The Fritzl case: Time as the main character IIA point of reference or departure is needed before we attempt to pinpoint a likely birth hour for Elisabeth Fritzl, kept in a secret prison by her father for 24 yeas, raped by him and giving birth to 7 children. How should one look upon her part in this drama while looking for that hour symbol best representing her singular fate? As a victim or as a heroine, an outstanding survivor? In addition to the Chinese classification of the 13 time segments during this day, the "controlling line" is provided for those time segments bearing some kind of semblance to her fate. As in the case of her father, an eye for images and clear conceptual thought is again needed to decide whether the match between fate and the potential of the birth omen is good. THE CHINESE DAY APRIL, 8, 1966 00-01: 10, LÜ (the Progressive
treader, or, the Actualizer)
01-03: 53, CHIEN (the Gradualist, or,
the Circumstantial)
Comment. The hexagram shows an exceedingly slow process; it grows as the weathered small tree on top of the mountain as the two component trigrams indicate. The fifth line controlling this Chinese hour describes a long wait where nonetheless only one suitor will appear, a match that can not be bettered. The implication is, Go ahead and marry this man. Could this be the sole male suitor in Elisabeth's constricted world - her own father Josef? The late Swedish film maker was born to this theme (although to a different ruling line) and he often expressed dissatisfaction over his childhood (privately and through his film art). Whether or not this symbol will apply to Elisabeth Fritzl depends on one's viewpoint: Was she a tough survivor finally becoming as famous and influential as that highly visible tree on top of the mountain, influencing the moral tone of its surroundings, as Richard Wilhelm so perspicaciously wrote in his translation of I Ching. But it is as yet only 01:00-03:00 in the morning, and this day will bring periods of time I believe better illustrates Elisabeth's fate. Not much among those few celebrities I have located on the fifth line, appears to have suffered the ultimate punishment of being locked away for 24 years like this. My files reveal US President George W. Bush, French soccer player Zinedine Zidane (who, like Bush, lost all credibility towards the end of his career), or the vain American TV personality Tom Brokaw. 03-05: 9, HSIAO CH'U (the Fosterer and
nourisher of externals)
Comment. A hexagram and a controlling line describing but a small fostering (of an unknown quality). This may be taken to mean being deprived of most things apart from dreams and visions of a better life than the current circumstances. Especially the controlling line with its image of a marriage gone awry, man and women angrily averting their eyes, not wanting "to ever see that man again" (as Elisabeth has stated regarding her father), almost looks like her fate in being intimately bound up with her father against her will. Their incestuous drama can easily be seen as that really lousy "marriage" described in hexagram HSIAO CHU, where the hoped-for ear never really seems to materialize. (Think 24 years in a room with no windows...) Among my few celebrity cases, the original Tarzan on movie, Johnny Weismuller, seems really to have "acted out" this birth sign and its omen of bad relations with the spouse. He was married five times! The ex swimmer and athlete was probably more interested in his own bodily fitness than fostering good psychological qualities for a working relationship with a partner. Singer-songwriter and lesbian k.d. laing is another interesting example of how unexpectedly these archetypal symbols may express themselves. Here we have a fundamental aversion towards man as a kind, and this too matches the hexagram's prophecy of the problems following upon those who arrive on Earth with "meager fostering" in the baggage. The ancient Chinese commentary Hsiang Chuan (The Image) indicates that HSIAO CH'U ( Fostering of the Small) may refer to a narcissistic personality, whose only opportunity and therefore bent is on the cultivating of the shallower aspects of one's nature, like clothing or overall styling, rather than working on depth psychological issues. Male homosexuality has struck me as being very shallow indeed, an obsessed dealing with the surface body, the lesser (HSIAO) part of one's being and hardly ever with the deep soul aspect. The Chinese wisdom reaching us from antiquity, a far more psychological era in the history of mankind, is a harsh medicine to swallow! Chinese wisdom knows of two sexes - the Yang and the Yin - and ideas of a third sex is only the result of "meager personal development," of wishful air headedness out of touch with substantial reality. I have personally observed a few subjects born to the hexagram and HSIAO CH'U certainly seems to indicate some odd deviations from the norm. In several cases a total obsession with fabric and textures, entirely in line with the Image commentary of dealing entirely with the outward aspect of things (their lesser side). There may well have been an inner nature, but surprisingly much revolved around "image" and "style"... On second thought, I doubt this is the birth hour of Elisabeth. There will shortly appear still more drastic omens this very dark day! 05-07: 5, HSÜ (the Clear mindedly awaiting)
07-09: 33, TUN (the Secretive and
retiring, or, the Withholding)
Comment. The overall theme of this hexagram, to remove (oneself), "go into hiding", "keep secret" et cetera, is very consonant with how a significant portion of Elisabeth Fritzl's life turned out. The bottom line of a hexagram always indicates something that might be the "root" of the situation (soon to become more visible), or maybe something still "hidden beneath ground!" But the symbol is not a perfect match; the judgment is more about not to remain passive and pretend to be busily looking another way when there is still a possibility to steer away from an encroaching danger. I read somewhere that the the bottom line indicates one form of animal behavior - by freezing on the spot the prospective game hopes to trick the stalking animal. Well, the bottom trigram, the immobile MOUNTAIN is certainly not the correct strategy here, seems to be the warning. This symbolism fits the facts IF Elisabeth too easily threw in the towel and let herself be taken into Retreat (TUN), into Hiding (the basement prison). But who is to decide whether she froze and used a bad strategy? 09-11: 59, HUAN (the Disperser, or, the Rescuer, or, the
Restorer, or, the Dispersed)
