever contribute new perspectives to his/her age if allowing him-/herself to turn into a perfectly brainwashed automaton?

Our mission here is to train our "psychological eye," as psychologist James Hillman called a certain inner sense - possibly a retranslation of Jesus' warning not to let the "inner lamp of the body" remain darkly turned off. In other words, we are looking for the Gestalt of the abusive father Josef Fritzl somewhere during this particular day. I am not a this point prepared to claim that an astrologically produced dominant motif equates one's inner daimon or over-soul. Life is probably more mysterious than that... But models and hunches are all we have while wearing the brain as our crowning achievement..

Trepidation, yes, but after having computed a hexagram for each time segment, I realized this may be one of the most difficult days I have come across. (I sometimes check out an entire day in connection with some celebrity whose birth hour is not in the public domain.) Several hours this day are coupled with very risky omens. Within each symbol often the worst "controlling line" is activated for the hour in question.

In listing the entire day I add the "line judgments" for those very critical moments in addition to the general titles, which indicate the quality or kind of Time is at hand. (A segment of time which to an unknown extent the individual will express in his/her life.)

00-01:

24, FU (the Returning, or, the Traveler with light, or, the Individualist)
Controlling line: 1 (counting from the bottom), a Yang line

01-03:

37, CHIA jÊN (the Family oriented, or, the Hierarchically observant)
Controlling line: 3 (counting from the bottom), a Yang line

Comment. Here we seem to see a high risk for a man who out of an underlying sense of weakness will try to over discipline his family - just to show who is the boss! In order for this symbolism to fit in with Josef Fritzl's case we additionally must assume he was overcompensating and creating a distorted caricature of the character shown by the above rather critical controlling line.

But as the horrible story has unfolded before the world, he turns out to have been considerably more deranged than what one might deduce from meditation upon the above "family scene." In fact,there has been nothing really exceptional with any of the three famous persons I have (so far) found born to the third line.

First, third world superstar singer Bob Marley (provided his birth hour can be trusted). Here the symbolism fits quite well: a macho male cultural stance, a tough guy taking shit from no woman but reserving to himself the right to fuck around and give birth to children all over the place. It may be surmised his attitude toward women was one way to show who was the boss in the house... Sociologists would probably refer to slavery, and how it at length broke down every normal sense of family obligations among the male Afro-Americans in the Caribbean and on the main continent.

Second, Rudolf Steiner, child pedagogue extraordinaire! Note that the theme of "disciplining children" is even more pronounced in his life cycle, but in a constructive rather than dysfunctional form. He even developed a complete pedagogic system for children (and not only the tittering and laughing, hyperactive ones).

Third, the well-known historian Arnold Toynbee, but here I have too little data to comment.

Still, Josef's own story corresponds remarkably well with this time segment: He insisted his initial aim had been to "rescue" his daughter. "Ever since she started puberty, Elisabeth stopped doing what she was told, she just did not obey my rules any more. She would spend all night in bars and come back stinking of alcohol and smoke," he said. "I tried to rescue her from this swamp. I organized her a job as a waitress, but sometimes there were days when she would not go to work."

Fritzl said his daughter had tried to run away from home twice and hung around with "persons of questionable moral standards". He insisted: "That is why I had to arrange a place where I gave her the chance – by force – to keep away from the bad influences outside."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/europe/
confessions-from-the-cellar-it-was-great-for-me-to-have-a-second-proper-family-
in-the-cellar-with-a-wife-and-a-few-children-824588.html

03-05:

7, SHIH (the Army leader, or, the Obliged)
Controlling line: 1 (counting from the bottom), a Yin line

Comment. The general is here at risk of losing the discipline of the troops! Above the base line, the second line of the hexagram harbors, among many others, Britney Spears (at one time totally out of control!), and a female mass murderer, one Myra Hindley. But then again, really bad seeds (like Myra) can be born to any symbol. Here we are on the lookout for a birth symbol inherently problematic.

As for the bottom line "controlling" the early morning 03-05, the celebrity cases are here mostly of a very high order indeed, disciplined thinkers like philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, Arnold Toynbee (again, his birth straddles the same two consecutive hours), and writer Arthur Miller. Even though the latter faced a disciplinary breakdown during his marriage to film star Marilyn Monroe, this trail is not very hot, since a thoughtful reading shows that the omen warns of oneself having to suffer sadness, not inflicting pain on others.

05-07:

36, MING I (the Hiding light, or, the Tactful Minister)
Controlling line: 3 (counting from the bottom), a Yang line

Comment. A meeting with a formidably wild horse predicted for this life cycle, and a warning not to rashly try to get results from severely enforced discipline. Now, does not this remind us a bit of Josef Fritzl and his haughty despotism?

