GORDON BROWN UPDATE

Gordon Brown’s honeymoon continues after 2 months with him as PM. I do have a creeping admiration for him, even though I’ve railed against him as a paranoid tyrant in the past. At our astrology group a few weeks ago we were talking about Gordon Brown, and someone observed that we all felt sorry for him, and that this reflected his natal Neptune conjunct DESC. I think it is like that with him – the man is obviously very competent in many ways, and really wants to do a good job, and that is why I’m starting to admire him. But he’s so obviously lacking as a human being, he is shy, he doesn’t like being in public, he doesn’t know how to be in relationship with people, he doesn’t seem to have many interests outside his work, he feels inadequate, and that’s why we feel sorry for him.

The big sticking point is that he doesn’t brook any opposition - the “sheer Stalinist ruthlessness” with which he ran the Treasury for 10 years. This hasn’t come out yet, although there is a bit of trouble brewing with his MPs over his backtracking on having a referendum for the latest EU treaty. It would be nice if he turns out not to be excessively authoritarian as PM, because I like having someone who is competent and not into all the razzamatazz and who has given us some self-respect back when it comes to toadying to the Bush regime.
His ascent to PM has coincided nicely with Saturn’s move from Leo to Virgo, and maybe gives us a flavour of what is to come with this transit. Out with the larger-than-life performers, and in with the narrow, hardworking accountants. For now, it’s a relief.

John Major (PM from 1990-97) was once referred to as the man who ran away from the circus (Leo) to join the men in grey suits (Virgo), because he did actually grow up in a circus. His real surname was Major-Ball. Like all good Virgos (in fact he is an Aries) he eventually got caught with his trousers down, when Edwina Currie told all in her autobiography. He fittingly coined the political slogan 'back to basics', though that wasn't what he intended. Interestingly, he followed on from the larger-than-life Margaret Thatcher (Moon in 10th House Leo), just as accountant Brown is following on from larger-than-life Blair.

I’ve been predicting that it won’t go well for Brown as PM because the current Solar Return chart for New Labour in Power is so extremely difficult. How do you fancy a Sun-Moon-Saturn-Neptune-Chiron Grand Cross? Along with a Mars-Uranus-Venus-Pluto-Jupiter t-square? The SR began on 2nd May 2007 at 13.16 in London, so it still has plenty of time to activate.

I think, for astrological reasons, that the trouble will begin at the Labour Conference next month – 23rd Sept 2007, 9.30am, Blackpool (thanks to Annabel Herriot for this info). This chart has a Sun-Mars-Pluto t-square, indicating a power struggle (Mars-Pluto) around the leadership (Sun). I will be interested to see how Gordon Brown deals with dissent.

Personal rant on the subject of conferences: at the 2 Astrological Association Conferences I have been to, I have found myself with a tag that says ‘Delegate’, along with everyone else who has paid their money. A delegate according to the dictionary is “a person chosen or elected by a group to speak, vote, etc. for them, especially at a meeting.” This is exactly what you are not. You have paid your money to hear the great and the good speak, and if you are lucky you might even have the honour of speaking to one of them. The delegate business is a pat on the head to try and make you feel important. It’s nonsense, and it’s maybe a particularly English way of going about things. England, as a Capricorn nation, knows how to run a class system. “Don’t call me ‘Sir’, my good man.”

THE 9/11 ECLIPSE

I’m hopefully off camping again tomorrow for a few days, but this time it’s all 3 of us. The local farmer has finally got round to cutting the grass in our field – it’s the hay for the horses in winter – so we’ll probably get back in time to stack it. Horse owners always get left till last by the farmers, because they’ve always got bigger, and more lucrative, fields to do first. So the hay’s not quite the quality it might be if it had been cut earlier, but it’s good enough. In my opinion the horses hardly need any hay, because they manage to stay overweight on just the winter grass. But who am I to argue? I’m just the carthorse that does all the heavy lifting!

As others have noted, there is going to be a partial eclipse of the Sun on the anniversary of 9/11 this year – at 8.32am, within 14 minutes of the time the first plane hit the tower at 8.46 am.

