The Neptune Return in 2009 – Part I

Between April and July 2009, Neptune will twice cross the degree of its initial discovery at 25 degrees Aquarius – this is its first return to this degree since September 1846. Neptune will have finally encompassed the entire zodiac and as we approach this moment in the near future we can look back and perhaps grasp the meaning of Neptune with a sense of completeness that we have heretofore lacked. When Neptune was discovered, it was closely conjunct Saturn, almost as though its recondite and vague nature required the disciplined measurement and definition of Saturn to bring it to human awareness. How interesting, then, that at the time of its first return since then, it is closely conjoined by Jupiter and Chiron. What can we deduce from this symbolism and how can we apply this to current and future events in the world?

Let us first say something about Neptune’s discovery. This has been described in detail elsewhere and will not be repeated in detail. Suffice to say that it seems to have been discovered independently by a number of different astronomers in Europe who subsequently entered a dispute about who should be seen as the original true discoverer. Even at its very birth into collective awareness, this planetary archetype was steeped in confusion and a deceptive fog that seemed to erode the scientific objectivity of the protagonists.

The events that coincided or immediately followed the discovery of Neptune have been well-documented. The first general anaesthetic, ether, was discovered in the same year, and Marx and Engels’ The Communist Manifesto was published 2 years later. The romantic movement in art and literature was at its peak, and within 10-20 years the spiritualist and theosophical movements were on the rise throughout the world.

With Neptune conjoining Jupiter and Chiron in April and May 2009, we have a chance to re-evaluate the meaning behind this mystery planet. When it was conjunct Saturn, we discovered how to dissolve the pain and material barriers of reality; conjunct Jupiter and Chiron perhaps we see ourselves dissolving our sense of progress, of hope, of opportunity. We are arriving at a time when we will be forced to transcend the ideology of endless growth, of expansion of wealth, of capitalist exploitation of resources, and we will be confronted with the unreality of prevailing ideas of progress. This will hurt, and we will feel deceived. We may feel quite angry and perhaps caught up in something that we didn’t really ever fully buy into, but which has recoiled into our faces. Neptune tells us how we are deceived, fooled into believing something that is false, because deep down we would rather the comforting allure of promised bliss than the depressing reality of pain and suffering. Casting our eyes back one whole Neptune cycle, we can see how ideology and dreams of utopia have dominated the major cultural, economic and geopolitical shifts of the past 165 years. And with Neptune having been discovered in Aquarius, the sign most associated with radical ideas for group evolution, it is not all that surprising how the main ideological current dating from the time of its discovery has been socialism and its more extreme form, communism (as well as political movements that have defined themselves as the antitheses of these ideologies). On a deeper level, then, I feel we are witnessing a collective sense of shame or regret over how easily we have allowed ourselves to be fooled yet again by unrealistic and unsustainable ideas about how we relate to each other economically and politically. There is a sense of ‘how did it come to this?’ or ‘how have we been so stupid to allow things to get this bad?’ But this is Neptune’s blessing: by being deceived we see how we can be so deceptive ourselves, we see how blindly we wish to place our faith in ideologies and abrogate responsibility for ever-vigilant awareness of the moral value within our relationships.

I think concepts of wealth and progress and opportunity and broadening of horizons will come to resemble a painfully distant fantastical dream, a paradise lost, a guilt-ridden hangover of global proportions, and this will by implication become a fertile time for the emergence of cultic figures who promise deliverance and redemption for our sins. Neptune has only just completed its first cycle and we have now found ourselves questioning the truth behind much of what we trusted as real: the democratic process, the meritocracy of a capitalist market economy, the unending progress of scientific rationalism and technological solutions. When it really comes down to brass tacks, where have these bastions of Aquarian egalitarianism and freedom of intellectual endeavour really taken us? Are we really more free now than before? Does our vote really matter any more? Is it not apparent that we are governed more than ever by an arrogant and spiritually ignorant elite that perpetuates its own privilege at the expense of the collective? At the expense of future generations? Aquarius is supposed to champion consideration of the views of all, irrespective of their popularity, yet today we see more homogeneity in political views than has ever existed in modern times. Everyone seems to have come to a consensus about the most important and fundamental questions of political justice: allocation of resources, relations between labour and capital, the role of religious belief in cultural life and its trumping by a disenchanted amoral scientism founded on human meaninglessness. Which is strange, because this is not characteristic of fecund political activity and debate; this resembles a zombified, comatose population who do not believe in anything at all, and who are thereby neutered of political power and freedom of choice. How can there exist freedom of choice when there are no alternatives from which to choose?

We astrologers associate hopes and ideals with the eleventh house and perhaps by extension, with Aquarius. We have heard a lot about hope in recent years, so much so that it has become a meme in itself, a political slogan, a catch-all term to sum up the promise of deliverance by one man, from the iniquitous pit of political criminality into which our world has descended. Hope has, I think, been ‘Neptunized’ – it has been glamourized, rendered numinous and holy, a sacred virtue of the true believer. In the real world, the world of shortages, lay-offs and corporate crime of staggering proportions, of Anglo-American-Israeli genocide in South-West Asia, of ecological crisis and rapidly declining resources, we do not need hope, we need action. To merely hope is to await those who will act to take action, yet presuming that we are incapable of our own action. To merely hope is to wilfully accept our own political paralysis, to deny our own responsibility to set things right starting with our own spheres of influence. Hope as fashionably utilized in recent political discourse is a palliative, a temporary soporific that saps us of our mettle and our courage to fight for justice. We know from experience how Neptune is not satisfied with mere concrete reality; how much more interesting to invest our own ideals of justice and moral rectitude in people who we can then tear apart with Dionysian fervour when they fail to deliver us the Promised Land.

Neptune, discovered with Saturn in conjunction, needs us to take responsibility for our own dreams, our own escapist pursuits, our own spiritual development, and our own addictions. We all have them, but we must learn to keep them from becoming too loose, too readily mixed up and confused with those of others. Above all, we need to stop returning to childhood fantasies of the perfect parent who just ‘knows’ what we need and will deliver us from our pain. Because he won’t. Because he can’t. Because this pain is as necessary as it is inevitable. It is the pain of spiritual, not material, growth.

© Agent 37

The Election of Barack Obama as U.S. President

The success of Barack Obama in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election has caused the world to notice that some major changes are afoot. Astrologically, it certainly seems appropriate that the first multiracial American president, brought up in different parts of the globe, has been elected on the very day of the exact first pass of the Saturn-Uranus opposition.

In this essay I wish to take a closer look at this opposition, its involvement in the 2010 cardinal t-square and at what these alignments may mean in the context of Mr Obama’s election. To begin with, I would like to examine the essential difference between an opposition and a conjunction. During a conjunction, there is a fusion of energies, of themes, of archetypes. In the case of a Saturn-Uranus conjunction, contraction or collapse occurs as weight suddenly loses its supports, there is a very clear, definite termination of a process, or a reversal of a process into its opposite. Saturn contributes realistic outcomes to a Uranian process of reform; Uranus innovates what has become impractical and useless, cutting free from established norms if necessary. The most recent example of a Saturn-Uranus conjunction in modern history is that which occurred in 1988 (13 February 1988, 26 June 1988 and 18 October 1988). This occurred during the final years of the political end-game of the former Soviet Union, with President Mikhael Gorbachev’s political reforms of the USSR including glasnost (openness) and perestroika (new thinking or restructuring). The actual fall of the Berlin Wall and the remainder of the revolutions in Eastern Europe that followed in subsequent years occurred during the Saturn-Neptune conjunction of 1989 and the Uranus-Neptune conjunction of 1993. We see here an almost universal recognition that a new beginning must be made, that something very old and dying must be allowed to pass into history, that a new dispensation is being brought into being and it is unstoppable, natural and singular in its focus.

However, the opposition has a different feel to it. At the time of the opposition, two different archetypal forces oppose each other, which means they represent two opposite ends of a spectrum of possibilities. Of course, they always represent two opposite ends of a spectrum, but at the time of an opposition of the planets representative of these energies, there is a tendency to mistake one end for the other, or to identify with one end at the total exclusion of the other. I suppose one might say that the tendency is to be extreme in one’s rejection of one end of the spectrum, but also in one’s espousal of the other end.