The symbol is very rare in this "predeterministic calendar system" (the Chinese did seldom assign the brilliant component symbol , "trigram", of FIRE to an hour; here it is seen positioned under the trigram for EARTH). But look what nightmarish figures were born to meet this "solar eclipse in the southern land": horror master Stephen King and Pablo Picasso. The most famous painting of the latter, Guernica, sums up the contents of this symbol pretty well.

A third celebrity born to the third line was the inventor of the telephone, Graham Bell. Perhaps this inventor shows a different take on the "wild horse": much patience and experimentation is needed to perfect a new vital but at first rather unruly idea.The symbolism looked very violent to begin with, but appears not quite fit with the case of Josef Fritzl. There appears to be no tendency towards brutality with any of the three celebrities, only the confronting a "wild horse" it will take some time to master and learn to control. In Picasso's case though, his immensely decisive experience of out-and-out brutality (Guernica).

07-09:

61, CHUNG FU (the Compassionate, or, the Truthful, or, rarely, the Callous)
Controlling line: 3 (counting from the bottom), a Yin line

Comment. I usually reserve the alternative title, "The Callous" (The Psychopath) for the potential of a controlling top line to go bad. I have knowledge of a very, very disturbed person born to that line, with no contact whatsoever with the inner life of the feeling. All is directed to external poses.

On the other hand, the third line rather describes a very easily affected individual, swinging to and fro due to the impact upon him/her of outer events. From a few cases this line appears to produce too weak types to match the severely misguided character of Josef Fritzl.

But never say never...I do have a few cases with psychologically very troubled persons born to this symbol. Remember that CHUNG FU deals with the establishing of a working contact with one's "innermost self."

Arnold Schwarzenegger was born to the mighty fifth line (the ruler's seat, the central place in the symbol's upper half), where the pronouncement goes: "if one has CHUNG FU/fidelity towards one's center, no bad moves will ever be made"! What a wonderful promise to bring into life for those who dare experience the "emptiness in the middle" and Schwarzenegger appears to have made the most of this good birth omen.

09-11:

32, HÊNG (the Durable, or, the Flexible initiator)
Controlling line: 4 (counting from the bottom), a Yang line

11-13:

46, SHÊNG (the Striver, or, the Confirmed)
Controlling line: 1 (counting from the bottom), a Yin line

13-15:

12, P'I (the Standing still, or, the Obstructed superior)
Controlling line: 2 (counting from the bottom), a Yin line

15-17:

9, HSIAO CH'U (the Fosterer and nourisher of externals)
Controlling line: 1 (counting from the bottom), a Yang line

17-19:

34, TA CHUANG (the Forceful, or, the Great implementer)
Controlling line: 6 (counting from the bottom), a Yin line

A Freudian slip! I miscalculated this and marked the heading red as a reminder. Was this in itself an omen to stop a while and carefully consider the quality of the hour? Indeed, it seems to be the case!

Comment. Perhaps the "worst" hexagram and the most troublesome controlling line so far this day and even within the system itself when it comes to describing male brutality! TA CHUANG as a whole seeks to impart the difference between true force and the violence resulting from a primitive mentality.

It is indeed strange to find this hexagram allotted to the day of Josef Fritzl's birth. It is a rather uncommon birth sign since the trigram THUNDER (upper half of the symbol), is severely restricted in this system. And now hear this:

THE ONLYFAMOUS/INFAMOUS PERSON I HAVE SO FAR FOUND BORN TO THE TOP LINE OF THIS HEXAGRAM IS THE "FATHER" OF SADO-MASOCHISM, MARQUIS DE SADE!

Note how in the reports coming out of Austria Josef Fritzl has been a frequent visitor to a whore house and there became the horror of the girls, probably exhibiting a behavior along the lines of this "aggressive masculine ram"!

Out of the six individual controlling lines only the third has a similar highly critical judgment attached to it. In this case too, I have only one celebrity, but as this man's professional activity is so similar to that implied by the "aggressive male goat," one must smile: the race car driver Mario Andretti. As the symbol says, an acute danger of losing the sense of what power or force it and turning into a caricature of maleness. The archetype takes control! Phallic race car driving certainly fits ties in perfectly with this type of theme!

With this celebrity case, I believe we have seen the "vibe" of this particular symbol...

19-21:

2, K'UN (the Receptive, or, the Responsive)
Controlling line: 5 (counting from the bottom), a Yin line

21-23:

54, KUEI MEI (the Impulsive, or, the Bonding, or, the Desirous)
Controlling line: 6 (counting from the bottom), a Yin line

Comment. An extreme interpretation of the title KUEI MEI ("Marrying off a virgin girl") could be "The Lustful" or "The Desirous." The top line of this theme is not at all pleasant as it uses for an image a forced wedding totally lacking in sincerity. The ritual is emptily performed and is only for show (according to some commentators); a man stabs a lamb with his knife but the lamb is dead already and no fresh blood flows out of it. In ancient China this may very well have been in violation of the rules obtaining at a wedding. A "pure" or "virgin" lamb should have been slaughtered on the occasion and not beforehand.