I think it will be a very significant eclipse for Americans in some way, the ending of a cycle perhaps, because there are all sorts of other astrological indicators at the same time. In terms of actual events, 9/11 was central to the Bush Presidency, it made the Presidency what it was with its War on Terror and all that. On 15 Sept, 4 days after the eclipse, General Petraeus will be delivering his report on the Iraq War, and it is expected to be less favourable than you might expect from a military man (hence his military nickname ‘Betraeus’). This will probably be one more big step in Bush’s political slide, and so I think this eclipse may well mark the beginning of the end of his Presidency.

Other interesting astrological indicators are: at the moment of the eclipse, the Pluto/IC line will be running through Washington – a depth charge underneath the Presidency; the Solar Return chart for 9/11 this year has Pluto on the MC opposite Mars at 21.28 Gemini, within 5 minutes of the US Sibly Mars: possibly a big change in direction around the War on Terror (which 9/11 is also a chart for); the eclipse itself has a Sun-Moon conjunction at 18 Virgo, opposite Uranus and square to the Mars-Pluto opposition, which again drags in the War on Terror (which the Iraq War is held to be part of).

The North Node for Iran is at 17 Virgo, bang on the eclipse Sun-Moon, so again it is the whole Iraq/Iran/War on Terror soup being activated.

And then there is Venus, which is an indicator of popularity in a politician. GWB has Venus natally at 21 Leo, which has been hammered (if that is the correct word) by the Saturn-Neptune opposition. The 9/11 chart has Venus at 18 Leo, close to GWB’s, indicating that his political fortunes are closely tied to the events arising out of 9/11. And the eclipse chart has Venus is at 17 Leo, opposite Neptune, and 2 weeks off making its final pass over GWB’s natal Venus. This will complete a cycle that began in July with a White House report on the Iraq War in which even they struggled to find any hope, and ending in September with General Petraeus’ report. So it is all stacking up politically around Bush for a very interesting autumn.

As we’re playing weird astrological coincidences today, let’s look at the first eclipse in the Saros series of which this eclipse is a part. (Eclipses run in series lasting perhaps 1500 years, and the first one of the series naturally gives us a flavour for the whole series).

This series began on 19th July 1917 at 2.59am GMT at the South Pole. And it has interesting connections with George Bush’s chart, suggesting that this eclipse on 11 Sept 2007 really does concern his fate. We find Sun-Moon at 26 Cancer, bang on his unaspected, 12th House, irresponsible natal Saturn. And weirdly we find Venus at 18 Leo, 6 minutes off the 9/11 Venus, and emphasising the issue around GWB’s poularity, or lack of. Moreover, the New Moon at 26 Cancer is on the Venus-Pluto midpoint.

Mars is at 24 Gemini, close to the US Mars, and wounded by a square to Chiron at 29 Pisces, so another reference to US wars. See you next week!

ASTROLOGY AND SCIENCE

It seems to me that astrology and science pull in opposite directions, they describe very different types of truth. So that any attempt to ‘prove’ the truth of astrology by statistical means is misguided.

Scientific truth is always generalised, it goes from the particular to the universal: it sees the universe as a machine in which certain sets of conditions always give rise to certain results. A particular event is of significance only inasmuch as it is an example of a general law.

But a human being cannot be reduced to a mere instance of a general law, a human being is particular and individual and ultimately unknowable. To the extent that science tries to reduce people to generalities, it is a de-humanising influence. This occurs particularly when science is in the hands of people who have the irrational, unprovable superstition that reality is ultimately scientific and ‘rational’, and that everything must be seen in scientific terms.

For science, the Eureka! moment is when you realise a general law like E=mc2. For an astrologer, the Eureka! moment is generally when you make an individual’s chart work for them, when you are able to put into words that person’s unique and particular way of living out the symbols in their chart.

