Man's arm trapped in train toilet

Mars in Scorpio square to Neptune

From BBC News

A passenger on a French train had to be rescued by firemen after having his arm sucked down the on-board toilet.


TGV toilets are equipped with a powerful suction system

The 26-year-old victim was trapped when he tried to fish out his mobile phone, which had fallen into the toilet bowl, and fell foul of the suction system.

The high-speed TGV train had to stop for two hours while firemen cut through the train's pipework.

The man was carried away by emergency services, with the toilet still attached to his arm.

"He came out on a stretcher, with his hand still jammed in the toilet bowl, which they had to saw clean off," said Benoit Gigou, a witness to the man's plight.

The incident happened on Sunday evening, aboard a train travelling in western France between La Rochelle and Paris.

Pluto in Capricorn: the End of Democracy as an Ideology?

I was just watching some American protesters making the serious point that Barack Obama is not to be trusted because his middle name is Hussein. Never underestimate some people’s capacity for stupidity. They really do believe stuff that most of us would consider comic exaggeration. Like Barack sounds like Iraq, and Obama sounds like Osama, so he must be a terrorist! But you also have to give Americans credit for showing up Sarah Palin for the idiot she is, albeit an intelligent idiot. A well-known comic, Tina Fey, has created a hugely popular and scarily accurate impersonation of her. In one of her sketches that got a lot of laughs all she had to do was recite part of a speech that Sarah Palin had actually made.

As Pluto finally moves from Sagittarius to Capricorn, we are leaving an era of fundamentalism and ideology, and entering a period of pragmatism. The ideology of unregulated markets has been receiving its death blows in recent months. Democracy as an ideology also needs a few death blows. Not that I’m against democracy per se. I’m against the worship of it. It works, sort of, and it’s better than some systems. But it also means that idiots who think that Obama’s middle name is suspicious get a say in who runs the country. And, being an Absolute Truth, it gets used as grounds for invading other countries because they are not democracies.

Democracy has gained ground as an Absolute Truth because its main protagonists, Europe and the USA, also happened to be rich and capitalist. Therefore democracy becomes equated with that great virtue, wealth, and the capitalist system that has produced it. This has been particularly so since the West’s triumph in the Cold War.

However, now we have the rise of China, which is not a democracy, but which is becoming very wealthy through capitalism. So this will relativise democracy, it will no longer be the One True Path. So this may be a theme of Pluto in Capricorn: the undoing of some of the West’s hubris about its own political system, and a more accurate understanding of it as a political approach that works quite well in some ways and under certain circumstances, but not in others. i.e. a pragmatic, Capricornian understanding.

Pointing the Finger

Events usually come about through a complex of causes, and the current global financial crisis, which is tipping over into a full-blown recession, is no exception. But it’s still interesting to try and identify key causes, or even one big bad cause to point the finger at!

I was just listening to Robert Peston on BBC News, and his take is this: the problem was that in the West we borrowed too much, and the reason we did this was because of the big surpluses being made by countries in Asia and the Middle East, as well as Russia. We borrowed that money at low interest rates, and that fuelled for example a housing boom, and then people would borrow even more against the inflated value of their houses. And then there were the dodgy sub-prime loans and so on.

In George Bush’s pithier summation, “Wall St got drunk.”

Much of this occurred during the recent Saturn-Neptune opposition, which symbolically describes the phenomenon well. Loss (Neptune) of common sense (Saturn). Borrowing (Neptune) that is not financially sound (Saturn).

My opinion, if we are going to look for a fundamental cause rather than a complex causality, something to point the finger at, is free-market fundamentalism. The excessive borrowing came out of the blind refusal to regulate that this ideology led to. This is what the current Saturn-Uranus opposition is addressing. A reality check (Saturn) on ideology (Uranus). The opposition also works the other way round: the disruption (Uranus) of an outdated system (Saturn).

Any system or society needs regulating, and it kind of surprises me that our system was called ‘free-market’ given how much regulation and protectionism there was anyway. I suppose it’s a relative term. From the end of WWII until the early 70s there was more regulation than there is now, which had arisen partly as an attempt to avoid a repeat of the Great Depression of the 1930s. It worked, inasmuch as there was a worldwide boom for 30 years.

Cracks began to appear in this system in the late 60s (after the last Saturn-Uranus opposition: Uranus again disrupting an outdated system), and in the early 70s a global recession began under the last Saturn-Neptune opposition.

The increased emphasis on deregulation and free markets of the 1980s onwards was a response to these difficulties, and it worked for many years. Because it worked, it became an ideology, economists began to treat it as an absolute truth. This is also described by Pluto in Sagittarius.