One obvious interpretation sees a connection to father Fritzl's grotesque sexual habits where he "stabs bloodless lambs" during his recurrent visits at the whore house. In connection with the Chinese wedding ritual the bleeding lamb would represent the virgin wife and the groom first ritually stabbed the animal and then his new wife, so to speak. A lamb no longer bleeding corresponds well to a prostitute in a whore house (no longer eligible for marriage, no longer bleeding like the first time).

In support of these rather explicit symbols I noted that news reports told of the prostitutes in Linz being replaced every ten weeks to stimulate the male sex buyers to return to the whore house for some "fresh and tender meat." This sordid reading nevertheless corresponds very well with a major motif in Josef's life and furthermore is quite in line with the ancient symbolism itself. Also bear in mind Josef's confession of having lusted after his mother during his adolescence. (She brought him up after his "no good" father left the family.) Remember that the hexagram generally appears to address the danger of badly controlled instincts.

The overall judgment (left out here) indicated that the father of the bride is anxious to go to war, and the symbolism of the top line shows, from one angle, how shallow is the interest of the father in his daughter's fate: he provides her with a dowry basket with nothing substantial in it!

The symbol as a whole can be seen as an explicit warning directed to the father rather than to the girl. The father is the one being admonished to keep a cool head in regarding "matrimonial" issues. He must not carelessly deal with the "holy coming together as one" of man and woman, so as the next minute to engage in war (which seemingly is more to his liking). Much can be read into - or out of - this symbol, which seemingly refers to potential disturbances of libido or the sexual energies. Instincts seem to dominate over intelligence.

Unfortunately this is the most rare birth symbol since both the upper trigram THUNDER and especially the lower LAKE, whose position in the family relationship among the eight trigrams are that of the concubine or youngest daughter. THUNDER has a connection to untamed passions and LAKE furthermore corresponds to the west, evening and death, among other things.

I have only found two famous people born during the dominion of this hexagram (and both to more benign controlling lines): film director Michelangelo Antinioni and the writer Emily Dickinson. I know of no violence in their personal lives (again: their controlling lines were "harmless"), but both of them certainly had very keen intellects and could describe empty conventions - like the shallowly performed wedding ceremony used for illustration of the unseen archetype lurking behind this birth hour.

I did, however, jot down a few lines in connection with Emily Dickinson: "Poet; "dominant father; mother not emotionally accessible", eccentric, life-long seclusion; never married but had a few relations. Literally stayed in-doors her entire life."

"Dominant father...stayed in-doors her entire life..." Before following this track any further, remember this is not one of Elisabeth Fritzl's potential birth hours but one of her father's! Still, there is a curious general similarity here.

Indeed, the symbol KUEI MEI takes a rather negative look at forced alliances like a wedding in a traditional culture like the ancient Chinese. Again, Emily Dickinson (bottom line controls here) seems to have lived her life as if to counterbalance the danger of being "married away" (KUEI) and thereby losing her independence as a biological woman in that age and society. Her life is an exemplary illustration of certain points subtly made in the "inner story" of the hexagram.

Keyword: forced alliance, with the subject being either "The Enforcer" or the "The Forced". Now, here is an opening to that earlier extreme reading of KUEI MEI as one having trouble keeping his/her desires within acceptable bounds. Connect the ideas and one gets a father's rape of his own daughter.

Now imagine that Josef Fritzl was born during the "sane" hour between these alarmingly forceful and/or unbalanced time segments. Is it possible that the "Receptive" and "Responsive" type squeezed in between these two problematic themes could absorb the "poison" leaking into it from both the preceding and the succeeding hour? The very name "The Receptive" shows what an impressionable and easily affected personality is predicted for 19:00-21:00 this day.

23-00:

55, FÊNG (the Abundant, or, the Expansive)
Controlling line: 1 (counting from the bottom), a Yang line

Final thoughts. The remaining time segments with their respective controlling lines appear not to be so overloaded as to predict anything on the magnitude of Josef Fritzl's crime. But, as seen, the day has offered a number of pits and much has revolved around male discipline, male lust in combination with a lack of clear intelligence. I was surprised to see several themes pointing out important features of father Fritzl's evil deeds.Are we then all victims of some mysterious Spirit of the Time?

Yes, victim is the one thinking his/her story began with one's father and mother copulation to produce a child. But reading the child psychiatrist Ian Stevenson I was surprised to find how almost universal the belief in reincarnation is. Many peoples and cultures besides the Indian have reached this conclusion.