Of course astrology also deals in general ‘laws’, like the nature of the 12 signs. It also moves from the particular to the universal, but in a very different way. Astrology doesn’t try to ‘reduce’ people to the signs. It is more the nature of artistic truth. A novelist will create characters, based to some extent on his/her observations of real people. If this is done well, the characters will seem real to us, and we will feel something is being said about people in general. But that general truth is arrived at through the depth with which the individual has been observed. The individual is central, yet also mysteriously connects us to a wider truth – but not one that can be proved statistically. This would be absurd, because the novelist deals as much in felt/intuited/experienced truth, that gives us a sense of human nature, as he/she does in truth that can be put into words: and even then, how do you couch those words in scientific terms?

It is the same with the signs of the zodiac. Some artistic genius saw the underlying patterning of human nature that the signs describe. But the essence of the signs is more about having a feeling for the type of character being described than about words. It’s like can you reduce your mother to the things you might say to describe her?

Astrology is also divinatory truth. It is about making connections between apparently unconnected events – i.e. the planets and ourselves – and realising what one has to say about the other. How can that possibly be scientific?

It is the same sort of truth as when an unusual event in nature occurs, and you feel there is a particular message in it for you. Like when you see, for example, a bird of prey doing something it doesn’t usually do, and you go away and think about it, and eventually the meaning dawns on you. In the same way, the universe at the moment you were born has a particular message for you about your soul, and the astrologer’s art is to help you read that message. Scientifically, this makes no sense at all.

Astrology is a higher form of knowledge than Science, because Astrology can understand and accept scientific truth, it can be incorporated within its body of knowledge. But Science has no way of understanding Astrology, the truth of which does not lie within its narrow method.

SORRY WE ATE YOUR GRANDPARENTS

A tribe in Papua New Guinea has apologised to the Fijians for having eaten four of its missionaries in 1878.

“Thousands of villagers attended a reconciliation ceremony near Rabaul, the capital of East New Britain province, once notorious for the ferocity of its cannibals.

Their leaders apologised for their forefather's taste for human flesh to Fiji's high commissioner to Papua New Guinea.

"We at this juncture are deeply touched and wish you the greatest joy of forgiveness as we finally end this record disagreement," said Ratu Isoa Tikoca, the high commissioner.”

In 1878 Pluto, a planet known for its love of death, was in Taurus, a sign known for its love of food. Pluto’s House is the 8th House: other people’s grandparents?

Mind you, I think we also need to look to Saturn, who was partial to his own children’s flesh – that guy had a strange 5th House!

I don’t think the Papua New Guineans should have apologised because (1) You can’t apologise for something you didn’t do and (2) I think that eating Christian missionaries is a good thing because otherwise they’ll end up destroying your culture (see Chinua Achebe’s excellent novel, “Things Fall Apart”.)

The modern equivalent are some of the imams that Britain seems only too happy to put up with. I think we should eat them. Turn them into burgers. “I’ll have a MacLaden and Chips please.”

SATURN-NEPTUNE THROUGH THE SIGNS

Saturn and Neptune have been opposite each other for 2 years now in Leo and Aquarius respectively, and in a week’s time they will be more than 8 degrees apart, the cut-off point I use for the end of the transit. In 3 weeks time Saturn will move into a new sign, confirming that the opposition really is over.

Over, at least, in the sense that the alchemy is over, the long chemical reaction has stopped fizzing, but it will still take a while for the results to crystallise out. Like the Oil Crisis of 1973, which took place a year or so after the end of the last Saturn-Neptune opposition.

A big theme of this opposition has been the Iraq War, and the Bush administration being forced to accept the reality (Saturn) that they were losing (Neptune) this war. With a major report due in mid-September, and with Saturn-Neptune entering the outcome phase, it will be very interesting to see what happens. The Saturn-Neptune opposition can easily lead to getting bogged down, which is certainly what has happened to the US in Iraq, with no apparent way forward, and no intention to withdraw. This should change as Saturn and Neptune move out of range of each other, and some sort of realistic direction for the war can begin to emerge over the autumn – probably at the cost of whatever authority George Bush has left to him.