So with the current Saturn-Uranus opposition, people are radically aligned with either a spirit of change for change’s sake, irrespective of the reality on the ground, or they are trenchantly insistent that nothing has changed, nothing will change, that things are the same old boring reality that they have always been. So while there is certainly a feeling of change in the air, and certainly a tremendous restlessness, there is a certain exaggerated quality to this, it seems to be an over-reaction, somewhat divorced from the underlying real events that are taking place. And, in a sort of holographic replication of the same dilemma as we examine smaller and smaller entities in the world during this period of history, we can continue to observe the opposite archetypal energies composing the ambient state of nature: in the U.S. election, on the side of Saturn, represented by Republican John McCain, a man in his seventies, we also had a dash of Uranus, in the inexperienced and somewhat off-centre female vice-presidential nominee, Sarah Palin. Equally, the victorious Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, representative of Uranus, with his racial heritage and young age, as well as brilliant oratorical skills and political genius, paired up with a rather Saturnian figure of Joseph Biden, in his sixties, with plenty of previous political experience.

In a sense it is at the time of this opposition that we become conscious of how we can lose our sense of boldness in demanding change for the better, for fear of losing the structures that we depend on to define our reality, or, we can lose our sense of reality altogether by throwing all our faith in new projects without examining them properly. And I can’t help but wonder if this is exactly what has happened on 4 November 2008. Mr Obama has been lionized, idealised, almost worshipped by masses of people who are willing to forget the realities of their current predicament, and the predicament of their lifestyles and their national economy, so long as the President has changed race. Economic, ecological and political conditions continue to deteriorate with increasing rapidity, yet Mr Obama has said very little about how he intends to grapple with these. To be fair, he has not yet been inaugurated and it is too early to judge his record. Nevertheless, for true change to occur at the time of a Saturn-Uranus opposition, it needs to amount to more than symbolic change, for the Uranian element must be balanced by some Saturnian hard work, realism, perspicacity and gravitas. Hopefully Mr Obama will demonstrate that he has these qualities and can use them for the public good.

This opposition makes 5 exact passes between now and July 2010, and the last of these occurs across the cardinal points of 0º Aries / 0º Libra, contributing to the powerful cardinal t-square alignment of mid-2010. This t-square alignment will be focussed on the missing point of what would otherwise be a grand cross, 0-3º Cancer. Horoscopes with significant points in this part of the zodiac will be greatly caught up in the turmoil of what will be happening only 20 months from now. Mr Obama’s Venus is placed at 1º48’ Cancer, and it seems it is his very image, his skin-colour, all the values that he represents and that people project onto him, that will be a crucial focus of the crisis that is coming in the next few years. In more cynical moments, I fear that he will be used to sell something very dark, very powerful and very destructive, and that his extraordinary charm and beauty of character and presentation will assist in the process. More optimistically, perhaps his very multiracial identity will serve as a symbol of peace and co-operation which will help inspire a true revolution of our social and community structures, values and our shared capital.

Mr Obama’s Venus itself is conjunct Uranus in the chart for the U.S. that I have been exploring recently, that for the Yorktown Surrender (17 October 1781, 10am, Yorktown, Virginia, USA). Uranus is at 2º52’ Cancer in this chart, and will also be centrally involved in the 2010 cardinal t-square. I have written about the symbolism behind Uranus in this horoscope in a previous blog entry: placed in the eighth house, it seems to be associated with the evolution of the financial core of the U.S. economic system, with innovations in corporate law, with increasingly instrumental manipulations of the dollar, with globalization and international trade and even with the lucrative trade in African slaves. As we currently read obituaries to market capitalism following the implosion of the derivatives markets and ponder the possibilities of another New Deal to help with the mess, we witness yet more of the Uranian quality of American capitalist elitism and ruthless exploitation of the people in a $700 billion bailout to banking corporations, with no regulatory controls attached. This is nothing other than theft, of breathtaking scale, right in the precincts of government, and which the majority of Americans opposed in opinion polls. This is the dark side of Uranian energy, utterly refusing to be fettered in any way, shape or form, completely unregulated, but devastating in its ruthlessness, inhumanity and callousness. And it is this Uranus that will be at the cross-hairs of the 2010 alignment, with Mr Obama’s Venus in the same position: will he sweeten the deal, will he sugar-coat the bitter pill of austerity, or will he radically reform and co-opt the power of the U.S. oligarchs and corporatists, forcing a new economic policy on a more fair and pro-social platform? This is one of the burning questions that will be considered over the coming months.

The cardinal t-square is in my view the most significant and exact alignment that we will be facing since the conjunctions of 1988 and 1989 (with the Jupiter opposition in November 1989). Assuming he survives until then, it will be the defining moment in Mr Obama’s presidency. Prior to that time, the other very significant alignment which will key into Mr Obama’s horoscope is the Jupiter/Chiron/Neptune conjunction at 26º Aquarius, opposite his own natal Uranus at 25º Leo, which occurs in April/May 2009. This may be a time when we get to see how much of his ‘change’ we can actually believe in, and also how deeply and creatively he can embody the popular yearnings for optimism in a time of ecological and spiritual pain. We see intimations of genius in this man – this seems to a be a worldwide impression, not only within the borders of the U.S., judging by the popular media and reactions to his election as President. Hopefully by April/May 2009 we will begin to get a sense of how he will use this genius, and for what ends.

At the time of his inauguration as 44th U.S. President on 20 January 2009 at 12 noon in Washington, D.C., his Saturn will be sitting on the M.C., the Sun and Mercury will be transiting conjunct his Jupiter, he will be only days past his 4th Jupiter return, and Pluto will be opposing his Venus - this certainly speaks of the success of a man of coloured skin in achieving the top political job in the world, and perhaps in these transits it is appropriate to see how his Venus, conjunct the U.S. Uranus in Cancer behind it, represents his racial appearance, but also a defining moment in American and world history when we can start to see an end to racial discrimination, the commodification of human beings that is inherent in it, and the reshaping of a world community that has reawakened to the unity of our ancestral past and the common burdens of our planetary future.

© A37
Nov. 2008

Economic Woes for the USA

Many words have been written on the subject of the ‘correct’ horoscope for the USA. Given the contemporary dominance of the USA in the cultural, economic and political life of the world, it is not unreasonable that astrologers have spent long hours poring over the various candidate charts for a national horoscope. Probably the most commonly used charts are those timed for various moments on 4 July 1776, which was apparently the day on which the Declaration of Independence was signed in Philadelphia. A Gemini-rising chart cast for the very early hours of the morning, a Scorpio-rising chart for early afternoon and the famous ‘Sibly chart’ with a Sagittarius ascendant have all been utilised extensively. Other possibilities include the chart for the First Continental Congress (5 September 1774 at 10am, Philadelphia), the Battle of Lexington (19 April 1775 at 5am, Lexington, Massachusetts), the signing of the Treaty of Paris (3 September 1783 at 10:30am, in Paris, France) or the adoption of the Federal Constitution (17 September 1787 at 4pm, in Philadelphia).

In this article, I wish to propose a case for the radicality of the chart of the surrender of British General Cornwallis to the American revolutionary forces at the Battle of Yorktown, which defined the end of the American Revolutionary War and essentially de-facto independence of the USA from Britain. The chart is set for 10am on 17 October 1781, at Yorktown, Viriginia. Further, I want to utilise this chart to examine some of the trends in US financial history which set the stage for the current problems besetting the US and world economy, and which have huge implications for the world over the next 2-3 years, irrespective of who wins the upcoming presidential election.

This chart’s basic structure can be summarised as follows. Probably the most striking feature is the new moon in the Libran eleventh house, conjunct the South Node, which indicates that the chart followed a total solar eclipse which occurred 6 hours and 10 minutes earlier. 10º Sagittarius rises, with Saturn following at 16º Sagittarius. There is a Venus/Jupiter conjunction within 1º16 of orb on the cusp of the first house, with Jupiter in very late Scorpio and Venus across the cusp in very early Sagittarius. There is a rather ominous-looking Mars/Pluto conjunction in Aquarius, and Mars closely trines Neptune. Uranus is in early Cancer in the eighth house.