Comment: The regime is here sending a danger or a person non grata in exile and erases or dissolves the bloody traces remaining from some insurrection or upheaval having preceded this political decision. Now contemplate a birth of Elisabeth somewhere in between this and that preceding hexagram TUN (Retreating, Going into Concealment) - what an illustration the two themes, taken together, make! See the article "Born a bad Seed" dated 2007 when I first started investigating the idea that perhaps ONE birth symbol is not adequate to describe a person but that the correct picture only emerges, like a mirage in the inner mind, when one simultaneously beholds two consecutive birth symbols. And this idea is now extended, for just look what TIME had in store for the next two hour segment... 11-13 29, K'AN (the Flexible, or, the
Guarded)
Comment. "A pit beneath the pit"! This time segment actually seems to refer to someone being trapped in a basement (the lower pit) below the upper pit, which in this case would be the hell-of-a-family where Elisabeth suffered from her father's tyranny during the earlier part of her adolescence. This day is not outright spooky, and one can only wonder in what ways this same symbolism played out in other cases born worldwide during this hour... So we here have three very critical two hour segments in a row. What if Elisabeth was born to the middle one and was cursed as well by the bad influences from both the surrounding "time spirits?" An interesting celebrity: famous Carl Jung was born to this very bottom line (as well as partaking in another interesting birth symbol, also containing the trigram for a pit or water flowing underground). After the traumatic break from Sigmund Freud he had a bout with schizophrenia for the next seven year. Talk about falling down into an "underworld pit!" When he eventually emerged above ground, so to speak, it was as a born anew shaman, insightful into the workings of the Psyche as few others on Earth. 13-15 8, PI (the Feudal Lord, or, the Vassal)
15-17 42, I (the Increaser, or, the Goodwiller)
17-19 59, HUAN (the Disperser, or, the Rescuer, or, the
Restorer, or, the Dispersed)
19-21 29, K'AN (the Flexible, or, the
Guarded)
Comment. A second time this day K'AN, The Pit or Abyss, appears. Not much to do or demand from the world during this incarceration, says the controlling second line laconically. Prince Charles of England was born to this very sign. His obvious lack of easy in handling the media and generally uninspired manners indicates how little is going on in this "existential prison cell"... Do note that this hexagram may also be taken to mean one's own body as a prison, but it is more often regarded as a sign of objective dangers facing the person. It does have a bearing on "the criminal mind" - devious, double-minded poker faces saying one thing but then doing something entirely different. Either of the K'AN time segments this day is a good candidate... If reading this omen simultaneously with the preceding one, about being separated from one's own and sent into exile, a birth somewhere in between both would be a very good prediction as to Elisabeth's actual time of birth this problematic day... I have begun to develop a weak notion that this Prison Cell, Abyss or Pit turns up in connection with weakly performing people, in the sense of having inborn psychological weaknesses or disturbances (angst ridden with no obvious explanation - except that a reincarnationist perspective holds this to indicate residues from a previous life festering in the deep unconscious...). But I have never met with a life even remotely so extreme as the experience of Elisabeth Fritzl, and my only conjecture is, after having read child psychiatrist Ian Stevenson's strange interviews with small children who remembered their previous lives, that the story of Josef and his daughter Elisabeth may very well be a continuation of some tragedy that begun in one of the all-female concentration camps during World War II in their hometown Amstetten. As Dr Stevenson bewildered noted, some souls would appear to simply continue on a theme begun earlier; KARMA does not at all turn the tables around but acts as a reinforcement. Perhaps, then, Elisabeth was a concentration camp victim in the very same town a while back, and now continued along the same kind of story, but this time WITH A DIFFERENT, AND BETTER, ENDING IN MIND... 21-23 48, CHING (the Well-like, or, the Introspective, or, the
Socially oriented)
23-00 46, SHÊNG (the Striver, or, the Confirmed)
Final thoughts. The other time segments this day is "clean" (or relatively so), but overall this is one of the worst days I have seen in those, admittedly not so many, cases where I looked up every hexagram for that day. There are several bad segments going on for hours, and whose symbolic representations connect to the fate of this woman's: incarceration. I can not decide if the first 6 hour "blackout" or the second 4 hour problem is the more likely. But the presence of the hexagram of the Pit says a lot. If calculating the correct planetary positions (see introduction to previous article on Josef Fritzl), one finds that Elisabeth was born a day when the Moon (feelings, everyday life, mind, the home) passed through the dark and pent-up sign of Scorpio and there associated with one of the moon nodes - in Indian astrology a very ominous influence! This sign of a darkened mind radically reinforces the general sign of month of the Sun's passing through Pisces, the Fish - another of those strange and sorrowful WATER signs showing introversion or things hidden to/from the outside world. The Chinese day prognoses and the ancient astral science seem to have both spotted the same thing, but express it in two very different languages. Any person reading this will probably accept the reality of the mantic arts, but if you happen to be still skeptic, note the birth date of one of the girls from the success tv series "Sex and the City," Cynthia Nixon. She recently came out (spring 2008) as a lesbian and described her anguish while being afflicted with breast cancer, not knowing whether she would live or die. It just so happens she was born in the same year as Elisabeth Fritzl, in the same month, and only one day before - incidentally the birthday of Elisabeth's rapist father! (I refer back to the final thoughts section on the page covering the father's day of birth for the theory that Elisabeth and the father prepared this marriage "in heaven," perhaps to even out a score, but, as it turned out, to give the majority of the world a chance to express their loathing and the minority food for thought.) Don't come tel me there isn't anything to the truth claims of astrology! It is only that an archetype has the peculiarly habit of now appearing in one of its guises, now another. Ultimately the perpetrator/victim dichotomy may turn out to be the wrong approach to strange cases like the Fritzl's, but I'll leave that to future's "hyperspace psychology" to answer.
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