An opposition like this affects everyone, it becomes the zeitgeist. Of course it will affect us more if we have personal planets or angles that are aspected by it, but all of us are nevertheless affected. There are many ways we can describe the interactions of these 2 planets, they are a particularly rich combination.

What I’m going to do is have a shot at how each of the signs – or pairs of signs – might be affected as Saturn and Neptune move out of aspect to each other. I’m going to do it, for the first time ever, the way Sun-sign columnists do it: for Taurus, for example, you put Taurus on the Ascendant, you use equal houses, then you find Leo on the 4th House cusp (i.e. Saturn) and Aquarius on the 10th House cusp (i.e. Neptune), you stick it all into your archetypal mincing machine, throw in the key phrases, and bingo! - you sound like you can read the future.

What I’m saying will apply not just to your Sun sign but wherever you have significant planets/angles in those signs.

So, Aries-Libra. Here we have Saturn-Neptune on the 5th-11th axis. This is particularly strong, as these houses correspond to Leo and Aquarius, the current signs of Saturn and Neptune. This axis is about individual creativity and self-expression (Leo) vs co-operating with collective ideals (Aquarius). So for Aries and Libra, the emphasis will be on grounding (Saturn) your new creative ideas (Neptune) in a collective setting. For Aries, a further emphasis will be on co-operation, and for Libra on staying true to one’s individual vision.

Taurus-Scorpio. Here we have Saturn-Neptune on the 4th-10th axis. Saturn (achievement) and Neptune (calling) are a strongly vocational combination anyway, and this is emphasised by being on the 4th-10th axis of private life vs public life, home vs career, solid achievement (10th) growing out of a strong personal foundation (4th).
For Taureans, the emphasis will be on letting yourself be drawn into the world, called to some new activity (Neptune) on the basis of the inner strength you have built up (Saturn). For Scorpions, it will be about confidently advancing your career through drawing new inspiration from your depths, and this may involve being less secretive about who you are.

Gemini-Sagittarius. Saturn-Neptune are on the 3rd-9th axis here, the houses that correspond to Gemini-Sag, so these signs are on familiar territory. It is the axis of faith vs reason, and of local interest vs the wider picture, and it’s all about learning and understanding. Particularly in our age of fundamentalism, these signs will emerge from Saturn-Neptune equipped to understand the local conditions that makes these ‘foreign terrorists’ what they are. For Geminis and Sagittarians, it is a time of balancing the claims of reason with the claims of direct, intuitive experience of the divine, 2 poles that are very publicly divided in our world, but which lead to wisdom when balanced in the individual. This theme is natural to Gemini/Sag, so it is a time of progress with what they’re good at.

Cancer-Capricorn. Saturn-Neptune are on the 2nd-8th axis of mine vs ours, my values/resources vs shared values/resources, beauty vs the beast. Cancerians are encountering Saturn in the 2nd vs Neptune in the 8th, the tension between a narrow clinging to their own /personal/family/tribal resources and wealth, as against surrendering to, trusting in the ocean outside their shell. It’s a security issue, it’s about the transformation (8th House) that comes when you trust (Neptune) that you’ll be looked after. That’s not an easy one. As for Capricorns, with Neptune in the 2nd and Saturn in the 8th, it’s about their 'achievement': relaxing around that tight sense of self-worth you have, based on what you have built in the world, and recognising the part others have played in what you have done, and that shared effort with others is a resource you can build on; realising that your worth is ultimately based not on what you have done, but simply is, and always has been. This transit is emphasised for Capricorns because Saturn rules their sign.

Leo-Aquarius. With the opposition taking place in these signs, it is a particularly significant transit.
It is the 1st-7th House axis. Self vs Other. For Leos, the issue is around tempering (Saturn) their own exuberant self-expression in order to understand the place of others, that through partnership they can connect with realities outside themselves more deeply and bring new inspiration to their lives. Aquarians, with Saturn transiting the 7th and Neptune the 1st, need to understand the mirrors they are being shown by others; the obstacles that others present (Saturn/7th) reveal the Aquarians’ illusions about themselves (Neptune/1st) in their quest to advance humanity.