I tend to think it’s easier to understand things by thinking pragmatically and disinterestedly, rather than in terms of theories and value-judgements. The economy is such a huge, complex and unpredictable beast that the small human brain can never hope to get it right. We just have to do what works for now. Sometimes more regulation will be needed, and sometimes less will be needed. That seems to be the cycle. Saturn and Uranus will tell us when. But if economists and politicians were able to be less ideological, less attached to their economic positions, the transition could be a lot less painful.

I suppose I am now starting to argue against human nature! Which is why we need Saturn-Uranus in all sorts of ways. We get into ways of doing things, ways of being, initially because they work for us (positive Saturn), but then they become entrenched habits and sources of security (negative Saturn) and we need Uranus to disrupt that. If you like, a fixed attitude (Saturn) contains the seeds of its own downfall because it is no longer able to adapt to changing conditions (Uranus).

Saturn-Uranus: Walls that divide Communities

Here’s one for the current Saturn-Uranus opposition, from the New York Times:

New Fence Will Split a Border Park

Tougher fencing being installed to curtail illegal crossings will slice through a San Diego park that has connected neighbors on either side of the U.S.-Mexico border.

A fence/boundary (Saturn) that splits a community (Uranus).

Building began on the Berlin Wall in Aug 1961, during an inconjunction of Saturn to Uranus. It was initially a wire fence. In 1965, during an opposition of Saturn to Uranus, work began on replacing the fence with a concrete wall. The Wall was demolished in late 1989, at the conclusion of a conjunction of Saturn and Uranus.

Reports of the death of globalisation have been greatly exaggerated

Appropriately for the end of Pluto in Sagittarius, the UK government has just released a load more files of UFO sightings, this time from 1986-1992.

But that’s not what I’m here to talk about. Reports of the death of globalisation have been greatly exaggerated, at least by me. My reasoning, just over a week ago, was that the globalising impulse of Pluto in Sagittarius was coming to an end, and with Pluto entering Capricorn, with its emphasis on boundaries, and with each country having to save its own banking system, we might see a withdrawal into separateness, at least for now.

But I think there are more possibilities than this. And globalisation has been taking place on many levels – economic, cultural, political and technological. In some ways it has been helpful, in other ways it has been unfortunate. If you see life as occurring in cycles, like I tend to do (and like astrology does), then globalisation looks like a phase we are passing through for now, and eventually we will do so again. If you believe that humanity is engaged in a sort of collective evolution, that we have a kind of destiny, then globalisation looks like the point at which humanity finally began to come together as one. This looks like a fundamentally good thing, being a collective evolutionary stage. Just because you believe one or the other viewpoint strongly doesn’t make it truer. It’s a good one to argue over a few bottles of wine.

Another possibility for Pluto in Capricorn, on an economic level, is that proper form is given to the globalisation that has been taking place in recent decades. An attempt is being made at this, in the wake of the near-meltdown of the global banking system. George Bush, in the final months of his Presidency, is hosting a series of summits to try and come up with some new rules and institutions for international finance. Meanwhile South Korea is going to guarantee loans made to its own institutions by foreign banks. So people are looking to the future again, even though a recession seems certain. And it does seem that economically there is a lot of political will behind maintaining the level of globalisation we have achieved.

So this is how Pluto in Capricorn looks to be shaping up, on one level. Rather than a retreat into national boundaries, it looks like economic globalisation is going to get even stronger by being given firmer foundations. Another meaning of Pluto in Capricorn is World Government, and this might be a direction we go in over the next 16 years. Pluto in Sag has been a bit like the Wild West, and now we have proper government coming in.

There is also the issue of resources. It is becoming clearer that we can only consume so much oil, water, commodities, food etc, and the world seems to be getting towards that point of maximum consumption. So whatever improvements are made to the world financial system, Pluto in Capricorn will be increasingly marked by a struggle for resources. Towards the end of this transit, for example, we will see the Neptune Return of the first oil strike of 1859, and Neptune rules oil. So there will be a tension between the increased trade and prosperity that economic globalisation, with an improved set of international laws (Pluto in Cap) gives, and the withdrawal into national boundaries (also Pluto in Cap) that a struggle for resources will tend to lead to. Pluto will reach its mid-way point of 15 Capricorn in about 7 years time, while it is still square to Uranus, so it may be then that the really defining issues of Pluto in Capricorn become clear.

The trouble with globalisation so far is that it hasn’t been so much about interconnectedness and the realisation of our common humanity etc, but about American culture and values and business practices becoming the world’s culture and values and business practices. Globalisation has to a large extent been about domination.