How? From personal experiences, or, as in the case of Dr Stevenson's research, from the strange tales told by their small children, while they still remembered a previous existence?

From this perspective one may rather be said to have pre-selected one's own birth and life on earth. The literature on reincarnation, like the strange - indeed very strange - books by hypnotherapist Michael Newton, one is supposed to return to earth to experience certain things. From the reincarnationist perspective one is more or less aware of what one's future life on earth will contain.

But from the entering of a soul into the flow of time and becoming a human being out of its own FREE WILL, from that moment in time, LAW becomes effective (the Chinese called it TAO). From that moment it becomes appropriate to talk about predestination. We can not see its workings (in all likelihood beyond human comprehension), but some evidence make it likely some such thing is going on behind the scene of phenomenal existence. Here is where the Chinese calendar system comes into play - from our earth perspective strange people in the past devised a method to highlight the salient features of whatever journey began at whatever birth hour.

Born a mere day apart Josef and the daughter Elisabeth appears to have agreed to make a joint "job" in this life, a shared mission. I lean against the utterly strange reports from extraordinarily deep states of hypnosis which hypnotherapist Michael Newton induced in his clients. There are levels within where we seem to hold the keys to our riddles in life! Some may have experienced that, even outside hypnosis.

From an earthly perspective, those condemners of patriarchy now have all the evidence needed. Remember how just a few years ago the homosexual pedophile scandal within the Catholic Church in Boston exploded upon a flabbergasted world. Josef Fritzl's enactment during the last quarter of a century is yet another branch on that same kind of tree: the curse of the double identity, or involving oneself in two business whose measuring sticks are altogether incompatible.

One fish is swimming into the darkness - well, good luck! The other fish is swimming back to its source of light - well, good luck to that too! But when this archetype takes full control of a human being, hypocrisy results, or worse. Pisces is certainly a mysterious sign, known since antiquity as the point of passage from "here" to "there" and vice versa. But it is a chaotic sign wherein one either sorts out confusion (by backing away from the noise of the world, as in a convent or retreat), or causes even more of a mess.

Josef Fritzl had the very worst combination of Sun i Pisces and Moon i Gemini (using astronomically correct signs), a combination the perceptive British astrologer Charles Carter held to be frequent in the horoscopes of the insane. Reason? Mixing WATER (the Fish) with AIR (the Twins) is difficult (the one feels while the other thinks), and in this case they are both "dual" signs too.

Perhaps, we should review Josef's entire day in view of excessive weakness instead of excessive male strength, particularly a hexagram or controlling line indicating mental confusion. Anyway, studies like these set one's imaginative faculties in motion and whatever the truth of Fritzl's birth hour, WE are already "building soul" (in contrast to trivial body building) - at least according to depth psychologist James Hillman. I like that idea very much - that we grow just by engaging our minds! Josef's sacrifice in the sign of Pisces becomes the gain of anyone who gives it some thought.

As an encouraging last image here's Albert Einstein's hour of birth. It pictures the total absence of devious double-mindedness. Here is shown a total fidelity towards "HEAVEN" and a goal oriented movement - "THUNDER" - in accordance with "Heaven's way." This stance (or rather mode of being) guarantees Eureka! moment, flashes of intuitive insight - "out of the blue" - for those dedicated to the facticity of life.

But on the other hand: alarms of "war crimes" for psychopaths playing a role while trying to accomplish something else! One either is with or against Heaven, Jung's OBJECTIVE PSYCHE; in matters of authenticity the goods are either real or forged. The same goes for any human mind, although during Einstein's birth hour that very question is show by his birth omen as having became the pre-eminent one ("God does not play dice"):

See "Heaven" (3 x Yang) on top controlling the situation; all the lower trigram (THUNDER) has to do is to respond. One of the possible time segments for Josef Fritzl's birth actually contained the same two trigrams but in reversed order. The goal oriented THUNDER placed itself above the all-powerful HEAVEN! The eldest son sought to surpass his Father Heaven. But Humanity is not the ruler of this creation, not until she has learned to control herself anyway.

The ancient Chinese authors seem at first glance to be saying very little about each of these 64 snap shots. But as one starts to keep more and more of them in mind simultaneously, the grandeur of this map gradually comes to life. What will happen the day a human mind simultaneously loads all 64 hexagrams and their interconnecting 384 lines into the mind-RAM? Will cosmic consciousness then appear "out of the blue"?

May 9, 2008

The Fritzl case: Time as the main character

Calculate a Yin Yang Horoscope | Celebrity Horoscopes | I Ching translation
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The Fritzl case: Time as the main character

Calculate a Yin Yang Horoscope | Celebrity Horoscopes | I Ching translation About the site author | Frequently asked questions | Home

Calculate a Yin Yang Horoscope | Celebrity Horoscopes | I Ching translation
About the site author | Frequently asked questions | Home