Virgo-Pisces. Like Gemini-Sag, the Saturn-Neptune opposition takes place in the houses corresponding to the signs: 6th-12th. So it’s kind of business as usual. Pisces, moreover, is ruled by Neptune anyway. (It only seems to have been Cancer where there hasn’t been an extra resonance.) Order vs Chaos. Useful vs Useless. Morality vs Amorality. Judgement vs Acceptance. Rational vs Poetic. For Pisces, there is an opportunity to make more concrete and useful their powerful imaginations and their ability to feel for others. And it is a time when Virgos can let more imagination into their ordered way of going about things (Neptune in the 6th), and are able to work with and bring on board their own hidden Piscean side (Saturn in the 12th), which can lead them to excess and to hypocrisy if not acknowledged.

ALBERT ELLIS

I’ve just read two obituaries of a guy called Albert Ellis who I hadn't heard of, but who was, apparently, ‘the grandfather of cognitive-behavioural therapies’. He was voted by the American Psychological Association to be the second most influential psychotherapist of the 20th century after Carl Rogers, and ahead of Freud.

“Freud was full of horseshit,” he liked to say, while Freud’s central concept of neurosis was “just a high-class word for whining.”


He used to run Friday night workshops which became legendary. “Let me tell you why people are always making you so angry,” he informed a troubled young woman in 2005 (when aged 91), “Because they’re screwed up! They’re out of their fucking minds! We’re all out of our fucking minds!”

This mantra, which he repeated regularly, was behind his 'Rational emotive behaviour therapy (REBT)'. Its starting point was that we have negative emotional reactions not to events themselves, but to our beliefs about them. He rejected Freud’s focus on unpicking a patient’s childhood experiences. Instead, he advocated identifying and modifying these “irrational beliefs”, which usually take the form of a hidden demand that reality should be different than it is.

“There are three musts that hold us back,” he wrote. “I must do well. You must treat me well. And the world must be easy.” We upset ourselves with the grandiose requirement that we should perform perfectly, and that others should be nice to us. But in fact we are imperfect: we fail, in love and work, all the time. And other people, often enough, “act like jerks.”

This approach led him to emphasise short-term treatment, aimed at changing one’s way of thinking, here and now. “As I see it, psychoanalysis gives clients a cop-out,” he said, “ They don’t have to change their ways or their philosophies; they get to talk about themselves for 10 years, blaming their parents and waiting for magic-bullet insights.”


Early glimmers of REBT could be seen in a nerve-racking experiment Ellis conducted as a teenager, with himself as the subject. As a 19 year-old, he was painfully shy around women. So during a month of visits to the Bronx Botanical Garden, he sat on a bench and spoke to every woman he saw. His 130 attempts at conversation did not lead to true love, but that was beside the point. He had proved to himself that rejection, though unpleasant, was not unbearable: there was no need to “awfulise” it. “Nobody vomited and ran away,” he wrote. “Nobody called the cops.”

The experience led directly to the “shame-attacking exercises” he later prescribed to his patients. “Stop somebody on the street,” he advised, “and say ‘I just got out of the loony bin. What month is it?’ And learn not to feel ashamed when they look in horror at you, and think you’re off your rocker, which they think you are. But you’re really not. You’re being very much saner than they are.”

In his final years, the Directors of his Institute threw him out and stopped paying for his accommodation and medical care. He took them to court last year and won, and ended up back at the institute. True to the principles of REBT, he insisted that the contretemps hadn’t upset him: there was no point, after all, in demanding that the whole universe fall in line with his wishes. The other board members, he said, were “ fucked-up, fallible human beings, just like everyone else.”

He probably was one-sidedly rational. I found this quote by him: "Witness, for example, the fervent testimonials that innumerable people keep giving for cults, superstitions, and hoaxes like astrology, shamanism, psychic surgery, fortune telling, channeling, witchcraft, communications from ghosts, satanism, and demonism."