Saturn rising in Sagittarius is suggestive of the religious fundmentalism and Christian moral conservatism espoused by the majority of American citizens; we see here an image of the bulwark of enlightenment and humanistic ideals of freedom, happiness, prosperity, justice and moral rectitude. Being in detriment, Saturn’s weakness is seen in the extremes of religious and moral hypocrisy evident in popular opinions on issues such as the death penalty, the teaching of evolutionary theory, provision of universal health-care and the widening disparity between rich and poor. This is a very traditional image of the shining beacon of democracy, the guarantor of liberty and self-determination.

Although Saturn is close to the Ascendant, we must not overlook Venus, tucked into the very first degree of Sagittarius, which by the whole-sign house system, is therefore in the very first degree of the first house. Venus is also conjunct (though out-of-sign) Jupiter, kind of adding to the Sagittarian flavour of Venus. I think this represents the prevailing image of America – big, brash, fond of risk, entertainment, wealth, gambling, horses, expansion, conquest, international adventure. But also, devoted to pursuing happiness and striving for the freedom to do so, even if this means acquiring enormously disproportionate extremes of material resources and money. I think this Venus-Jupiter conjunction straddling the first house cusp indicates the tendency of America to see itself as fundamentally benign and indeed blessed, particularly with Jupiter being in the twelfth house. There may be a tendency to confuse the strong fantasy of blessed exceptionalism with the reality on the ground, with inconvenient socio-economic data failing to generate attention because it doesn’t fit with the shiny, happy face of the American dream.

Mars and Pluto conjoin closely in early Aquarius, in the third house of transport, communications, intelligence services and early education. Note that Pluto in this chart is exactly stationary, going direct. This is an image of the obsession of the US with violence, particularly gratuitous and shocking violence, as well as the dominating strength of the US military machine. Violence and individual rights (Mars in Aquarius) combine in the liberal gun laws in the US, where the individual’s right to bear arms against a dicatatorial monarchy has retained its place at the very core of American identity and civic status. Weaponry is futuristic, utilising the most modern technologies, as well as consisting of a large nuclear stockpile. But a very important part of the USA’s offensive capabilities, particularly since the end of the Second World War, consists of the work of intelligence agencies such as the CIA. Utilising networks of intelligence operatives across the world, the USA has unrivalled ability to manipulate in the affairs of other nation-states and foment suitable political crises to assist it in its geopolitical aims.

Note the vey close trine from Mars to Neptune, which I think is the fetishization of military life, the inculcation of seductive imagery of bravery and heroism via media and education. The USA is truly a militarised culture, based very deeply on the values of the Western: personal bravery, rugged individualism, fighting the good fight, respect and admiration for the outlaw. This aspect also relates to the slightly grandiose over-glamourisation of the military life, the action movies churned out by Hollywood, the shoot-‘em-up computer games, the contrast between the fantasy of gun-toting heroes being welcomed as liberators and the reality of human misery and cruelty unleashed by the controllers of the state. Mars-Neptune is also helpful for espionage and undermining enemies as opposed to more direct force.

The Libran eclipse New Moon in the eleventh house is to my mind the epitome of classical civilised democratic government, complete with checks and balances and a strong congressional component representative of the people and the component states. Even the most important central public government buildings throughout the US are built in neo-classical architectural style, suggestive of the institutions of Greece and Rome. I think a New Moon carries the mundane symbolism of the marriage of the people with their rulers, and with the Moon eclipsing the Sun, the monarchical rulership has indeed been overthrown by popular revolt.

However, with the MC being in the Virgoan tenth house, Mercury, placed in Scorpio in the twelfth, takes the role of the executive branch of government, tensely placed square the rather belligerent Mars. Despite the checks and balances of the constitution, the reality is that the President ends up rather isolated and placed on a pedestal as the idealised leader who makes the tricky and difficult decisions, often decisions related to warfare and defence. Sometimes this has not been so successful, as for example at the onset of the Civil War in the early 1860s, when transiting Pluto in Taurus opposed Mercury, and the country split into the Union and the Confederacy for a 4-year period of blood-letting.

Given the upcoming election, together with the prevailing economic vicissitudes affecting the US economy, it is useful to have a closer examination of the placement of Uranus in this horoscope. Uranus is placed in the eighth house, the house of financial deals, foreign trade, taxation, corporations and national experiences of death and loss. From early in the history of the USA, one of the most lucrative forms of financial activity and trade was that involving Africans, brought to the USA as slaves, and this persisted through much of the nineteenth century, and, some would say, on into the twentieth and twenty-first, albeit in a less overt form. We can see this symbolically reflected in the placement of Uranus in Cancer, the sign of race, clan and birthright. We also see here the mass killings of native Americans across the continent during the years of expansion of the USA in the nineteenth century.

In early 1886, the US Supreme Court argued and decided upon the famous case of Santa Clara County –v- Southern Pacific Railroad which was to grant corporations the same legal rights as juristic persons under the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution, i.e. the rights of citizenship. Transiting Saturn was conjunct natal Uranus, and a transiting Jupiter-Uranus conjunction was square natal Uranus. This was a crucial development in the growing power of corporate America, which seems to be reflected by this Uranus placement in the US horoscope. (The Fourteenth Amendment itself, passed in 1866, explicitly described the rights of citizenship and, controversially at the time, extended citizenship to slaves. At this time, transiting Uranus was conjunct natal Uranus.)

In 1914, when the transiting Saturn-Pluto conjunction was exactly conjunct natal Uranus, the Federal Reserve was formed, a private corporation which was given the role of loaning money at interest to the US Federal Government. This was a major step towards handing over financial sovereignty of the American people to a private interest, and was the final result of a long process of lobbying and persuading politicians on the part of international banking interests. Note that transiting Neptune was trine natal Venus, the symbol of the US dollar, at this time.

On 6 April 1917, following on the sinking of the Lusitania by German U-boats, and the disruption to US-European trade by the war in Europe, a reluctant President Woodrow Wilson declared war on Germany, with only one more year to go until the end of the conflict. Transiting Pluto was conjunct natal Uranus.

In late 1929, and early 1930, as economic depression hit the USA following the Wall Street Crash, transiting Saturn was opposite US Uranus, and progressed Moon and Venus, conjunct in early Aries, were squaring Uranus.

Towards the end of the Second World War it was apparent that the tide was turning against the Axis powers (Germany, Italy and Japan) and that a new system of international financial regulation would have to be set up in the wake of the economic depression and devastation caused by the war. The major non-Axis powers met at Bretton Woods in New England in the first three weeks of July 1944 to settle on a new post-war economic dispensation, as transiting Saturn conjoined US Uranus.

In the early 1970s, interesting events took place regarding the international economic connections and climate in which the USA was operating. On 15 August 1971, resident Nixon ‘floated’ the US dollar, taking it off the gold standard, which effectively turned it into a fiat currency, declared to have a given value by decree. It was no longer exactly exchangeable for a given amount of gold. Transiting Neptune was exactly conjunct Venus (the dollar was ‘floated’), and transiting Pluto was sextile Jupiter. Towards the end of 1973, following on US support of the Israelis in the Yom Kippur War, as well as the depreciating value of the US dollar as a result of the removal of the gold standard, Arab oil-producing countries imposed an embargo on oil exports to the West, resulting the first Oil Crisis. Transiting Saturn was conjunct Uranus and transiting Uranus was conjunct the US Sun. Transiting Pluto was also conjunct US Neptune. Note also, that earlier that year, the World Trade Centre was officially opened on 4 April 1973, when transiting Pluto was exactly square US Uranus.

Transiting Uranus opposed natal Uranus in November 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell and a whole new expanse of the geopolitical map was ripe for economic development and trade, as the old communist regimes in Eastern Europe collapsed. This was enunciated by President Bush in 1990 as a ‘New World Order’ ready for the forces of globalization rooted in the Western capitalist corporate economic model. During the presidency of the younger President George W Bush, the events of 11 September 2001 took the US on a strange new trajectory in terms of the fundamentals of its economic system. Following the devastation of the World Trade Centre on that day, as transiting Mars opposed the US Uranus, and the transiting lunar nodes straddled it, the large stores of gold that were kept in the vaults beneath the World Trade Centre were shipped out under federal security in the course of the removal of the debris of the disaster; none of this has been accounted for since. The day before, 10 September 2001, the then US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, declared that there was a $2.3 trillion discrepancy in the accounts of the Pentagon – following the disaster the next day, this was never followed up or investigated.

