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Peter Linnerooth and the star Algol


Dr. Peter Linnerooth spent nearly five years wearing an Army uniform, including the bloodiest 12 months in Iraq at the height of the surge. As a mental-health professional, his top mission was to keep troops from killing themselves. After he returned home, he spent another two years trying to save the vets he loved, working for the VA in California and Nevada. Few who wore the uniform in the nation’s post-9/11 wars better understood the perverse alchemy that can change the rush and glory of combat into a darkening cloud of anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress. But strikingly, all that understanding – and the knowledge, education, and first-hand experience that nurtured it – didn’t save him. Dr. Linnerooth died in Mankato, Minn., on Jan. 2. He was 42.




In the last few posts I have dealt extensively with several events that I attributed to the 20th May 2012 eclipse which was placed 0ge21 (star Atiks of Perseus the rescuer) conjunct Jupiter (24ta56) which in turn was conjunct the star Algol. From the chart shown above readers can see  the same eclipse drawn for  Mankato when progressed to 2nd Jan 2013 brings it to the MC with Mars-Neptune on the horizon axis. At this point let us recall what Diana Rosenberg had to say about Algol.


“Though it is often found in the horoscopes of criminals, having Algol prominent on a nativity does not necessarily mean one will commit or experience violence, it is rather that one will not be able to remain aloof  from that level of human experience and will be led to come to terms with it in some manner .  A journalist may be assigned to cover tragedies….a medical student may be assigned to a trauma centre (in medicine the treatment of pain is called Algology!), a soldier witnesses terrible slaughter, a war veteran suffers flasbacks; an Algol placement compels confrontation and assimilation of these harsh aspects of human experience…Under the influence of Perseus, whose head and arm are here, they desire to make a difference, with the idea of “rescuing” people, social groups or nations from their ills”.


What she did not say was that even the “rescuer” could fall victim to Post traumatic stress disorders leading to a suicide.

In addition, Mars is conjunct the star  Zosma on the Lion's rump, near the tail of the Lion. Both Robson and Ebertin associate Zosma with “melancholy and unhappiness of mind”.


Dr. Linnerooth  spoke eloquently in recent years about the need to care for the troops’ mental woes. He also warned of the grinding stress that providing such care inflicted on Army mental-health workers like him. “Despite the resilience that may result from training and experience, it is reasonable to assume that professional burnout occurs at a relatively high rate among the vulnerable and overstretched population of clinical military psychologists,” Dr. Linnerooth wrote in an American Psychological Association journal. He was, eerily, telegraphing his own fate.


Looking at the eclipse chart a little more in detail, we notice that it the eclipse Sun-Moon form the apex of a T-square with Mars-Neptune. Sun is conjunct the asteroid Circe (helper) and Mars is conjunct asteroid Psyche (mental trauma) while Neptune is conjunct asteroid Hygiea (health issues), so clearly this eclipse is speaking to us  not only about mental health workers but about our need as a society to deal with the root cause of the harshness or ‘evil’ buried in the collective psyche.

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