But that is the nature of countries. It became very clear at the Olympics, for example, that China has huge ambitions to occupy the top spot. Personally, I’d rather have America there. What seems almost inevitable, however, is a return to the old system of competing superpowers.

The internet is a result of the globalising process we have recently been through. That seems likely to develop rather than disappear. But it has also had its Wild West, Pluto in Sag, aspect. Pluto in Cap will inevitably bring in more regulation which is sorely needed, for it has become a haven for thieves and paedophiles. But there is always a price to pay for that. Like with Glastonbury Festival when, during its Saturn Return, a wall was built around the site. It kept out much of the criminal element, but also a lot of the free spirits.

Neptune Stations

During a visit to the mental asylum, a visitor asked the Director how do you determine whether or not a patient should be institutionalized?

'Well,' said the Director, 'we fill up a bathtub, then we offer a teaspoon, a teacup and a bucket to the patient and ask him or her to empty the bathtub.'

'Oh, I understand,' said the visitor. 'A normal person would use the bucket because it's bigger than the spoon or the teacup.'

'No.' said the Director, 'A normal person would pull the plug. Do you want a bed near the window?'

Dharmaruci's Crystal Ball Part II

Gordon Brown saved the world, kind of, this week. It’s not often one gets the chance to do that. What he did was to get the UK government to buy into some of the banks, which began to stabilise the banking system, and then offer that as a model to the rest of the world. The US has taken it up. Without something to stabilise the system, there could have been complete worldwide economic collapse, a Minsky Moment. And we were all looking into that abyss for a while. For all Brown’s failures as a leader, having Sun in 12th House Pisces has its virtues, one of them being the ability to save the world!

This doesn’t mean, however, that we are not in for a significant recession, and worldwide markets are reflecting that fear. But at least complete collapse seems to have been avoided.

So where is it all going? A predictive tool that can be useful is Andre Barbault’s Cyclic Index. My reading of the index is that the recession we are entering will last about 1½ years. I’m not sure I believe that, but let’s continue anyway.

Here’s what the index is about in Barbault’s own words, from the Mountain Astrologer Feb/Mar 1998:

“[The Cyclic Index] is the sum of all the angular distances between the pairs of the outer planets, from Jupiter through Pluto. For instance, on January 1, 1998, Jupiter will be located at 22 Aquarius and Saturn will be at 13 Aries; therefore, an angle of 51 degrees will separate them. If you do the same calculation for the remaining nine cycles of these slow moving planets – Jupiter-Uranus, Jupiter-Neptune….Saturn-Pluto….Uranus-Pluto and Neptune-Pluto - you will calculate an index of 555 degrees.

This number becomes meaningful when we see that it lies between a minimum of around 500 degrees in 1996 and a maximum of 1080 in the year 2003. The fluctuation of this index originates in the alternative movement of the ascending (0-180) and descending (180-0) phases of all the cycles, as if the solar system were expanding and contracting; the good periods go hand in hand with celestial expansion, as the planets separate from each other, and the critical times occur simultaneously with planetary concentrations, or conjunctions.”

As an example, in the 20th century the index collapsed at the time of both the first and second world wars.

This is the 20th century index:And here is the 21st century index:

So we can see the fall that began in 2003 (with the US’s disastrous foray into Iraq) will continue until 2010/11. Then there will be a period of expansion for a few years, followed by quite a big fall until 2020. My interpretation of this is that we will pull out of the coming recession relatively quickly, and have a few expansive years again. But it will be at the expense of not dealing with the underlying problems sufficiently – OK, there’ll be a bit more regulation etc, but not nearly far-reaching enough. It will only be as Pluto reaches the half-way point of his journey through Capricorn, in about 2015, that we will feel the full strength of his bite: just as 9/11 occurred in the year that Pluto reached the half-way point in his journey through Sagittarius.

This is not my personal prediction, for I don’t have much sense of how it is all going to go, apart from feeling it is going to be BIG. But it does seem to be a reasonable interpretation of the Cyclic Index, that also ties in with Pluto’s movements.

The Case Against God

Pluto in Sag ruled by Jupiter in Capricorn? Or is it an eccentric attempt to upset (Uranus) the established order (opposite Saturn)?

From BBC News:
Legal case against God dismissed

A US judge has thrown out a case against God, ruling that because the defendant has no address, legal papers cannot be served. The suit against God was launched by Nebraska state senator Ernie Chambers, who said he might appeal the ruling. He sought a permanent injunction to prevent the "death, destruction and terrorisation" caused by God.

