The Cronus Virus - it's Time!

Hi, Richard here.

My inspiration for writing this new blog post (has it really been seven years!) started with a simple miscommunication.

Last week I was chatting to my daughter about the solar system and we got onto the topic of Saturn. I explained that the Greek name for Saturn is Cronus. She stared at me with a puzzled expression on her face and said "you mean like Coronavirus?" and I replied "No, Cronus!"

In that moment I looked through the eyes of a child and saw how easily Coronavirus could become Cronusvirus.

At the time I didn't give the connection much thought but over the the last week or so I've been thinking about how the planet Saturn might relate to events here on Earth. I'm self-isolating right now, working from home, with maybe a little too much free time on my hands, so I strapped on the sync goggles for old times sake and this is the result of my musings.

Is there a tangible link between between Cronus and the Coronavirus?

Let's begin with the factual stuff first.

In Roman mythology Saturn is the founder of civilisations, god of agriculture, social order, conformity and restrictions. The famous rings of the planet Saturn that enclose and surround it reflect the idea of human limitations. Saturn also symbolizes authority and our sense of responsibility and duty.

Which fits perfectly with the current climate. At present we're being asked to conform to the new rules which our respective governments are enforcing. Social order, whom Saturn reigns supreme, is at the forefront of every news story or article that I come across these days. We're being asked to be responsible and do our duty for the community. Stay inside. Maintain social distancing. Wash your hands. Also movement has been restricted in ways in which we've never seen before (at least in my lifetime) and the human experience (along with toilet rolls and pasta) has become somewhat limited.

At first glance the Cronus/Corona connection ticked a couple of the right boxes so I turned to astronomy and learned that a special alignment is taking place later this year.

Info from Earth Sky:

"On July 20, 2020, at 22:00 UTC our planet Earth will fly between Saturn and the sun, bringing Saturn to what astronomers call opposition. Opposition is a big milestone each year for observing the ringed planet Saturn, or any superior planet. When we fly between a superior planet and the sun, the planet is generally closest to Earth and brightest for that year.

When opposite the sun, Saturn is visible all night and at its best! What’s more, the moon turns new on Saturn’s opposition date (July 20, 2020), guaranteeing moon-free skies on Saturn’s special day."

So we have Saturn, Earth and Sun aligning in Summer 2020, heralded in by the start of a fresh lunar cycle. There's nothing too earth shattering about this 'sync up' as it happens every year, or every 378 days on average, however it got me wondering about how the crisis might unfold over the Summer months. 

Could the Saturn Earth Sun opposition point to some kind of breakthrough which signalled the end of the global lockdown? (or is that just wishful thinking?) Or will the virus stay true to it's current course, regardless of what's happening in the heavens above, and continue to take a heavy toll on the population. At the heart of my questioning I wanted to know if there was any light at the end of the tunnel, and if so, where was it going to come from.

(disclaimer: you will not receive any answers by the end of this post but please play along anyway)

The virus was previously known as “2019 novel coronavirus” before the World Health Organization offically named it Covid-19 in January 2020.

To delve deeper into the Summer alignment I turned to the 19th card in the Tarot deck - The Sun.

I think this French version - Le Soleil - sums up our predicament quite nicely. We see two lovers standing inside a ring (aligned with Saturn?) embracing beneath the Sun. Behind them the brick wall could be interpreted as their choice to stay indoors and self isolate and despite their SOLitary confinement they seem to be making the most out of the situation. Covid-19 is being kept at bay.

Now if I was giving you a tarot reading and The Sun turned up in your spread I'd be telling you that this is a fortuitous omen. Keep your chin up because something good is waiting just around the corner. This might be at odds with the current crisis but sometimes not everything is as it seems.

 

How does it spread?  Well from a Tarot perspective I'd say it spreads pretty nicely.

The Rider Waite version of The Sun, probably the most popular deck in the world and originally published 1910, is a card worth closer inspection. 

Again we have the isolation wall but this time the lovers are replaced by a child riding a pale horse.

Now I've always interpreted the red flag as the childs salute to the the fire of Sun, bringer of life, but if we look at it in the context of the Coronavirus it starts to take on new meaning.

