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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