Dharmaruci's Crystal Ball

I’ve recently had a number of requests/comments relating to Pluto in Capricorn and its passage over the UK Sun in 5 years time. It’s still a way off, but it is no longer another era, because Pluto has recently moved into Capricorn. People are sensing the early beginnings of this transit, hence the interest.

While the transit is bound to have a big effect on the UK individually, it will be taking place in the context of a much bigger picture, a global picture, because so many countries have significant points at the early to middle degrees of the Cardinal signs. This is well known to many astrologers, and many of us have been seeing this coming for some years now. It will not just be Pluto either, because by then it will also be forming a square with Uranus.

It is a global transit, and we have been there before in the early 1930s, when Pluto and Uranus were squaring each other in the early to mid degrees of the Cardinal signs. The early 1930s saw the first ever global transit, an astrological configuration that affected the whole world in a connected way, because the world was by then sufficiently interconnected for this to happen. What we got was a huge convulsion, the roaring twenties turned into the Great Depression and then the Second World War, out of which a very different world emerged.

So we have another global transit coming up, between approximately 2010-2016, and quite possibly/probably another huge convulsion in an even more interconnected world. But that doesn’t mean Armageddon.

To give an idea of the actual astrology, among what are now the major powers, Uranus-Pluto will be hard-aspecting the Suns of the following: China, USA, UK, Germany, Russia, France, the EU, Canada, Australia. This is phenomenal, and does not even include other major points, such as the Moon and Saturn of OPEC, the MC of India, the Asc and Moon of Japan, the MC of the US, and a host of hits in the Middle East: the Suns, for example, of Saudi Arabia, Libya, Kuwait, and Syria.

The effects of the 1930s Uranus-Pluto square began to be felt in 1929 with the Stock Market Crash. The 2 planets were still 10 degrees apart, like now, and the Stock Market did recover over the following year, but the Great Depression still occurred. We have recently had a big chill go through world markets, rooted in the US credit/mortgage crisis, and like 1929/30, the Stock Market is now recovering. The Bank of England, for one, has announced that the worst is over.

I don’t want to draw too many parallels with the early 1930s, because our situation is different. The point is, though, that the events very early in a transit can point to what is coming later. In fact, as astrologers we know that the course of events and the course of people’s lives are contained in their beginnings, for that is how astrology works.

So even though the markets seem to be recovering, we need to pay very close attention to what happened in late 2007/early 2008 as Pluto moved towards and then entered Capricorn. It wasn’t just the fact that Uranus and Pluto had been moving within 10 degrees of each other last year; it was also Pluto’s Ingress into Capricorn, which was another beginning.

Pluto is going to be back in Sagittarius for a while this year, and I think we are now experiencing the calm before the storm. All the factors are there in the world economy for a period of major change to be on its way. One factor is debt in the major economies, which has ballooned under Pluto in Sag. This will be a factor, but it can be sorted straightforwardly through belt-tightening and good book-keeping. The drop in consumer spending involved may lead to a recession, but that’s not the end of the world.

The really big issue is resources. With the growth of China and India, it is becoming clear that there are no longer enough resources to go round. There have already been food shortages, with of course the poorest countries suffering. And the price of oil has rocketed. Water is going to be an issue. The price of metals has soared. And so on.

As Pluto and Uranus move towards an exact square over the next few years, this issue of resources is going to intensify. It had to happen sooner or later, because you can’t have indefinite economic growth. Many countries will feel that their survival is threatened, and there is going to be a scramble for resources and, almost inevitably, conflict. I can’t see there not being wars of some sort. Has there ever been a time when countries have NOT gone to war over resources?

But at the same time, there will inevitably have to be a new economic model. I think that there is still plenty to go round. But the West particularly will need to learn not to be so wasteful. In Britain, the general level of health reached a peak during World War II when there was what were perceived as food shortages. If there was more public transport, and if people lived closer to where they worked, we would not need nearly so many private vehicles. With good insulation, by only warming the rooms we are using, and by wearing more clothes, heating bills could drop considerably. All this and more is, I think, inevitable. And the fresh scientific vision of Uranus in Aries, empowered by its square to Pluto, will give a huge boost to the development of alternative energy technologies.

I’m not just randomly throwing out predictions here. I think it’s what is actually going to happen: there will be a worldwide scramble for resources, but we will also be learning to live a lot less wastefully, and there will be a lot of innovation. We are still living as we have lived for decades now, nothing has actually yet changed. But it’s about to, just wait until Pluto gets back into Capricorn in November, or even when it stations in September. The world will be picking up where it left off at the beginning of the year, and getting serious about change.

This is all good Capricorn stuff, cutting your suit to fit your cloth. I’m quite optimistic that it’s all going to work out OK, partly because the chart for Pluto’s Ingress into Capricorn was so nice: Pluto trine to Saturn and conjunct the 2 benefics, Venus and Jupiter.

I don’t feel it’s just about learning to be thrifty and treating that as some sort of virtue that will get you to heaven, though no doubt people will get very moralistic about it, just like they do already with green issues and smoking. What I feel is the much more important underlying issue is that we will be coming back into a much healthier relationship with the material world and with money. We have lost sight of what resources are for and what wealth is for. Wealth has become an end in itself. To my mind, for example, the point of a business is to earn a living for those who work there. You also want to ensure the business has a future, and you want to make a product or provide a service that people actually need (and yes, a bit of luxury is also necessary sometimes!) In our world, this business would be seen as a failure, as a dead end, if it wasn’t continually growing, if all it did was to sustain itself. To my mind, this is a crazy way of thinking. And what's the point of all this excess wealth we have been creating if it doesn't lead to more leisure time? Surely that is the point of earning more than you need? But it seems the wealthier we get, the harder and longer we have to work. It's all upside down.

So this is what I am looking forward to under the Uranus-Pluto square: a change in the way we feel about work and money and our material needs. And I think it’s going to happen because we’ll have no choice.