A friend of mine recently returned from a lengthy holiday abroad. To say that she has been depressed and unhappy since her return is to put it mildly – I believe that she has experienced panic attacks and her senses are heightened causing an over reaction to negative situations that she views in her immediate surroundings.

Travelling to other countries that do not share our levels of crime and “flavour” of stress can do this to you – although in my travels, even to the most first world of countries – all that I have ever wanted towards the end of my trips was to come home. We are all affected differently and in pondering the reasons as to why this is so, I deduced that it was a question of philosophy.

The right to emigrate

We live in a (supposedly) free world, and if you are unhappy in one country you have every right (you also need the right passport, heritage and or the financial means) to seek occupancy in an alternative country that is more pleasing to you. But, and here is the crux of the matter, you have to realise that you take yourself and your beliefs with you. If you are prone to allowing external influences to penetrate your core and belief system, then immaterial of where you live, you will be affected – I suppose that the decision is which specific exterior factors you are willing to live with. I am more inclined to accept the negatives in South Africa and to try and somehow, even in a miniscule manner, alleviate some of those factors for the greater good of my country, than to live in a foreign country.

Personal philosophy

Here is the question of philosophy – this is mine alone, I do not judge that of others nor ask others to judge mine. I was born a South African for a reason so surely a large part of my destiny has to do with my origins. I have been given tools in my make up to help me cope with the situation in my country and I have been given talents that I can use to uplift and touch the people around me. For me, these talents will be diminished should I take them elsewhere, they will not be as effective or as needed.

Astrological principles are relevant to every country and to every person on our earth – each country has its own unique agony and ecstasy and for me it is so much more appropriate to be part of what is already in my genes and in my soul – I have an African soul and I know that no matter where I live I will hear her cries and that of her people. Will it diminish the pain if I hear this while sitting in my neat little home in a suburb with no fences around the manicured lawns, safe and snug in my house with no burglar bars on the windows – I think not?

Will not seeing the wretched street children on a daily basis make them any less wretched or my pain any less? The pain will remain as poignant as it is now. So my decision is, to use a cliché, to try and be part of the solution and not the problem. Here I use a close friend as an example – he is a top Jhb dentist, he is an avid and successful sportsman, he is doing extensive post graduate studies, and yet has found the time to enrol and be trained as a police reservist. Every weekend, and some week nights, you will find him assisting our grossly under paid police force in making South Africa a better place for all of its people – he could be sitting in a bar during “happy hour” bemoaning the fate of his country or his falling shares, he could be playing golf on a weekend together with a large portion of our male population, or he could be attending numerous dinner parties where he is part of the groups of people who feel it necessary to discuss how bad a state of affairs the country is in while eating food bought from up market stores heated using generators whose cost would feed the average impoverished family for a year.

The crime factor

There is also undeniable proof that many unscrupulous people are jumping on the crime band wagon and using the current climate for the enactment of their own personal agendas – the murder of Taliep Petersen by his wife’s hit men, the murder of Brett Keble and very recently a Northern suburbs woman who claimed to have been hijacked and raped when in fact she had a drug habit that needed to be fed and used her body as collateral – to name a few. These people are to be despised, they are exploiting a volatile and horrendous climate for their own gain, fuelling the pervasive belief that we truly do live in a country that is going nowhere and not so slowly either.

Mutual reception

I believe that my country needs me and in reality, I need my country. I need her vibrancy, the laughter of her people and the doe shaped eyes of her children, the smell of the veld after a Highveld storm, her wide open plains and rugged landscape (with or without the litter – in fact if the litter bothers me so much I can always go and clean it up myself) and even the sound of a car/house alarm going off at 2am and the vicious newspaper headlines shrieking at me from lamp posts – they all resonate deep within me, and I would not trade any of it for complacency and refuge in another country – the price to be paid by my soul is too great. I have faith in my country and in its people and in God - and I have faith in what I have been given which I need to put to good use to make a difference. So, to anyone who knows me I say that when we chat, do not tell me about the “bad state of our country” – I am well read, own a TV and am fully aware of current affairs – rather tell me what you are doing to make this country a better place – how you are making a difference to the life of someone less fortunate than you – and if you can’t do that then rather say nothing on that topic or just give me your flight details.