Mind you, I don't necessarily think people are being unreasonable if they think astrology is nonsense. There's no reason why it should work, which makes it all the more wondrous that it does. And you can't write off people's opinions just because they haven't tested astrology: so many ideas and theories come our way, astrology is just one of them, and we have to be able to form opinions about things. Like whether we really are ruled by aliens, or whether the moon is hollow (as I was knowingly informed once). I don't think a belief in astrology is any less strange.

Back to Albert Ellis. He was born 27 Sept 1913 (no time). His chart has a powerful signature: a Cardinal t-square involving the Sun, Jupiter and a Mars-Pluto conjunction. I know someone else with a Cardinal t-square involving these planets, and this person is not pleasant! Always starting fights and plotting, and never getting anywhere.

But if you can live it, it's very powerful and creative. Ellis had Sun in Libra (relationship to other people) in a t-square with Jupiter in Capricorn (structured philosophy) and Mars-Pluto in Cancer (tough love! - or transformative care for others that goes to the root of the matter.) That Sun square Pluto demanded of him that he become authentically powerful (hence the experiment in the park aged just 19 - apparently he eventually became very good at picking up women), and with Mars involved as well, he was tough enough to stand up to the hostility of the psychotherapeutic establishment to his ideas. This tough, combative power, so necessary to his life, also led to an enduring criticism: that his tone could make him sound as though he was urging people who, for example, were severely depressed, simply to pull their socks up.

He had another side: Venus in Virgo conjunct the Moon and sextile to Pluto. So under the abrasiveness was a real sensitivity, insight and care. Venus is about how we relate to others (Don't expect others to be perfect! he would say with Venus in Virgo), and his natal placement was at 1.15 Virgo. It is an important planet for a therapist, and appropriate that he should have died on 24th July under a Venus Return, with Venus stationing at 2.41 Virgo.

TANTRIC EMPOWERMENT

“I reckon Pat Parelli is a Tantric master,” Vajramala announced at dinner tonight. I should explain that Pat Parelli is this American guy who teaches people how to form a good relationship with their horses, and only then, and on that basis, do they do all the usual stuff, like riding them – and even then, not the conventional way. It’s all about relationship and the horse’s point of view.


I had this reaction against what she’d said, because I’ve seen so much of these titles like Tantric Master being a cover for bullshit. But Vajramala has a stronger connection with Tibetan Buddhism than I do, and a stronger sense that not all the titles are bullshit. She’s just been on a weekend of Parelli stuff in Birmingham, and she said that this week she has been better at what she does with her horses, and more aware of what she already knows. She said that just being around Parelli had empowered her to become better at what she does.

When she put it like that, I was right with her. Because that is how Tantric transmission is traditionally described: something passes over from the teacher to the pupil that empowers them. The trouble is, it’s often put in far less concrete terms, it becomes like a badge to wear, and the badge is bigger if the teacher has a bigger reputation, occupies a more lofty position in the Tibetan hierarchy. It so easily becomes more about vicarious power, about what the ‘initiation’ was and who did it, rather than the concrete ways it has changed who you are.

And this ‘transmission’ is also apparently something only the Masters from these esoteric, foreign traditions can do, and they have to have titles like Lama or Rimpoche, which guarantee the power. There’s this big dividing line.

So I’d often wondered what all this was about, because I felt there was something in ‘transmission’, but I didn’t know what it was, and it was hard to separate out from all the bullshit.

It seems to me that if you have a passionate connection to what you do, and you have humility, when you talk about it to people who want to know, something passes over that isn’t just theoretical knowledge. It applies to all human endeavours, astrology very much included. And this is the essence of ‘transmission’. You don’t have to be a ‘Master’ to do it, there isn’t this big dividing line. But obviously there are levels of it depending on the strength of your gifts, how long you’ve been at it etc.

Put it like this: if someone acts or talks with emotional engagement, with enthusiasm - a word meaning “possessed by a god” – then other people, if they are open to it, become possessed by that god. 10 years ago, when I used to run a Buddhist Centre, I used to give talks that were deliberately informal, because then the enthusiasm could take over, and people would be pinned to the wall. They would sometimes only turn up if they knew I was doing a talk. It’s not ‘you’ doing it, though it’s not separate from you either. Something comes through that people take away with them and it’s god-given.

