Makemake

Dwarf Planet Makemake represents a way of thinking that splits us into a more civilised and a wild self, and assuming the more civilised self is the better of the two. This split affects our attitude towards resources of all kinds – and how we apply them to fulfill our needs.

This planet shows the places where we feel trapped and unable to connect with wealth and abundance.

On the global level, Makemake represents the damage to culture and the environment that flows from assuming continual development and first world values are superior to a more integrated and sustainable way of life.

Makemake (136472 / 2005 FY9) is part of the group of minor planets including Haumea, Eris and Pluto, known as Trans Neptunian Objects (TNO’s) because they orbit out beyond Neptune.

The influence of these planets comes from deep space and moves into our more human realm at various intervals.  They are galactic messengers, weaving humanity into a story much bigger than we are accustomed to considering. 

What message could Makemake be bringing us from the dark outer reaches of the galaxy?

Makemake comes inside the orbit of Pluto at it’s closest point to Earth.   Makemake’s overall orbit is 306 years, compared to Pluto’s orbit, which is 248 years.

The Easter Island Story

Makemake was named for the Creator God of a small isolated volcanic island in the Pacific Ocean known as Rapa Nui or Easter Island.  Although the island may appear insignificant, it’s history has evoked tremendous confusion amongst scholars.  Were the indigenous people responsible for the devastation of their own culture, or did it occur after the Europeans arrived on the scene in 1720?  The historical confusion is part of the message Makemake brings us.

The island of Rapa Nui is over 3600 kilometres east of South America and over 2000 kilometres from the closest inhabited landfall. Some consider it part of an ancient earthgrid, originally the highest point in a landmass that is now submerged in the Pacific, known as the East Pacific Rise, and that it was sought out by ancient navigators because of it’s crucial importance in mapping celestial energy on Earth. (see here) 

Astrologer, Philip Sedgwick, believes the position of Rapa Nui bears a direct relationship to the Galactic Centre.   It’s thought that the original Polynesian people arrived in their canoes around 380AD, having navigated their way by the stars thousands of kilometres across the deep ocean.

Perhaps Makemake has something to say to us about mapping our own personal celestial voyage?

The Mythology of Makemake

Makemake was the primary creator god on Rapa Nui.  It is difficult to know his story because so much of the oral tradition of the islanders has been lost.  This description is from the naming citation issued by the IAU:

Makemake is the creator of humanity and the god of fertility in the mythology of the South Pacific island of Rapa Nui. He was the chief god of the Tangata manu bird-man cult and was worshipped (sic) in the form of sea birds, which were his incarnation. His material symbol, a man with a bird’s head, can be found carved in petroglyphs on the island.

(Thanks Philip Sedgwick for this quote). 

As part of the bird-man cult, the islanders would swim out to an islet each year through dangerous open sea to collect Sooty Tern eggs.  It’s likely that this annual ritual was designed to ensure that the strongest and bravest warrior was chosen each year to be a sort of chiefly figure, someone the islanders could trust to provide for them, to bring them continued fertility.

 The symbolism of the egg is significant, given that the island was originally named Easter Island by the Europeans who arrived there on Easter Sunday in 1722.  The planet Makemake was discovered at Easter, on 31st March 2005, and astronomers provisionally named it “The Easter Bunny”.  The team eventually chose the name Makemake mainly because of the Easter connection, and it was only later that the synchronicity of the egg hunt become apparent.

Also, only a month after Makemake received its official name, the egg shaped National Centre for the Performing Arts opened in Bejing.

One of the best known aspects of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) are the statues or moa.

These massive statues weighed about 14 ton each and were carved out of a quarry on the island then transported to the coast.  We might expect that the statues were intended to scare off intruders, but in fact they face inwards, creating a protective circle.  That their protective essence is masculine is clear from the phallic shape and the hands clasping the genitals.

The History of Rapa Nui

The accepted history of Rapa Nui is that when the Europeans began to arrive in 1722, the islanders were already in a state of decay. Generations of tribal warfare had destroyed their food supplies, their culture and their religion, and they had resorted to cannibalism to stay alive.  There were tales of a major upheaval in 1680 where many of the islanders had died in a huge battle and the creation of the statues suddenly ceased.  So the story goes.

But it seems that this story is based on false evidence, and that uncovering the true story is a vital part of our understanding of the meaning of Makemake in our designs, and in our global evolutionary journey.