I will now step off my self appointed Aquarian soap box and judge the chart which ignited this article – I decided, unasked, to assist my friend as she was agonising over whether or not to emigrate – I fully respect and understand that some people need to remove themselves from situations that are causing them grave distress.

The attainment of Judgement

4 March 2008, 12:40, Johannesburg SAFR, Asc 10 Gemini

• My friend is not the Querent, I am, so her significator is Lord 11. We cannot allot her the Moon as co significator as she belongs to the Querent, who in this question has no bearing.
• Lord 11 is Mars posited in the turned 3rd (radical 1st) at 0Cancer. He is ruled by the Moon (interesting that the Moon rules Africa), exalts Jupiter, in his own Triplicity, Term and Fall, in the Face of Venus and Detriment of Saturn.
• For “over there” we use Lord 7 – Lord 1 (in this case Lord 11) and the 1st house show the situation as it is now and Lord 7 and the condition of the 7th show things as they will become if the change is made – the view forward.
• Lord 7 is Venus (radical 5th) – she is in the turned 11th (radical 9th), ruled by and in the Triplicity of Saturn, in her own Term, in the Face of Mercury and Detriment of the Sun.
• There are no significant fixed stars to take into account and the placement of the Antiscia is not relevant to the question.
• Please note that we are not looking for aspects between the two significators, I simply want to assess the condition of my friend in South Africa and the condition of “over there”. The fact that she is considering emigrating shows us that she could most likely do so if she chose – the question I am asking is basically a “should I stay or should I go question” on her behalf.
• The criteria provided by John Frawley and my assessment of them are as follows – please remember we are dealing here with a turned chart:
• 7th house better than 1st – go, if not stay; In this chart the 7th house is empty and the 1st houses the PoF – the first is then better than the 7th – so we have a “stay”.
• Lord 7 stronger than Lord 1 – go, if not stay; Lord 7 is definitely stronger than Lord 1 as Mars is in Fall (his being in Triplicity and Term does not diminish this at all) and Lord 7 is in her Term and applying to conjunct the N.Node – we have a “go”.
• Moon or Lord 1 separating by aspect from a benefic and going to a malefic – stay; separating from a malefic and going to a benefic – go; I will not use the Moon as instructed by JF as she is not co significator of my friend – I look at what Lord 1 is applying to or separating from - Mars is applying to sextile Saturn, the greater malefic (peregrine and retrograde so not good) and he has very recently separated from an opposition to the Moon. Both the Moon and Mars are in the very early days of their new signs and if we take the chart back by a day we see the opposition. But, the Moon in Capricorn would have been in detriment so she is viewed in this case as bad due to her essential debility. We therefore have a situation of going from bad to bad.
• Planet in detriment in 7th, Lord 1 in its exaltation – stay put; not applicable here.
• Dignified planet in 1st, Moon separates from dignified planet and applies to one that is peregrine – stay; not applicable here.
• S.Node in 1st, N.Node in 7th – go; not applicable here.
• So, we appear to have conflicting testimony although based on the movement of Mars, I would already be inclined not to go.
• We can see that my friend is distressed as her significator is in Fall, but is this enough to make the change? We have one more testimony that we can look at. If the Querent gives a specific place for there, we can pick up her/his planet and drop it inside that house. If we take Mars and drop it inside the turned 9th (foreign country), we see that he becomes peregrine – this would most likely be the case if one uprooted and moved, you would feel lost and anchorless for awhile. But, the essential fact here is that the planet is only somewhat improved – it removes Mars from being in Fall but it also takes away the Triplicity and Term which it currently enjoys.

Conclusion

My answer therefore to my friend would be that the situation does not change drastically if she goes - she is going from bad to bad and based on what sort of "bad" she can live with, needs to make her decision. This highlights what I said in my article above - we all have to decide which external factors we are willing to live with and what price we are prepared to pay to remove those that we cannot endure.