Judge Marlon Polk said in his ruling that a plaintiff must have access to the defendant for a case to proceed. "Given that this court finds that there can never be service effectuated on the named defendant this action will be dismissed with prejudice," Judge Polk wrote in his ruling. Mr Chambers cannot refile the suit but may appeal.

'God knows everything'

Mr Chambers sued God last year. He said God had threatened him and the people of Nebraska and had inflicted "widespread death, destruction and terrorisation of millions upon millions of the Earth's inhabitants". He said he would carefully consider Judge Polk's ruling before deciding whether to appeal. The court, Mr Chambers said, had acknowledged the existence of God and "a consequence of that acknowledgement is a recognition of God's omniscience". "Since God knows everything," he reasoned, "God has notice of this lawsuit."

Mr Chambers, a state senator for 38 years, said he filed the suit to make the point that "anyone can sue anyone else, even God".

Gordon Brown's Reputation; Saturn-Uranus-Neptune and the resurgence of 'Socialism'

The one thing we do know about Gordon Brown is that Pluto is coming up to conjoin his MC at 4.43 Capricorn, having spent this year conjoining his Chiron at 0.53 Capricorn. Until a few days ago it was looking like this Pluto to Chiron-MC transit was going to be about his undoing, about his gradual destruction as Prime Minister, culminating in a landslide win for the Tories in 2010.


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But the banking crisis seems to be changing that. Uranus transits are known for being the ‘unpredictable’ ones. Well in their own way, Pluto transits are no more predictable. Which of us could ever have guessed beforehand what was going to happen to us under a Pluto, or indeed Neptune, transit?

In a poll a few days ago, Labour were ahead of the Tories when people were asked who they trusted to see them through the present difficulties. Gordon Brown was known as the Iron Chancellor, and while his reputation now seems inflated, because he was Chancellor during the good times, this current crisis has nevertheless brought him onto home territory. He never had this sort of test while he was Chancellor, and it is these situations that make or break reputations.

I think he has probably made his reputation through the bold steps that Britain has taken this week to shore up its banking system, effectively part-nationalising it, with the money that the government has given to purchase shares in the banks going to re-capitalise them. It may be that Pluto on the one hand will enhance Brown's reputation for economic competence, while destroying his aspirations to be a great leader in a wider sense - which everyone except him seems able to see that he never will be! There is the real legacy of Capricorn, but also the self-inflicted wound of Chiron.

Nationalising the banks, at least to some extent, seems to be the only possibility of saving them worldwide, and there is strong ideological resistance to this in the west, particularly in the USA, which is why it is lagging behind. It is interesting that it should be a Labour government, with its socialist roots, that feels able to take this step. New Labour has spent its whole time in power fleeing from its roots. Now that we are in a crisis, it is returning to them.

The West thought that it had left Socialism behind when the Cold War ended, when free-market Capitalism seemed to have finally triumphed. The Cold War began to end in the late 1980s, when Saturn was conjunct Uranus. Now, with Saturn opposite Uranus, socialism, in the form of state ownership of businesses, has reared its head again.

It is not being done, however, for ideological reasons. The ideologues are the free marketers – Uranus – whereas the nationalisers are being pragmatic, they are addressing the needs of the system as a whole, they are Saturn. For now, Saturn seems to be triumphing over Uranus.

The present situation could also be seen as a late outcome of the recent Saturn-Neptune opposition. The effects of the previous opposition of 1971/2 were not seen until a year later, when we had an oil crisis followed by a recession. And it is the same now, but with the ‘socialist’ dimension thrown in. The Cold War also ended under a Saturn-Neptune conjunction, and I think Socialism, with its attempts to be fair, is better described by Neptune than by pragmatic Saturn. So this is another echo of the Cold War era. As is the recent resurgence of Russia. And as governments step in to rescue their banks, so is Neptune stationing.

It is not surprising there should be these resonances, for the Cold War ended under a Saturn-Uranus-Neptune conjunction, and we are now in the middle of the ensuing oppositions, first of Saturn to Neptune and now of Saturn to Uranus.

It does look like these attempts to shore up the system might just work. I don’t think any of us, however distasteful we find the system, wants to see a collapse of the banks and then the economy, with all the suffering that would bring. Even if we do pull through, the system has had a huge shock, and it will take a long time to build up trust between banks again. It also marks the beginning of a 2 year struggle, as Saturn performs its opposition to Uranus, between the free marketers (Uranus) and the pragmatists/regulators (Saturn).

The even bigger theme of Uranus square to Pluto is also starting to come our way. Pluto is a god of wealth and riches, and so is intimately related to the economy. He is also a god of our survival instincts, which money easily brings into play – even for people who have far more than they will ever need!