The red flag is simply a pointer towards where this all began.

If we go a step further we can even find subtle reference to the 5 stars on the Chinese flag.

China angry over coronavirus cartoon in Danish newspaper

Denmark's Jyllands-Posten printed a cartoon of the Chinese flag with virus-like figures in place of the symbolic yellow stars. China demands apology from the paper as flag goes viral on social media.

So where does the horse figure into all of this? It's a big feature in the Rider Waite version of The Sun but after chewing it over I drew a complete blank. There's the connection to The Four Horsemen but that felt a little too obvious.

Then I came across this poster for the new Mulan.

Mulan was originally scheduled for release on March 27th 2020 but due to the escalating crisis Disney decided to push it forward to July 24th which is just four days after the Sun Earth Saturn opposition on July 20th.

Using one of the most power tools in a sync-heads arsenal I flipped a single letter...

...and arrived at Wuhan.

"Scientists say it is highly likely that the virus came from bats but first passed through an intermediary animal in the same way that another coronavirus – the 2002 Sars outbreak – moved from horseshoe bats to cat-like civets before infecting humans.

There's been a recent twist in the tail as new data suggests that the first human infections must have occurred in November 2019—if not earlier—because there is an incubation time between infection and symptoms surfacing. If so, the virus possibly spread silently between people in Wuhan—and perhaps elsewhere—before the cluster of cases from the city’s now-infamous Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market was discovered in late December."

I'm going to look at a couple of older movies alongside some of the newer 2020 releases so if I go off on a random tangent please bare with me. There is method to this madness.

Let's start with Pixar's latest which comes out June 2020.

Soul = Sol = Sun

In the movie Joe Gardner (note that Cronus is God of Agriculture) has a death experience and is transported outside of his body. In the trailer you can see Saturn-like rings descending over Earth.

Joe Gardner is voiced by actor Jamie Foxx.

He's the one who taught young Robin and his followers how to prevent against infection.

Next up we have Top Gun: Maverick, the sequel to one of my all-time childhood favourites. The movie has been delayed until December 2020, one year after the discovery in Wuhan, but similar imagery can be seen right now in streets and subways all around the world as people go to extreme measures to prevent against exposure. This guy was recently photographed in Kings Cross Station, London.

A 'maverick' is someone whose considered to be unconventional, unorthodox and independent. The virus is pushing a lot of people out of their comfort zones, forcing them to think about the world outside of their personal bubble, and I get the feeling that this is going to help spawn a new generation of mavericks, or environment-conscious free thinkers, which can only be a good thing for the future of our planet.

While scanning Tom Cruise's career for further virus-related clues I noticed this poster for Magnolia. I already had The Sun tarot card fresh in my mind so when I saw this big yellow flower I wasn't surprised to find Tom Cruise staring intently into the rings of Saturn...

...and something resembling the Cronusvirus.

There's also his connection to East Asia, the Horse and the Red Flag to consider.

And of course The Sun/Sol/Soul.

The Sun’s corona is the outermost part of the Sun’s atmosphere. The corona is usually hidden by the bright light of the Sun's surface so this makes it difficult to see without using special instruments. However, the corona can be viewed during a total solar eclipse.

Having found a direct link between Sun and Corona(virus) I tried to think of a movie in which a total solar eclipse played a pivotal role. A few movies came to mind but one that stood out in particular was Pitch Black as it kick-started young Vin Diesel's career back in 2000.

The total solar eclipse takes place when a ringed planet, clearly inspired by Saturn, aligns with Sun.

 

 When exposed to the Corona/Cronusvirus it's better to be safe than sorry.

 

Bloodshot was released in March 2020 while the pandemic was in full swing. In the movie Vin dies and is resurrected by the power of nanotechnology. With The Sun at his back, and an improved healing factor, he has the ability to stare directly into the Corona without even blinking.

 

Which leads me to actor Cillian Murphy.

Cillian's latest movie, the sequel to A Quiet Place, was due out March 2020 but will now be released September 2020.

These are not screenshots from the movie.

