Stars of the demise of the bluefin tuna

A bluefin tuna has been sold for three quarters of a million dollars in Tokyo - a price almost double last year's record sale. The bluefin tuna, prized for making the finest sushi, fetched 56.49m yen ($736,000, £472,125) at Tsukiji fish market's first auction of the year. The winning bidder was Kiyoshi Kimura, owner of a sushi restaurant chain.Japan is the world's biggest consumer of seafood, eating about 80% of the Atlantic and Pacific bluefins caught. 5^th Jan 2013, BBC

A report issued this week [7^th Jan] by fisheries scientists on behalf of fishing nations, including the United States and Japan, shows that decades of uncontrolled overfishing have left stocks vulnerable, with conservationists warning that there is a real possibility of their collapse.

Shown above is the  chart for the 20^th May 2012 solar eclipse at Tokyo progressed to 5^th January 2013, the date of the news item.  We can immediately see that as per the rules of mundane astrology the chart is significant for the date since the eclipse [0ge21] has reached the IC of the chart. The  Sun forms a T-square with a Mars-Neptune opposition. Mars [10vi32]  is on the the star  Zosma [11vi30] (the constellation of the Lion) while Neptune [3pi06]  is on  Fomalhaut [4pi07]  (the Southern Fish).

"The lion ever devises fresh fights and fresh warfare on animals, and lives on spoil and pillaging of flocks. The sons of the Lion are filled with the urge to adorn their proud portals with pelts and to hang up on their walls the captured prey, to bring the peace of terror to the woods, and to live upon plunder. There are those whose like bent is not checked by the city-gates, but they swagger about in the heart of the capital with droves of beasts; they display mangled limbs at the shop-front, slaughter to meet the demands of luxury, and count it gain to kill. " [Astronomica, Manilius, 1st century AD, p.237.]

On the Ascendant [17Aq03] we have the stars Sualocin and Rotanev of Delphinus.

The constellation of Delphinus is associated with the story of Amphitrite, the goddess of the sea, because the dolphin persuaded her to become the wife of Neptune, and Delphinus was known as Persuasor Amphitrites, as well as Neptunus and Triton.

[Star Names, Their Lore and Meaning, Richard Hinckley Allen, 1889].

About AMPHITRITE  some say she was one of the fifty Nereides, others an Okeanis, but most simply describe her as the female personification of the sea: the loud-moaning mother of fish, seals and dolphins.  The ‘moaning mother’ gives one the feel that the goddess is concerned with the general condition of  all creatures in her domain.

"Other men take pleasure in looking for the sea in the sea itself: they dive beneath the waves and try to visit Nereus and the sea nymphs in their caves; they bring forth the spoils of the sea and the booty that wrecks have lost to it, and eagerly search the sandy bottom.” [Manilius, Astronomica, 1st century AD, book 5, p.335].

When we put Manilius’ quotes about  the  constellations Leo and Delphinus  along with the   description of Amphitrite as the ‘moaning mother of fishes’ do we not get a picture of overfished seas and depletion of fish stocks?

But the eclipse is not  done with us yet. It goes on to bring its message home. The eclipse at 0ge21 was in ancient China  part of an asterism called Py, the Net, representing a hunting net. Sometimes Mao, the Pleaides, were also seen as a net and together they were called T’ien-Kang, the Celestial snares. The Autumn hunt was a huge massacre of animals in which the Emperor himself, in his war uniform, took part. But given the wisdom of China he was guided by the following advice which forms part of the Hexagram 8 of the  I Ching:

“In the royal hunts of ancient China it was customary to drive up the game from three sides, but on the fourth the animals had a chance to run off. If they failed to do this they had to pass through a gate behind which the king stood ready to shoot. Only animals that entered here were shot; those that ran off in front were permitted to escape. This custom accorded with a kingly attitude; the royal hunter did not wish to turn the chase into a slaughter, but held that the kill should consist only of those animals which had so to speak voluntarily exposed themselves.”  [1]

[1] I Ching, Richard Wilhelm

 http://www.scribd.com/doc/113182629/The-Royal-Hunt