The current economic problems besetting the USA are in my view probably the most serious in the history of the country. Earlier this year, and most exactly next year and in 2010, the US Uranus will be opposed by transiting Pluto, and squared by the transiting Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus, all culminating at the cardinal climax in mid-2010. I predict that this will involve a radical devaluation of the US dollar, a serious economic depression and most likely severe social and political turmoil in the US as the leadership attempts to maintain control in an increasingly turbulent and unpredictable situation. This may also coincide with the decision by China, Russia and other foreign holders of US bonds to dump their holdings and make a call on the debts owed them by the USA. This would be extremely serious and could well escalate into a major international crisis as the world tries to collectively intervene to sort out the mess that the US economy and national entity has become.

World Geopolitics September 2008

Hi there to anyone who happens to have come across my blog... As you can see I haven't added anything since mid-June 2008, due to various pressures of time. However, I am currently writing up a long essay on the strategic dilemmas confronting Russia and the European Union. After that, I will try and write something on the dog-and-pony show that is the USA Presidential Election. I will not be placing emphasis on the latter, however, because in my view it is becoming increasingly irrelevant to the real issues dictating geopolitical realities - principally resource depletion and the collapse of globalized capitalist ideology solely manipulated as an agent of Western piracy, through its increasingly apparent internal contradictions.

More anon....

A37

Recent Events in the European Union

The European Union is a bloc of 27 member states that has developed in stages from the original Treaty of Rome in 1957, which established the European Economic Community (EEC) or ‘Common Market.’ Following the humanitarian, economic and infrastructural destruction of the Second World War, the nations of France, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg agreed to pursue common policies in areas of mutual concern, such as trade tariffs, fisheries, agriculture, mining and atomic energy. The original intent of the organisation was to facilitate the free movement of goods, capital and labour throughout the signatory member states, to promote economic growth in a mutually beneficial way.

The EEC underwent successive waves of expansion over subsequent decades. The UK, Ireland and Denmark joined in 1973; Greece, Spain and Portugal joined in the 1980s and Sweden, Finland and Austria in the 1990s. Progressively more cohesive and broad-ranging treaties were signed by member countries over the years, bringing member states ever closer to full political union, such as the Single European Act and the Treaty of Maastricht. By the early 1990s, around the same time as the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, the EEC had become the European Community (the EC) and had adopted a flag (twelve gold stars in a circle on a blue background) and an anthem (Beethoven’s Ode to Joy).

On 1 November 1993, at midnight in Brussels, Belgium (the home of the European Commission, the main executive body) the EC became the EU (European Union). The chart for this moment is shown here, because in my view it is a crucial chart for the political future of Europe, superceding the chart for the Treaty of Rome in significance. Since the formation of the EU, more member states have joined, firstly Sweden, Austria and Finland, and then a large swath of what used to be Soviet-bloc countries such as Poland, the three Baltic States, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Malta, Bulgaria and Romania.

The common European currency, the euro, was adopted in electronic format in 1999, and was rolled out in notes and coins in 2002, although not all member-states currently use the euro. Still, a common currency was a core objective of the EU as a political entity, in order to facilitate the original objectives of free trade amongst its members.

Looking at the chart for the EU, we can see the strikingly exact t-square in fixed signs involving a Mars-Pluto conjunction in Scorpio, the Moon in Taurus and Saturn in Aquarius. All of these planets have lots of essential dignity and are also strongly placed in the angular houses. Mars-Pluto in Scorpio in the fourth house symbolizes the origins of the European political project in the intense conflict and destruction of the First and Second World War and the holocaust, like an unmentionable and powerful stain on the continent’s recent history which must never be allowed to happen again. The exalted Moon in the tenth house represents the wealth and economic largesse of the European people, the wish of the people to live a peaceful but rather materialistic lifestyle with a liking for luxury, protected by common external tariffs. One can imagine the infamous grain and butter mountains and wine lakes resulting from the over-subsidization of agriculture and the common agricultural policy, which has resulted in farmers being paid not to actively use their land in order to stabilise prices throughout the union and compete more powerfully with other parts of the world. While promoting the wealth and financial security of its population, the EU’s policies in this regard seem to promote morally dubious material excess.

The tension between the Scorpio conjunction and the Taurus Moon, playing across the fourth/tenth axis represents the purpose of the EU in trying to funnel the historic nationalistic rivalry between closely situated neighbours into a common strength and a common sense of ‘supranational’ identity and belonging as European citizens. This opposition is exactly squared by a strong Saturn in the seventh house, which can be seen as the political institutions that subserve the diplomatic and deal-making processes to thrash out agreements across member states. When transiting Uranus conjoined the Saturn in 2002, the euro became a reality in notes and coins amongst the majority of member states.

The other important aspect structure in this chart is the exact Uranus-Neptune conjunction in Capricorn, which is in the sixth house. This is probably related to the fusing of boundaries, the melting away of border controls, the lack of clarity in the systems of governance, the pervasive sense of political decisions being taken without popular consultation at a level once-removed from national parliaments. The square to Venus is suggestive of the deep unpopularity of the EU as a political entity, as a system of continental government, as well as a prevalent suspicion of the impracticality of such unwieldy institutions of governance in reaching meaningful agreements. Equally, the sixth house placement of this powerful conjunction may represent the harmonization of standards, of efficiencies, of units of measurement, of health services and labour force law and worker’s rights, all of which were important objectives of the original European integration project. Could it also suggest the emergence of a common European police force, or military force used in foreign engagements?

Most recently, the latest revamp of the political institutions that govern Europe has been developing in the past 4 years. This has involved the proposed adoption of a European Constitution, complete with revised voting rules – introducing population-based weighted voting, and hence directly challenging national soveriegnty – and an EU president and foreign affairs minister, amongst other reforms. The original formulation of the Treaty of Rome was updated in 2004 and put to the people in a number of member states in referenda, but was rejected by a number of states. This led to a widespread sense of the Union floundering in a rather directionless fog of confusion with little sense of a common understanding or a shared vision of the future. Over the period 2005-2007, the transiting Saturn-Neptune opposition straddled the first and seventh houses, with Saturn crossing the Ascendant – suggesting a depressing sense of disappointment and frustration in defining the terms of the agreement that is the EU, but also perhaps pointing up the reality of the out-of-touch idealism and – to many of its citizens – confusing nature of the EU in its purpose and goals.

A new treaty was negotiated in Lisbon in 2007, in a further effort to improve the clarity and efficiency of the EU’s governance. Strangely – and perhaps ominously – only one of the 27 member-states put this treaty to its people for ratification, this being Ireland, a country of 4 million people (in contrast to the 500 million people in the whole EU). All other states either ratified the treaty or planned to ratify it purely within their exisiting governmental mandates. With transiting Neptune sitting exactly on Saturn, Ireland voted clearly to reject the treaty, once again throwing the EU’s structures of governance and its very authority and capability as a collective political structure into confusion. The absurdity of a supranational collective which preaches the fundamental value of democratic process as one of its guiding principles being frustrated in its attempts to change its core political processes by a tiny member-state, which is the only member-state to actually present the treaty to its people in a fair democratic manner, has not been lost on commentators continent-wide. Such is the effect of the undermining and tragi-comic Neptune-to-Saturn transit.

However I have concerns that this time around, events may conspire to push the new treaty provisions through regardless. In the next year, the progressed Sun reaches the Mars-Pluto conjnuction, and hence sets off the t-square pattern, bringing the tensions between the more powerful ‘core states’ like Germany and France, and the more peripheral or smaller states, like Ireland and Denmark, into bold relief. Also, transiting Jupiter is conjoining the Uranus-Neptune conjunction throughout this year, supported by a trine from transiting Saturn later in the year, giving an extra impetus to pushing through the vision of collective governance. In addition, progressed Venus has reached the Sun, symbolising the front-and-centre importance of powerful leadership in bringing agreements to bear, even if such agreements may involve a two-tier system of membership (Venus has progressed from Libra to Scorpio, from its dignity to its detriment). As Pluto enters the sixth house this year in the course of its ingress into Capricorn, the true power of the EU may come to be seen for the force that is really is, in managing the crises that are already developing in the services that keep society running, and the revolt of popular labour movements against the constraints of declining resources and escalating costs. The health and welfare of older people especially (of which there are a large population, thanks to the early retirement brought about by widespread wealth) will become a major financial and social burden which will require considerable ingenuity in terms of solutions in the face of the increasing cost of living.