I’ve never taught astrology, but sooner or later I inevitably will, because I have an ability. (Moon in Sag!) But I wouldn’t want to do it within the formal organisations: I’d feel something was expected of me that I couldn’t guarantee in advance. When I start talking, I don’t know where I’m going to end up, and I don’t think it matters. It’s something else, not you, that decides what needs saying.

For me it is essential to this process that you’re not presenting yourself as someone who has the answers. My experience of the astrological organisations – and I’ve crept in on quite a few lectures and seminars over the years – is that you get the classic teacher/pupil thing, where the teacher feels obliged to present themselves as someone who knows something (bless em!), and the pupils come looking for that. That’s understandable, and has been going on for millennia, but the BEST teachers don’t do this: it’s a shared exploration, they admit where they don’t know stuff. This empowers the pupils, who feel they are on the same path as you are. But this requires humility.


I’ve certainly leant a lot of astrology through going to lectures and seminars – I’m crap at learning it from books: I’m Mr AstroTABLETALK – but in none of them have I strongly felt this quality of shared exploration. Great astrologers and formative influences they might be, but they speak from on high, they are not the best. Like any human endeavour, the best tend to be found outside the Beltway (as John Townley calls it). I just haven’t physically met any of them yet!

THE UK 1801 CHART

It’s often not possible to have a final answer as to the correct chart for a country, and there may be more than one valid chart that describes different aspects of the nation. For the USA, one of the classic cases is that of the 2nd July vs 4th July charts: the first being that of the legal declaration of independence, and therefore describing the first working of an independent US government; the second being the public declaration of independence, which therefore relates more to the country as a whole and its ideals. Both charts can be seen to work in their own way.

The UK has a number of charts as well. For example, for the monarchy, we can use the 1066 chart for the coronation of William I, or the 1801 chart for the proclamation of George III as the first king of the United Kingdom of Britain and Ireland.

For the country itself, the two most recent charts are for 1801 and 1922. In 1801 Britain became united with Ireland, and in 1922 the South of Ireland seceded. So was the 1922 event just a re-organisation of the UK, or was it a whole new incarnation, which therefore gives us the most recent chart for the UK? You can take your pick.

For now, I’m going to look at some aspects of the 1801 chart, based on the Act of Union between Britain and Ireland which came into effect at 00.00 hours on 1st Jan 1801.


What is immediately noticeable is just how Cardinal this chart is: Sun, Moon and Angles are all Cardinal. This gives a nation that likes to act, to take initiative and to be in control, a very good chart for the successful empire-building that was going on at the time and subsequently. And an unaspected Pluto in Pisces. Unaspected planets aren’t that easy to interpret, but Britain did build the largest empire in world history: an unrestrained Pluto (power and riches)? And Britain ruled the seas: Pluto in Pisces. Jupiter (expansion) in the 10th (world stage) also helps, as does Moon in Cancer in the 10th - at home on the world stage.

Uranus Rising: the individualistic, even eccentric Englishman, and the country that never quite fits in with the European Union. This is also partly due to the UK’s allegiance to the US, its outsized offspring. The UK has Moon at 19 Cancer and MC at 9 Cancer, so it feels at home on the world stage with the US, which has Sun at 13 Cancer, on the UK Moon-MC midpoint.


Libra Rising: the British sense of fair play. Britain is also known for treachery (‘perfidious Albion’, say the French), but the British don’t see this. Maybe it’s the unaspected Pluto again.

This Pluto was Direct by Progression from 1755 to 1957. This corresponds pretty well with the rise of what was called the second British Empire, after the loss of the American colonies, but including the acquisition of India and much of Africa, South East Asia and other territories, so that by 1921 it included a quarter of the world’s population. Prog Pluto began to slow down to go retrograde during World War II, and in the years after the war most of the Empire was dismantled. Prog Pluto has been Retrograde since 1957, as Britain has built a new, albeit diminished power-base in the world.