There is little evidence that the islanders were anything other than happy and healthy when the Europeans first arrived.  There were the usual log entries that described them as savages living a poor life.  These are ethnocentric views expressed by European sailors accustomed to judging life by very different standards.  Their views didn’t take into account the complex cultural, spiritual and natural resources of the local people, and were often formed after very short visits to the island.  Because of this idea that the islanders outgrew their resources and began fighting for survival, there is a tendency to use Makemake as a predicator of environmental disaster if our resources are not properly managed, the inevitable consequence of ill management and overpopulation.

If we dig a bit deeper it becomes clear that the history of Rapa Nui was ingeniously – and quite subconsciously – rewritten by the ‘victors’.  Rather than being the victim of their own bad management and aggressive tribal warfare, it seems that the environmental damage inflicted on Rapa Nui and it’s people – which constituted almost a complete genocide – was entirely the result of the rape and pillage by the Europeans and the later arrival of missionaries on the island. 

Hundreds of islanders were stolen by slave traders.  Some were later returned to Rapa Nui where they unwittingly spread the smallpox that decimated the population and destroyed it’s culture.  The women were regularly raped and/or stolen to be sex slaves on the visiting ships. It’s a familiar story to Australians who know something about the early treatment of the Aboriginal people.

After a detailed examination of the evidence, Benny Peiser comes to this conclusion.

“The striking lack of research into actual European attrocities contrasts noticeably with the fixation of most researchers on hypothesised ecological ‘suicide’ which is squarely blamed on the self-destructive actions of the natives themselves.”

One early report described the island as being “exceptionally fertile, an earthly paradise with a considerable population with more beauty and grace than I afterwards met in any other island; and a soil, which with very little labour, furnished excellent provisions and in an abundance more than sufficient for the consumption of the inhabitants.”  Others found it difficult to see this reality and reported instead “a barren island, a field of volcanic stones, an unproductive tract of land incapable of supporting a population of any density”. 

The visiting Europeans refused to accept that the native culture was capable of the sophisticated skills needed to survive on Rapa Nui.

To the victor goes the spoils, and as long as the islanders could be blamed for their problems, the Europeans could continue to take advantage of the islands’ resources, including her people, which they did for several centuries. 

By the time the missionaries arrived in 1863, “they found a culture in it’s death throes: the religious and social system has been destroyed and a leaden apathy weighed down upon the survivors from these three disasters” – the slave trade, smallpox and the resulting inability to sustain the food supply and culture.

If you’re asking what the downfall of a tiny island in the Pacific Ocean in the 18th and 19th Century might have to do with your life, consider the underlying power mechanics of slave labour and viral epidemics, wise use of the earth’s resources, the destruction of spirituality, and loss of local culture and a sustainable food supply.  We are now reliving Rapa Nui’s disaster on a global level. 

Makemake tells us that we must become very clear about the real story behind the accepted headlines, who is really creating the difficult global situation we find ourselves in?

Makemake in the Human Design Chart

When it was discovered on 31st March 2005, Makemake was at 20 Virgo 16, putting it in Gate 47.4 in the Human Design chart.  At that time it was designated 2005 FY9, and given the provisional name The Easter Bunny.

According to the Huang I Ching, Gate 47 describes a situation where we are surrounded by enemies, poverty stricken, extremely tired or exhausted.  A fitting example for the outcome on Rapa Nui.

The Wilhelm I Ching talks about ‘superior’ people being oppressed by ‘inferior’ people.  I find this really interesting, as the problems on Rapa Nui arose because the Europeans saw themselves as vastly superior, so much so that it was impossible for them to value the subtle and life sustaining island culture. Again there are similarities to Australia, where the Europeans turned up assuming their ways were superior and wiped out a culture that had sustained itself for at least 50,000 years.

This is an Ajna Centre gate, so it deals with mental processing and how we conceptualise.  One aspect of this gate is a tendency to accept a ‘gloom and doom’ version of any story and the need to breakthrough into more empowering ways of perceiving our reality.  If we consider the story so far, our gloom and doom version could be the way in which we tend to blame ourselves for our situation, without putting our lives into a larger context and taking account of external forces.   While those external forces remain invisible to us, we give our power away to them and are unable to change our circumstances no matter how hard we try.