Neptune, Pluto and Peak Oil

Melbourne - The price of oil has been increasing at a significantly accelerated rate in the past two months. Worldwide, prices at the petrol-pump have been following this trend and recent parliamentary debate in Canberra has been conducted over ways of relieving the financial pressure this has been causing families. Is this just a blip in the market, the result of transient interruptions in supply in unstable places like Iraq and Nigeria? Or does it represent a reprise of the oil shocks of the 1970s, resulting from artificially elevated prices controlled by the cartel of major oil corporations currently responsible for production of oil throughout the world?


Within the last 2-3 years, there has been a developing consensus amongst experts in the petrochemical industry, geologists and economists that the era of cheap oil is coming to an end. Although this notion of ‘Peak Oil’ has been described and written about at least since the 1950s, it is really only within the last decade that it has started to receive the widespread attention that it deserves. This is unfortunate given its profound ramifications for our civilisation and our current way of life.

Essentially, oil is the accumulation of organic hydrocarbons – the remains of life forms - in cracks and crevices in the rocks of the earth’s crust, which has been subjected to the telluric forces of heat and pressure over the millenia. Trapped in the chemical bonds of these simple hydrocarbon molecules is energy which can be released by oxidation when oil is burned. Oil has proven to be an exceptionally convenient source of energy because it is relatively pure, compact, easily transported, abundant and easily accessible. Where coal was the energy source that fuelled the Industrial Revolution, oil was the fuel of modern industrial, electronic and biotechnological civilisation, including its most recent development into computerisation and virtual reality.

While oil has been, and still is, used as a fuel for electricity generation, probably the use that has caused it to most spectacularly transform our society is transportation. The car has not only transformed our everyday work and leisure, it has caused us to completely re-design our cities and towns along the model of suburbia, especially in places like North America and Australia, where pre-existing urban structures were not of great antiquity. Air travel has become relatively cheap and has enabled millions to travel around the globe for very little expense.

However oil has also been the essential starting point for a whole range of chemical derivatives which have become so commonplace in their everyday use that most of us have forgotten about their origin: plastics and all that has been made out of them, pharmaceuticals including antibiotics, antimalarials and pesticides, cleansers and detergents, fabrics such as nylon, fertilizers for modern agriculture. A cursory look around our homes and a brief list of our typical activities in a week will show just how dependent our modern lifestyles have become on this incredibly potent substance, a substance sometimes called ‘black gold’ or ‘concentrated sunshine.’

Looked at in this way, we can see that the phenomenal rise in human population over the past century (2 billion in 1930, 6 billion in 1999) has been intimately tied to revolutionary advances in medicine and in food technology, or the so-called Green Revolution of the 1960s. Both of these advances have been dependent on abundant availability of petrochemicals.

The problem is that, while there are still huge reserves of oil left to be tapped, produced and brought to market, these reserves are becoming increasingly difficult to utilise. The first oil-wells spurted out oil under its own pressure, requiring practically no energy to be invested in order to extract the substance. However as a typical oil-field matures, and the easily extractable oil is depleted, the remaining reserves take much more energy to be invested in a variety of technologies in order to pump the remains to the surface. Inevitably, there comes a point where the amount of energy invested in the oil extraction process exceeds the amount of energy obtained in the oil extracted, making the activity pointless. When this occurs in any given oil-field, the field is said to have ‘peaked.’ In 1956, exactly this was predicted to occur in 1970 by geologist Dr M. King Hubbert with respect to the total oil production of the lower 48 states of the USA, to much derision from his contemporaries in the oil business. He turned out to be right, and the total production of oil from this region has continued to decline ever since.

Similarly, Russian oil production, that of Mexico and the North Sea have all peaked. There is uncertainty about the largest oil producers in the world currently, namely Saudi Arabia, Iran and the other Gulf states, in terms of whether they have reached peak production. However a number of prominent geologists and oil industry figures have been reaching increasing consensus that the world as a whole either will reach peak production in the next 5 years or so, or is actually at peak now. It is not a simple matter to determine this, as different players have different economic and political interests invested in their oil and in what information they release about their reserves. It does appear, however, that an ominous sign is sustained and very substantial rises in oil prices, together with fairly large fluctuations in prices, but an underlying inevitable march up the price scale.

To this analysis must be added the extra demand on oil supplies represented by the rapidly growing economies of China and India, together accounting for some 35% of world population. If anything, this will tend to bring the peak closer than if world demand remained the same, or if not, it will naturally cause prices to rise even further ahead of the actual peak.

Other energy sources are also widely used by our modern civilisation, such as natural gas, coal, wood, hydroelectric, nuclear, solar and others. These are almost exclusively used to generate electricity, but they are generally poor substitutes for oil for purposes of cheap and fast transportation. Hence, as the world navigates the ‘oil descent’ curve post-peak, it will likely be in the area of transport, and all that is dependent on it, that we will see the most serious problems looming.

For example, the greater population of Melbourne and other large spatially spread-out cities, resides in suburbs which are highly dependent on cars for transport – transport to work, to shops, to hospitals, to schools. Food retailing and fresh food supplies are totally dependent on road haulage, such that basic food prices will rise with the cost of petrol. Public transport exists, but is insufficient to meet the needs of suburbs of such large magnitude. Airlines find it hard enough turning a profit even with relatively stable fuel prices, but are already laying off staff, placing planes in storage and closing routes as well as raising ticket prices by up to 3-4% per month. Analysts are seriously talking about a doubling in the price of air travel by the end of this year.

This is just a small taste of the basic theory and implications of Peak Oil. Often dismissed as a ‘conspiracy theory’ as recently as 3-4 years ago, it has suddenly become mainstream news in the most famous broadsheet newspapers around the world in recent weeks.

This may be related to two distinct, but inter-related astrological alignments this year and next: Pluto’s ingress into Capricorn and Neptune’s return to its discovery degree, which takes place in April next year.

Neptune

Neptune is often said to hold dominion over oil, but the reasoning behind this is somewhat obscure. It is true that the start of the modern oil industry and the birth of organic chemistry that followed on its heels both took place not long after Neptune’s discovery in the mid-nineteenth century. Neptune’s relationship to drugs, gas, liquids and overpowering vapours and smells is probably well-recognised. The panic over rapidly rising oil prices and the increasingly deceptive actions of world leaders in disguising their grabs for the last remaining oil deposits are redolent of the Neptunian chaos waiting to be released as the world begins the inevitable slide down the oil production curve post-peak.

Neptune stationed retrograde on 28 May 2008 at 24º15’ Aquarius, right in the middle of Australian federal government arguments over a ‘price-watch’ scheme to assist motorists identify the cheapest petrol on sale from service-stations. Neptune has been in conjunction with the Moon’s North Node and, more loosely, Chiron over the past 5-6 weeks, as oil prices have risen by about 20%, and internet blogs have been full of people asking when society will wake up to its collective madness in continuing to consume so much oil for such extravagant and unnecessary reasons. Next year, however, Neptune will finally reach its discovery position at 25º53’ Aquarius, on 11 April 2009, while partile conjunct Chiron and about 5 weeks short of a very exact and rare Jupiter/Chiron/Neptune conjunction. Is it possible we are coming face-to-face with the reality of the over-abundance, the over-population, the over-use of material resources and the painful truth of the shadow side of excess?