The Sun, Moon and Angles run from 7 to 19 degrees of the Cardinal Signs, and the last 2 transits of Pluto to these points have proved very significant politically. The first of these sweeps of Pluto through these points was from 1919 to 1931, and this was a period of rising power for the Labour movement, firstly through industrial action in search of better conditions, which resulted in the General Strike of 1926; this failed, but then the first proper Labour government was elected in 1929, and lasted until 1935 (they had been briefly in power, as a small minority government, in 1924).

The next sweep of Pluto through these points was from 1974 to 1980, and again we see the same power struggle going on. In 1974 the miners managed to oust the Conservatives from power through strike action, and the years that followed were ones in which there was a lot of industrial unrest and strike action, in which Britain was seen as ‘the sick man of Europe’. In 1979 Margaret Thatcher was elected to power, and there was a sea-change in British politics (just as there had been in 1930, at the end of the previous series of Pluto transits). Rightly or wrongly, Thatcher broke the power of the unions and got Britain back on the road to economic health.

You could see these 2 periods as struggles between the left and right wings of politics, with first the left gaining power and setting in motion a much more compassionate society, that resulted after the War in the creation of the welfare state. But Labour did not have a good economic record, and eventually a corrective in the other direction was needed, which Thatcher provided.

There is another of these Pluto periods coming up, between 2011 and 2018, as Pluto moves from 7 to 19 Capricorn. It is not clear to me what this struggle might be about, as the old imbalances are no longer there. We no longer have the old polarity of the Tories trashing the public services, or Labour trashing the economy. This has been Blair’s great achievement, to manage both the economy and the public services fairly well at the same time. And there is no sign of this changing.

So this next Pluto series of transits may not be about a struggle between political polarities. But there is no shortage of wider issues to be faced: environmental degradation, energy resources, nuclear proliferation – all of these are becoming pressing, they are global issues, and furthermore Pluto (and Uranus) will also be impacting on the charts of the major powers. If there is a political struggle, it may be about which party can deal most effectively with these problems.

TOO MUCH INFORMATION

A friend has just returned from a weekend away to find a used condom on the bathroom floor. Confronting her partner with it this morning (he'd been the only person in the house), he denied all knowledge. She calmly walked over and dropped the offending item in his cup of tea. She has Sun and Moon in Scorpio.


When Vajramala's eldest was 15, we went off for the weekend, leaving him on his own. We knew what he would get up to, and sure enough when we returned he was conflicted: he had 'pleased with himself' written all over his face, at war with a natural reticence. Eventually the boastful Leo won out, and he went to his bedroom window-sill and retrieved a used 'Chocadom' (chocolate flavoured) which he displayed for our benefit.

GORDON BROWN’S CHAOS

Gordon Brown, the UK PM, has Sun, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Node in 12th House Pisces, as well as Mercury in the 12th. A substantial part of this man is hidden from view (12th) and it is chaotic, indolent, imaginative, creative, profoundly connected to the collective desires etc etc. But we don’t get to see this side, and never did in all his 10 years as Chancellor – apart from, perhaps, the odd flash via his concern for Africa.


What we do see is this unusually controlled, responsible accountant, which he is particularly playing up (successfully) at the moment, but it is not an act, it’s his comfort zone, and has been for years. Gordon, where are you?

This may sound like pop psychology, but being leader of the country, and being so connected to the collective, I think his missing 12th House gets projected outwards, it gets played out around him in major national events. This has been happening since the moment he became PM. All these events that he can’t control are his own suppressed 12th House Pisces.

There has been a remarkable run of uncontrollable national events in the mere 6 weeks since he has been PM. Within 2 days of him starting the job, there was a series of attempted terrorist attacks. Then we have had endless and unprecedented flooding in the UK (particularly appropriate for 12th House Pisces). And in the last 24 hours there has been a confirmed outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease: when this last happened, it spun out of control very quickly and became a national crisis.

At least it's cheaper for him than paying a dominatrix.

It is a strange set of coincidences, and I think it is psychologically fascinating. Chill out, Gordon! Stop "trying your utmost" as you put it.