On Tuesday, April 20, a Transocean rig called the Deepwater Horizon exploded and caught fire approximately 42 miles Southeast of Venice, Louisiana, while completing drilling a well for British Petroleum. U.S. Crude oil began to hemorrhage in gushes from wounds on the floor of the sea -- and never stopped.

What unfolded in the weeks that followed had all the hallmarks of a blockbuster disaster movie. The horrendous spill , the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez every four days, has created panic in the region where the toxic oil slick is making its way ashore and anger in rest of the nation and around the world.

The extent of the damage from scientists: sightings of several underwater plumes, including one 22 miles long, six miles wide, and more than a thousand feet deep. BP-US, which will pay a penalty based on the size of the spill, estimated that 210,000 gallons of oil were flowing into the ocean daily, though government scientists suspected the number is closer to 800,000 gallons.

To try to grasp a deeper meaning from this deep-water catastrophe, we turned to the renowned astrologer Jessica Murray, who offered this, in part, as an explanation from stellar configurations:

"[The] fatal blast in the Gulf of Mexico happened under a sky that featured Saturn (business as usual) exactly opposed to Uranus (explosions), which is moving into position with Pluto (hidden power) for their long-running square. Ceres, the asteroid of the Earth Mother, conjoined Pluto, the despoiler, in the sign Capricorn (corporations) within a degree.

"The fact that this was no ordinary oil spill became clear right away as the disaster moved through several quick meaning changes in the public mind: from that of an accident brought on by the failure of a mechanical device, to that of an example of how government fails to regulate oil companies, to that of an entire system where corporate interests are allowed to commit travesties against Nature.

"The rig explosion coincided with the entry of Chiron (wounding) into Pisces (oceans) that very day. Horrified TV viewers saw aerial photographs of the blue sea turning into a conflagration of toxic crude. The mind reels. The heart recoils."

She goes on to say that we are now living in a time when all secrets are being revealed -- in this case the secret plundering of the planet's precious (and irreplaceable) natural resources by multi-national corporations and the collusion of governments in these world-scale dirty deals.

However we want to look at this huge and scary event, what is emerging into human consciousness at an even great velocity and volume as the oil into the water is the terrible truth that we have disconnected ourselves fatally from nature, 'using' it for our selfish and misguided purposes -- and we are now about the pay the consequences.

We can ignore this disaster in deep waters by going into collective denial -- surrendering our minds and souls to the numbing drone of what Jessica Murray calls our 'infotainments' -- or we can see it as the wake-up call it surely is...and decide to learn how to live as humble and obedient children of our Mother Earth. For each of us, that will look differently; for all of us, it will be necessary if we are to survive as a species.

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Check out Joseph's newest book: God On Your Own: Finding a Spiritual Path Outside Religion, with a Foreword by Thomas Moore.