Pluto

But there is a darker side to oil that I think transcends the realm of Neptune and is more suited to the symbolism of Pluto. Oil comes from the depths of the earth, from forces of great heat and pressure, and contains tremendous amounts of energy which originally derived from the sun’s rays trapped in plant life. This energy has been the fuel behind the enormously accelerated growth in human life on the planet as well the huge impact of human choices – and mistakes – on the planetary ecosystem as a whole. This characteristic of enormous power deriving from something as superficially insignificant, even disgusting, as a slimy black fluid seeping from a hole in the ground, is classically Plutonian in its imagery and symbolic resonance. This is reiterated by the association of Pluto with great wealth, and indeed oil has really become the currency of the world (as instantiated in the petrodollar). The unseen manipulations and machinations conducted by the powers that be, lying behind some of the major wars of the past hundred years, have to some extent been connected with the need for nations and peoples to gain access to more oil so that their technological development and military and economic prowess can grow ever more mighty. Again, this seems to evoke the invisible and powerful work of the archetype of Pluto.

The conjunction of Nepune with Pluto in the late 1880s and early 1890s – followed by the long-drawn-out opening sextile from the 1940s to the 1990s – seems to be significant in that it occurred in the sign of Gemini, the sign of transportation, commerce and telecommunications, all of which have been utterly transformed by the impact of cheap oil.

Now that Pluto has moved into Capricorn, the phenomenon of Peak Oil is suddenly front-page news, and the degree to which the symbolism is concretised is almost trite: Capricorn is the peak and Pluto is the oil. Beyond the other looming difficulties such as water and environmental spoilage, species extinction and climate change, all of which are rooted in the common need for some sort of planet-wide taking of responsibility for our excesses, Pluto in Capricorn also represents scarcity and the societal impacts of ‘energy descent.’ The most common predictions for Peak Oil seem to converge around 2006 – 2015, with most of them around 2008-2010. If the analysts are correct, and the models replicate the behaviour of inidvidual fields and countries around the world over the past 50 years, Pluto’s move into Capricorn has coincided with a momentous and defining point in our civilisation’s sense of history. This is the time when we have to start cutting back, when we have to be more responsible in how we use the vast wealth of millenia of stored energy beneath the ground. This is a problem of social organisation, of physical lifestyle change, of rationing, of re-defining the responsibility of the individual towards the group.

This will not be an easy time, and the first major period of difficulty will probably coincide with the prolonged Uranus-Pluto squares of the early 2010s, perhaps kicked off by major events in July/August 2010 when the cardinal t-square reaches maximum exactitude (Jupiter/Uranus conjunction opposite Mars/Saturn conjunction, both square Pluto).

Useful websites to look up if you want to learn more about Peak Oil include The Oil Drum (www.theoildrum.com), LATOC (www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net), Energy Bulletin (www.energybulletin.net), www.oilcrisis.com and many others you can find linked from these. The more informed you are of what’s really going on, the better you will be able to weather the coming storms; take the responsibility to educate others about this important information, so that we can initiate some real change in our attitude to the resources that sustain us.

Cancer Ingress 2008

Pluto has slipped back into the last degree of Sagittarius, for a final farewell for a few months, before entering Capricorn to stay for the next 16 years. At the Ingress moment, the Sun is opposing Pluto within only 11 minutes of orb. This is the closest that Pluto comes to aspecting the Sun at any ingress in the current decade, only seconded by the Libra Ingress of 2009, when the orb will be about 40 minutes.

Neptune sits at 24º05’ Aquarius, retrograde, closely opposed by Mars at 23º42’ Leo. This very tight opposition also aligns with the nodal axis at 19º26’ and with Chiron at 20º47’ Aquarius. Mars and Neptune are both on the Moon/Uranus midpoint. Uranus is about to turn retrograde (in about a week), at 22º39’ Pisces.

Saturn is starting to gather pace in its direct motion through the first decan of Virgo, at 3º41’ and is closely sextile Venus, at 3º15’ Cancer. Jupiter is retrograding through Capricorn, at 19º44’. Mercury has started moving direct from its station 2 days previously, and is unaspected at 13º03’ Gemini.

The Moon is just past full, at 25º09’ Capricorn, loosely conjunct Jupiter.

The two main themes of this ingress are the Sun-Pluto opposition and the Mars-Neptune opposition lying on the nodal axis. Oppositions are representative of the energy of tension, conflict, division, polarisation and projection, and both of these oppositions involve the pitting of a personal, active energy against the forces of the collective. This is most likely to manifest as decisions and actions taken in the face of powerful group dynamics, where people can be easily swept up into energetic defence of extreme ideological positions or fanatical identifications.

The nodal axis is pointing towards Aquarius, with its arrow pointing straight at Chiron. There is a sense that the way forward is not easy, but somehow it will have to involve an admission of problems and a willingness to examine collective denial and illusions before progress can be made. There is a feeling of fakery or over-glamourisation affecting events, especially political gatherings and meetings, which may provoke strong feelings of anger or impotent rage in certain quarters. Perhaps a pervasive feeling of a ‘make-or-break’ situation may develop, complicated by violent venting of idealistic fervour.

The Sun in opposition to Pluto, so close in orb, brings a paranoid and conspiracist tinge to events. People may be making important decisions based on assumptions that they are being coerced or forced by the powers that be into doing something contrary to their interests. This is an aspect of obdurate opposition to authority, of refusal to tow the party line, and of deliberate antagonism to the will of those who are perceived as being in control. There may be a criminal or underhanded aspect to events or things may seem as if they are being manipulated from behind the scenes by some unknown force or powerful interest. Accusations of secret dealings float around and a dark mood of distrust prevails.

Mars-Neptune can indicate deceptiveness and sabotage, and the opposition especially may bring such activities into the public eye. Actions pursued to further a political or religious ideology – up to and including violence – can be suggested by this configuration. With both Mars and Neptune sitting on the Moon/Uranus midpoint, it seems as though there is a popular mood for change, perhaps change at any cost, and this may be achieved through less than edifying means.

With both of these oppositions, it may be that the period around this ingress, and especially the months of July, August and early September, may be periods of exceptional division in popular opinion, fuelled by feelings of being able to engage with collective forces of political ideology and collective will, and turn them around somehow. There is a possibility of violent clashes with establishment forces and a prevailing feeling of victimisation and paranoia.

The approaching Venus-Saturn sextile may mitigate to some degree, perhaps providing a possibility for constructive dialogue, a space for diplomatic engagement and maybe some opportunity for a lasting agreement; even the forging of a new alliance.

A37

The Olympic Torch in Australia

The Olympic Torch touched down in Canberra on 23 April 2008 to begin the Australian section of its world tour. Already having attracted large numbers of protestors in support of the cause of Tibetan separatism while on its way through major European and North American cities, the Olympic Torch relay was expected to require a strong security presence on its arrival in Australia. As it turned out, there was a perhaps unexpectedly strong show of support for the Chinese state along the route of the relay, with ranks of large red flags somewhat drowning out the yellow and blue sunrays of the Tibetan flags. There were relatively minor scuffles but at the end of the day, peace prevailed and the relay was not derailed.

This was all taking place as a powerful t-square was perfecting in the cardinal signs: Mars in the 22nd degree of Cancer opposite Jupiter in the 23rd degree of Capricorn, both square Venus in the 23rd degree of Aries. Note that Venus is in its detriment, but Mars and Jupiter are both in fall, but in mutual reception by exaltation and triplicity. Hence all the relevant planets in this tense aspect formation are in a sense in the wrong place. It is like they are playing out a drama but the real substance of the drama refers to a completely different location.

The Tibetan/Chinese conflict was being played out in Canberra, with the symbol of international competition being used as the vehicle to bring this to worldwide attention. Not only is Jupiter in the 23rd degree of Capricorn in the chart of the People’s Republic of China (1 October 1949, 15:15 (GMT+8), 39N55, 116E25, Beijing, China), but is also at this same degree in the Davison Relationship Chart for Australia and China (17 May 1925, 17:25 GMT, 3N10’10, 134E31’44).

Ian Thorpe, whose ruling planet Saturn is in the 25th degree of Libra (completing the grand cross pattern), was the last person in the torch relay to light the flame before its departure to Japan where it is due to arrive on 26 April 2008.