In line 4, we find the oppression of wealth and circumstance that prevents us from being able to connect with the subtle powers of the universe that inform us more truly than external indicators of success. When we let go of our attachment to the signs of our financial success we find our power and connection to life.

Nick Anthony Fiorenza considers some of the main themes of Makemake to be a toxic build up of psycho-emotional energy due to a subconscious involvement with riches, money, wealth and financial resources.  We get sucked into something outside ourselves rather than paying attention to the flow of abundance and living from the heart.  We can feel helplessly trapped in this place, disregarding initiatory lessons that would help us regain our power.

Our hunt for the egg has turned sour, as we lose our sense of the rebirthing nature of the initiation, seeking the goal only as a material object. Fiorenza also highlights the intelligence to tune into the prophetic messages of the natural world.  There is an overriding sense of being trapped.  This is an interesting idea.  The missionaries had a story that the islanders were trapped on Rapa Nui without resources, but they were highly skilled navigators and sailors. They could have left the island at any time if it were true that their survival was truly threatened and the island was unable to sustain them.  They only became trapped when they were kidnapped, raped, infected with disease and disenfrachised.

He goes on to talk about the experience of ‘actual neurological transmutation’ (again, the idea of the mind) required to get free of the false sense of entrapment and to find self mastery.  Part of this process involves having the consciousness to release our ego attachment to the greed of wealth and the global financial system, to offer up our lower self and it’s long standing grief, guilt, resentment and self-judgment as a way of moving out of the past. When we are open in this way our minds operate in diverse and creative ways. When we cling to our attachment to wealth and status, we are stuck in a prison of the quintessential one track mind. Entrapped in our own narrow thinking, we are unable to ensure our own material survival, our own spiritual and cultural wealth.

When things seem most shocking, it’s a time to chill out, relax and allow the resources we need for the initiation we are facing to reveal themselves.

(The above sentence comes from looking at Makemake’s Perihelion in gate 51, Aphelion in 57, North Node in 45 and South Node in 26.)  Phillip Sedgwick sees Makemake as giving the courage to face the peril of the spiritual journey, as symbolised by the ritual ‘race’ through shark infested waters and up sheer cliffs to find the egg, which symbolises rebirth or initiation.

Transits of Makemake

When he was discovered on 31st March 2005, Makemake was in Gate 47.  Since January 2006 he has been in Gate 6, the Gate of Conflict, in the Solar Plexus Centre.  In October 2011 he will begin his movement into Gate 46 in the G Centre.  There is some to-ing and fro-ing due to retrogrades, but this is essentially the timing of the shifts between gates.

2012

Makemake left Gate 6 and moved into Gate 46 line 1 on 20th December 2011.

29 December 2011 – retrograde in 46.1

26 Feb 2012 – returns to Gate 6.6 in retrograde

16 April 2012 – Gate  6.5 in retrograde

7 May 2012 – square Galactic Centre (11.5)

11 June 2012 – goes direct

14 July 2012 – square Galactic Centre (11.5)

4 August 2012 – Gate 6.6 direct

17 September 2012 – Gate 46.1

29 October 2012 – Gate 46.2

29 December 2012 – retrograde

During 2010 and 2012 Makemake made an astrological square to the Galactic Centre which is a fixed position in Gate 11.5.  The exact squares occur on 7th September 2011, 7th May 2012 and 14 July 2012.

One way of interpreting this square is a challenge to open our minds to new ways of understanding each other so as to find the truth in a harmonious way rather than through conflict.   Approached with an open heart and no emotional attachment to winning or losing, we will discover a more authentic way of discovering who the other person is without projecting our own desires onto them.

Also, will add more on the subjects of extinction, volcanoes (shared with Haumea), no moons, management of resources, sexuality, ownership of self, celebratory culture, singing and dancing,

Further Reading

http://www.mikebrownsplanets.com/2008/07/make-make.html

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=Dwa_MakeMake

http://serennu.com/blog/2008/08/astrology-research-data-for-makemake/

http://www.lunarplanner.com/asteroids-dwarfplanets/Haumea.html

http://www.mauricefernandez.com/eng_art10.html

http://www.midlandsschoolofastrology.co.uk/astrologymakemake_swine_flu_population_.html

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/07/080723-makemake.html

https://daily.jstor.org/what-really-happened-to-easter-island/All unattributed quotes come from the research article by Benny Peiser.