 Cillian in 2002 virus outbreak movie 28 Days Later.

Actress Anya Taylor-Joy starred alongside Cillian in hit TV show Peaky Blinders.

Anya's worth noting as her new movie Emma was released Valentine's Day 2020.

 In Latin the word Corona means Crown.

Which means that the Coronavirus is also the Crown virus, King of the viruses.

 

Which brings us to actor Jude Law.

In Gattaca he helps his brother fufill his dreams of reaching Saturn.

He does this by donating his blood for the greater good of the mission.

At the time of writing this post there are already several reports of positive blood trials.

Plasma from coronavirus survivors found to help seriously ill patients

Blood transfusion studies by teams in China report striking improvements

 

Jude Law also starred in this 2011 movie which has had a massive resurgence in popularity.

In March 2020 Contagion was the seventh most popular movie on iTunes. Every other movie in the top 20 was released in 2019.

According to the piracy analytics company MUSO, "Contagion" increased from 546 visits to piracy streaming sites on January 7 to a whopping 30,418 visits on January 30, when coronavirus concerns had reached a high level.

"Although not an especially high number compared to the piracy numbers for blockbuster titles, the average daily visits for 'Contagion' increased by an astonishing 5,609% in January 2020 compared to December 2019."

  

Which brings us to another actor worth touching on.

In the movie Interstellar a wormhole opens in close proximity to Saturn. Mankind is in search of a new habitable planet and Matt Damon is one of the first astronauts to travel through the portal.

While sitting spacing at the Interstellar poster I realised that I'd seen this spaceship before in the most unlikeliest of places. We see a similar design hidden behind the logo for the new Trolls movie which came out recently on April 10th.

Trolls World Tour sees the return of Justin Timberlake who plays the character Branch.

This is probably a good time to look at Cronus, King of the Titans, in a little more detail.

During antiquity, Cronus was occasionally interpreted as Chronos, the personification of time. The Roman philosopher Cicero (1st century BCE) elaborated on this by saying that the Greek name Cronus is synonymous to chronos (time) since he maintains the course and cycles of seasons and the periods of time. 

 

Cronus represented the destructive ravages of time which devoured all things, a concept that was illustrated when the Titan king ate the Olympian gods — the past consuming the future, the older generation suppressing the next generation.

This syncs with the 2020 release of Gretel & Hansel, a story about the consumption of children.

Chronos and his child by Giovanni Francesco Romanelli, a 17th-century depiction of Titan Cronus as "Father Time," wielding a harvesting scythe.

 -chron- comes from Greek, where it has the meaning "time.''

It can be found in words such as: chronicle, chronology, synchronize, synchronicity.

 

During the Renaissance the identification of Cronus and Chronos gave rise to "Father Time", an elderly bearded man dressed in a robe and carrying a scythe and an hourglass.

Here's a look at some of the other 2020 releases which fit the pattern.

The poster for The Green Knight, coming out in May, illustrates the connection between the Crown/Corona and the Clock/Cronus.

We have a new time travel movie in August, Bill & Ted seen here self-isolating.

In November we'll see the King and Queen in No Time to Die.

November also sees the release of Wonder Woman 1984.

Now there's nothing obvious in the poster referencing Saturn/Cronus, other than the multiple rings of her lasso...

...but if you check out the trailer then the first image you'll see is this watch.

And then there's another watch.

Which is a lot of watches for a two minute trailer.
 

They belong to Chris Pine who must have somehow time travelled his way to 1984.

In the trailer he's all over Wonder Woman like a rash so is clearly ignoring his own social distancing rule.

November seems to be a big 'time-themed' month as Black Widow also comes out.

 

Which leads to my most anticipated movie of the year - Tenet.

The film stars newcomer John David Washington.

He's Denzel Washington's son so is clearly following in his dads footsteps (Father Time)

The tagline for Chris Nolan's latest is Time Runs Out.

Tenet is due for release on July 17th, just three days before the Saturn Earth Sun opposition.

Cronus runs out.

Coronavirus runs out. (here's hoping)

And on that note I'm outta here.

Be safe

R