Turbulent Times for the American Economy

Following on the sub-prime mortgage crisis of the second half of 2007, economic indicators in the USA continue to slide. In recent weeks the US Dollar hit new lows in value compared to the Euro, and oil prices climbed above $110 per barrel. Most recently, a major investment corporation, Carlyle Capital, which features some very famous political figures on its board of directors, has essentially gone bankrupt, and another two banks, Citibank and Countrywide (both of which widely involved themselves in securitization of sub-prime mortgages) followed suit. This was then immediately followed by the US Federal Reserve bailing them out with a $200 billion loan in an effort to keep some of the banking system afloat. Hence a decision was made to inject solvency into the bankers’ operation, despite the prey of those same bankers’ predatory loan practices (who are in the large majority African-American and Hispanic) not being offered the same assistance. If this sounds unfair, well that’s the game the Federal Reserve likes to play, ever since its foundation in 1914, when it usurped the power to provide paper money to the people of the USA, including its government, at interest that it knows can never be repaid. This is debt peonage, and has been a simple yet powerful tool of financial elites of European origin for about the last 400 years.

The problem, however, is that we are fast approaching some externally imposed limits to wealth creation on our planet, such as peaking oil supplies and carbon-fuelled climate change. Additionally, increasingly people are starting to wake up to the grossly unfair and piratical system of international finance which has been operating to enrich the few at the expense of the many. The US economy is almost certainly in recession, and mortgage foreclosures are rapidly mounting not just in the USA, but in European countries too. Only two months ago, the British prime minister announced that a UK bank would be nationalised. Only 2-3 years ago this would have been regarded as unthinkable given the unquestionable assumptions of globalisation and free-trade capitalist economics. Bubbles are bursting and stock-markets are falling fast. There is increasing talk of a major depression over the next few years.

The upcoming Full Moon, which occurs at 5:40 AM AEDT on 22 March 2008, Melbourne time, is shown here. Note the remarkably exact square the full moon makes to Pluto, only 24 minutes out of orb. Now examine the chart for the opening of the Federal Reserve (16 November 1914, noon chart, at Washington, DC) and compare. Transiting Pluto in the Full Moon chart opposes natal Pluto (45’ orb) and natal Saturn (17’ orb). Transiting Neptune squares the Sun (orb 21’) and transiting Saturn is on the South Node (1º02’ orb).

It seems to me that this lunation, so close after the Aries equinox, is a potent suggestion of major problems hitting the Federal Reserve, problems that will become very public or at least affect the public at large, and may well sound the death-knell for this entity, or at least indicate the need for radical changes and transformations in its purpose and function. Neptune squaring the Sun suggests lack of confidence, an aura of deception and corruption and disillusionment with the role of the Federal Reserve. Saturn on the South Node is always a bad sign of past realities coming back to be dealt with and acknowledged and mistakes to be corrected (particularly with Saturn and the South Node being in Virgo).



A quick look at the Astrocartography map for this lunation shows a prominent confluence of lines on the Mexico/USA border near the states of New Mexico and Arizona. The Uranus on MC line intersects with the Pluto setting line and the Mars rising line. Could this be indicative of a major explosive incident in the Southwestern USA, perhaps riots in the major cities? Only time will tell.

This lunation is one of a series of difficult astrological configurations due to hit the charts for the USA in the coming year. The major one in coming months will be the exact Saturn-Uranus opposition occurring on Election Day. I will write more about this in coming weeks.

Australia Says Sorry

As a perfect trine formed between the transiting Moon in Taurus and transiting Saturn in Virgo, both trining Saturn in the chart for Australian Federation, the prime-minister of Australia issued an official apology to the stolen generations of indigenous Australians for the hardship, brutality and suffering that they were subjected to at the hands of racist white men between the 1860s and the early 1970s. Saturn in the Federation Chart is significator of the executive, or prime-minister, and with Saturn now in Virgo, how fitting it is for the current incumbent to be a strongly Virgoan type, with Sun, Mercury, Mars and Pluto in the sign. Indeed, with Pluto in the second degree of Virgo, in many ways he ushers in a new generation of leadership in this country, perhaps more prepared to admit fault and make correction.

Transiting Neptune is squaring the Federation Chart’s Moon in Taurus, perhaps symbolic of the sense of shame and guilt on behalf of the majority, or even the emotional expressions of relief and disbelief on behalf of the indigenous people that this time has finally come. Yet still there linger stubborn suspicions that it is all merely an empty gesture, a hyped-up symbolic statement with little subtantial promise of reform behind it. One can’t help but think that there is a deeply buried sense of guilt among the majority over the actions of white Australians towards the indigenous population, but that this emotion is so profoundly unacceptable that it is denied with the most stubborn and resolute determination to remain ignorant of the truth. This is perhaps a manifestation of the negative side of the Moon in Taurus; so long as I’m comfortable and secure, I see no reason to change my outlook or my values.

Uranus is also squaring the Federation Chart’s Uranus-Pluto opposition, currently closer to the Pluto end; this configuration also ushered in the new government and is generally suggestive of a desire for radical change and open examination of deeply buried but controversial collective traumas.

Interestingly, the 1788 settlement chart seems strangely mute to significant transits or progressions at this time. Perhaps this indicates that today’s events are taking Australia out of the era of colonisation and into the future of reconciliation and acknowledgement of past racist policies and arrogant imperial attitudes.

Finally, the coming lunar eclipse in the second degree of Virgo (on 21 February 2008) is exactly square the Federation Chart’s nodal axis, and lands exactly on Kevin Rudd’s natal Pluto. What this suggests is that our current prime minister took a step forward in our nation’s path of growth, and did so with the strength and conviction of an individual who profoundly understands the power of humility.

Pluto enters Capricorn

At 3:34 PM, AEDT on 26 January 2008, Pluto moved out of Sagittarius and into Capricorn. It was last in Capricorn in the years 1762-1778, and last changed signs (from Scorpio to Sagittarius) in 1995.

I have cast a chart for the ingress moment, at Melbourne, but with natural angles. Notable patterns in this chart are:
(1) Jupiter-Saturn trine in earth
(2) Mercury-Neptune conjunction, trine Mars in air
(3) Stellium of Sun, Chiron, Neptune, Mercury (and North Node) in Aquarius
(4) Moon-Uranus opposition

Before trying to see what this may mean, let us first review previous ingress charts for Pluto and compare them to the events that took place in their aftermath.

Pluto’s ingress into Virgo took place at 4:23 PM AEST on October 20, 1956. Symbolizing the entire sixties generation, this chart shows a grand cross in fixed signs involving a Moon-Neptune opposition and a Chiron-Uranus opposition. Mars is opposite Venus, and Saturn is exactly square Pluto. This is suggestive of the ecological activism, esoteric mysticism and perhaps the strong desire for escape that fuelled the psychedelic movement throughout the decade. The Mars-Venus opposition evokes a potent sexual tension throughout the period, and the square of Saturn to Pluto (especially with Saturn in Sagittarius) may represent the struggle for human rights and law reform.

The Libra ingress took place at 4:30 PM AEST on October 5, 1971. This chart is interesting because of the extraordinarily airy emphasis. Libra itself contains a stellium of Pluto, Mercury, Sun, Uranus and Venus. The close Sun-Uranus conjunction in Libra trines Mars in Aquarius, and Saturn in Gemini. The Aries Moon opposes Venus, and the Jupiter-Netune conjunction in early Sagittarius sextiles Pluto. I see this as a sort of turning point or re-balancing of the power between opposing sides of conflict. A fundamental will to restore fairness in all dealings between groups. The seventies was a period notable for the rise of feminism and gay rights, as well as the advent of the most notable work of philosophy in the area of justice since the utilitarian writings of Mill: John Rawls’ Justice as Fairness. The swashbuckling escapades of space-age science-fiction as portrayed by the Star Wars series brought the real-world binary division of the Cold War into archetypal resonance with the imagery of two great powers battling for supremacy in the cosmos. Despite the Libran penchant for peace, the Aquarian Mars trine Uranus, together with the Sun-Uranus conjunction, correlated with militancy amongst those who felt unfairly dealt with, whether they were nationalists in Northern Ireland, trade unionists in Britain or ideological radicals in South-East Asia and the Middle East. The oil crises of 1973 and 1979 reinforced the reality of the way power could see-saw between different interests depending on their willingness to achieve a diplomatic compromise.

