"Catching Fire"

Heard an interview on NPR with Harvard Professor of Anthropology, Richard Wrangham, who has just published a book called Catching Fire: how Cooking Made Us Human. Wrangham presents a new idea about how cooking food has been a major factor in human evolution. I guess he assumes that we are superior. That's an idea that I seriously question every day, but we humans do talk and we do make use of our opposable thumbs like nobody's business so I can see how he's got a point.

What's interesting from an astrological point of view is that cooking is related to the sign of Cancer which represents Hearth and Home and Family. And so the presentation of this new idea of the human condition into society fits into the current big outer planet t-square that's currently up-ending societey. Cancer is the sign that is missing from the t-square between Saturn, Uranus and Pluto. ( end of Gemini is also implicated as this t-square is extra potent on the Aries Points.) T-squares are said to look for "resolve" to the challenges that the planets and signs they create by looking for a solution in the missing section of the square shape they create. Among other things, the planets of Saturn and Uranus represent things that are Manmade and which center around Societal creations. Pluto and Uranus both represent major changes within societies (usually of crisis proportions). The sign of Cancer which represents Home, Hearth, Family, Tradition and Cooking. The news has recently showed a sort of stupid side of this t-square in how NASA has recently bombed the Moon looking for Water. Both Moon and Water are ruled by the sign of Cancer.

A New York Times review of the book notes that cooking does a number of things to set the humans apart from the rest of the hominids, bipeds, and omnimipids. It makes our food safer (Saturn). It makes our food taste rich and deliicious (Taurus?). It reduces spoilage (Pluto?). And it does something that is a new idea: it increases the amount of energy we obtain from the food. I suppose that's partly ruled by Mars, ruler of Aries and the natural Ascendant which represents the Physical Body, the Head, and, of course, Fire and Energy.

Just for fun, I'll note that the book has been published while Mars has been transiting Cancer.

I'll just jump forward and wonder if this means that all the strange foods that modern society currently eats, and doesn't eat( since food is the source of fat, and anorexics are in fashion). Diet is ruled probably more by the sign of Virgo which rules day to day living conditions, especially ones that have to do with Health. Saturn (restriction, discipline) is currently in this sign showing that not only is there a depressing influence affecting us in this area (diet, that is) which is restricting our lifestyles, but that serious study and science is also more interested perhaps in this phenomenon.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/books/27garn.html?_r=2&ref=books