Pluto entered Scorpio at 8:41 AM AEDT on 6 November 1983. This chart also has a stellium, this time in Scorpio (Pluto, Saturn, Sun, Mercury and Moon). Jupiter conjoins Uranus in Sagittarius, and a Mars-Venus conjunction in late Virgo squares Neptune. The heavy Scorpio stellium at a new Moon was perhaps a warning of a new era in matters of sexual and financial exchange, one tinged with themes of responsibility and death of old ways. AIDS and the transformation of attitudes to sexual behaviour that it brought in its wake, although first described in 1981, did not become a widespread epidemiological concern until around 1984. A harder-edged, less forgiving approach to financial management in the business and corporate worlds became noticeable as market liberalisation and privatisation of state assets swept through western capiltalist economies, spearheaded by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. A new level of development and popular availability of microcomputers took off in the early 1980s and was perhaps correlated with the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction, preset at this ingress. The ideological struggle of the previous decades finally resolved itself in the death-throes of the communist states in Europe and the triumphant merging of the two alienated halves of the continent, as if in a chain of events in an unstoppable biological reflex. By the time Pluto left Scorpio and entered Sagittarius in 1995, the political landscape was utterly transformed.

Entering Sagittarius at 9:52 PM AEDT on 17 January 1995, Pluto was in conjunction with Jupiter and Venus, and square Mars and Saturn. The Sun was conjunct Uranus and Neptune and opposite the Moon. Two major developments took place in the common understanding of power and the collective will during the Pluto in Sagittarius era. Firstly, there was sense that moral hypocrisy had reached new levels. Western political leaders developed a sense of incorrigible arrogance and infallible righteousness that persisted in the face of widespread popular knowledge of evidence that contradicted their claims. Starting with the shenanigans surrounding the Clinton impeachment in the US, and continuing through the manifestly undemocratic 2000 US Presidential election, the inadequately invesitigated 9/11 events and the subsequent manufacture of lies and deceptions leading up to the invasion of Iraq, which still continues to this day, it was the sheer breathtaking scale of the audacity of judicial and political corruption that was suggestive of the workings of Pluto in Sagittarius. I associate this development with the T-square involving Mars, Saturn and Jupiter-Pluto.

The second major development was the dawning understanding of the power of global networks, whether instantiated through the internet, the common atmospheric perturbations of climate change, or the giant casino of global capital exchange and speculation. I associate this aspect with the Sun-Uranus-Neptune conjunction in late Capricorn. The difficulty with such pan-global structures, or, moreover, their essential characteristic, is that they are decentralised, and therefore lack leadership or management hierarchies. And it is precisely this idea that acts as a perfect segue into the Pluto in Capricorn era.

For it is during the next 16 years that the reality of the pan-global networks and communities and interdependencies will no longer be doubted; not only will it be the everyday reality for everyone on the planet, it will require leadership and reponsibility to maintain it and to ensure its ongoing viability. There will ensue a transformation of what it means to be in an executive position. To lead will no longer be synonymous with capitalistic, exploitative and wasteful enterprise, for this notion of leadership dies with the deep acceptance of limits to our existence. Rather, leadership will be more associated with the development of a sense of responsibility to contribute to the public good, but in a manner that is flexible to change, that is willing to forge new paths, to try alternative courses of action. Pragmatic adoption of what works and what is sustainable will be the order of the day. Older hierarchical structures depending solely on values of deference and respect of authority for authority’s sake will not survive, because they have become too crystallised to respond to the rapidity of the changes affecting our globalised systems. Ultimately a new sense of personal autonomy and citizenship will emerge, one which may strip away the power of nationalism and tribalism, but promote the power of individual achievement, duty and reward.

I think the emphasis in both Capricorn and Aquarius bears out these themes. The Jupiter-Saturn trine in earth is suggestive of future growth and prosperity being brought about by means of restriction or shrinkage, perhaps shortage. The Mercury-Neptune conjunction in Aquarius is redolent of the new faith in collective problem-solving, but also perhaps the fraud and deception that may emerge in such global efforts as carbon-trading and emissions reduction. Trine Mars, this Mercury may also symbolize a quantum leap in speed and complexity of communications, taking connectivity in the collective to a new level.
With Venus conjunct Pluto, and Jupiter not far off, all in Capricorn, perhaps the most immediate and obvious issue for everyone in the next few years is the diminishing pool of wealth and resources available for the members of our species to survive. Throughout the next 16 years, it is the duties that we individually shoulder towards our overpopulated and fouled environmental matrix, and the actions we take to discharge these, that will determine how we deal with the shifts of collective will during this time.

Mars in National Horoscopes and Recent World Unrest

That the god of war holds dominion over civil unrest and national forces of strife should be fairly obvious. What is not so easy to acknowledge is that such breakdowns of civilised social intercourse are in many ways necessary in the greater scheme of things. I tend to the view that there is a natural need for conflict and competition within us and within all of nature, just as there is a need for stability and peace.


Within the past few months, especially centering around the Capricorn Solstice (see chart), there has been an emphasis on disputes, disagreements and outright violence in a variety of internationally prominent settings. This has been associated with the prominent opposition between a retrograde, fallen Mars in Cancer and the Sun-Pluto-Jupiter-Mercury stellium sitting astride the Sagittarius/Capricorn cusp.

Probably the most reported and likely the most crucial event that correlated with this picture was the summit of world environmental ministers which took place in Bali, charged with developing a framework for a new climate agreement for the world. We can see in this event, which took place from 3 December to 15 December 2007, and which actually over-ran into an unplanned extra day because of difficulties coming to a compromise, the last-minute pressure of international diplomacy in the face of vast looming disaster, symbolised by the Jupiter-Pluto conjunction in the very last degrees of Sagittarius, soon to move into Capricorn, the sign of worldly reality and limitations. Mars opposing represented the recalcitrance and resentful negativity shown by a variety of national interests who seemed to be unwilling to pursue any meaningful joint and flexible agreements about emissions. I think the sensitivity of the 0º Capricorn/Cancer axis to major internationally significant events is again highlighted here.

On 27 December 2007, Benazir Bhutto, the leader of the Pakistan People’s Party, and twice former prime minister of Pakistan, was assassinated during a political rally in Rawalpindi. She had recently returned to the strife-riven country from exile, and was intending to contest the planned general elections planned for February 2008. Pakistan (see chart) has had a stormy history since its foundation on 14 August 1947 at 9:30 am IST, in Karachi (this was when the British viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, addressed the constitutional assembly to declare independence from the British). Its foundation chart has a fallen Mars at 0º Cancer on the MC, conjunct Uranus – which is hardly suggestive of stability, especially considered together with the Venus/Saturn/Pluto triple conjunction in Leo in the eleventh house, the house of political assembly.

Bhutto’s assassination threw a fragile process of return to civilian democratic rule into chaos again, only months after the military junta headed by Pervez Musharraf had been finally persuaded to transfer powers back to a democratically elected parliament. The country has been torn apart by a powerful resurgence of fundamentalist Islamic militias in opposition to more moderate pro-Western forces, echoing the greater regional conflict which has spread throughout many countries in South-West Asia over the past decade and longer.

When Bhutto was assassinated, there was a partile transiting Mars-Jupiter opposition in the second degree of Cancer/Capricorn. This was clearly hitting off Pakistan’s natal Mars. Transiting Pluto was also closely opposing Mars, and will continue to do so throughout 2008. Incidentally, transiting Neptune was in partile opposition to Pakistan’s natal Sun, perhaps reflective of the chaos and confusion surrounding the country’s leadership.

The third international crisis recently in the news was in Kenya, where presidential elections were thrown into turmoil with allegations of electoral fraud and violence between supporters of the re-elected Mwai Kibaki and the main opposition candidate, Raila Odinga. The violence emerged along well-established tribal faultlines which have undermined Kenya’s unity since before its emergence as an independent nation on 12 December 1963 (see chart). In this chart, Mars is exalted in Capricorn in the fourth house. Between the end of December 2007 and January 2008, transiting Jupiter has been conjoining natal Mars while transiting Saturn has been stationing on the Ascendant. It looks like Kenya will be undergoing some major transformative convulsions in its government and national identity through 2008 as the Saturn-Uranus opposition sets off the natal Uranus-Pluto conjunction in the first house and squares the Sun in the house of the people.