So the current crisis is not just about trying to save the banking system and then banging in a load of regulations to stop it happening again, until the next time. That will probably be part of the story, and it is more predictable because Saturn, which is not an outer planet, is involved. But Uranus-Pluto we can only stand in awe before. Whatever necessary steps are taken in the economy over the next year or two, underlying it is this much bigger change that is completely out of our hands.

That said, I do not want to belittle Saturn-Uranus. The opposition of 1918 marked the end of World War One, the conjunction of 1942 marked the point when World War II began to turn, the opposition of 1965/66 heralded the massive social changes of the 60s, and the conjunction of 1989 marked the end of the Cold War. So Saturn-Uranus is bringing us into a new era, the old order (Saturn) is being disrupted and shaken (Uranus). All the same, that will only be a start, for Uranus-Pluto, which is already with us, has even bigger work to do.

The Credit Crunch and the End of Globalisation

There is a strong astrological similarity between the financial crisis of the early thirties and what is happening now. A big difference, however, is that the process of globalisation has gone much further. Even back then, events in the USA produced shock waves throughout much of the world. But now more countries are involved, and the interconnections are that much closer. There are, for example, many more multinational corporations and banks, and vastly more trade, as well as improved communications, including the ubiquitous internet. Hence the speed with which the present crisis is developing.

The process of globalisation has been particularly intense in the last couple of decades, and this was reflected firstly in the Uranus-Neptune conjunction, which lasted from the late eighties to the mid-nineties; and then in the passage of Pluto through Sagittarius, which lasted from 1995 to the end of 2008.

These outer planet movements are very powerful, bringing a deep and lasting cultural impetus with them. So they were about much more than just globalisation, though this was an important aspect. Symbolically, we can see Uranus-Neptune as progress (Uranus) through the dissolution of national boundaries (Neptune). In the case of the boundary between East and West, i.e. the Cold War and Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, the collapse (Neptune) was very sudden and unexpected (Uranus). The internet, and its globalising effect, is also very Uranus-Neptune.

Hot on the heels of Uranus-Neptune came Pluto’s entry into Sagittarius. Sagittarius is driven towards expansion, towards finding meaning in a big canvas. The connection with globalisation is obvious, and Pluto empowered it. But as ever with Pluto, it brought its shadow as well: it made systemic weaknesses, which we are seeing now, more of a global phenomenon.

In 2003, Uranus moved into Pisces, and so into mutual reception with Neptune in Aquarius. This means that each planet is in the sign that the other rules, and it has an effect a bit like a conjunction. This mutual reception, which will continue for another couple of years, has prolonged the effect of the Uranus-Neptune conjunction of the 1990s, and has been another factor in the intensity of the globalisation process.

We are now coming to the end of the era of globalisation. Pluto moves finally into Capricorn later this year, and the Uranus-Neptune configuration is drifting gradually towards its conclusion.

This ending has a very interesting bearing on current attempts to deal with the global banking crisis. As a planet transits a sign, it becomes increasingly empowered with the qualities of that sign. So with Pluto at the very very end of Sag, the forces of globalisation are at their most powerful. And yet they are about to turn into their opposite, as Pluto enters the sign of national boundaries, Capricorn.

The G7 group of rich nations has just met in response to the banking crisis, and proposed a plan, lacking in concrete steps, for governments each to take more control of their banking systems – buying stakes, injecting liquidity, guaranteeing interbank lending – in order to loosen up the freeze that has taken place in the credit system. In theory this could work. But though we have come a long way with globalisation, we have not come that far. Nations remain sovereign and independent, even within the EU, and concerted action remains notoriously difficult to achieve.

What is needed are the kind of bold steps that the UK has taken, making £400bn available to its banking system. This is 10 times as much, relatively speaking, as the US is proposing to make available to its own banking system. If the US does not act boldly, the world banking system will go down. The US cannot act boldly because of its political cycle. They have a President at the end of his second term, and they are always ‘lame-ducks’, the current incumbent particularly so.

Nor for astrological reasons can the G7 solution work. A credit squeeze is very much a Pluto in Capricorn phenomenon, it is the new era, and so it cannot be dealt with by the methods of the old era. The G7 solution is far too Pluto in Sag: go global, and throw money at the problem.

What I think is going to happen is this: each country will have to withdraw into its own shell and solve the problem for itself. A government cannot provide guarantees when its banks lend to foreign institutions. But it can provide guarantees when the money remains in the country. This is a very Capricornian solution, in which Capricornian Britain is leading the way.

So because the richest nations cannot act in concert, because economic (Pluto) globalisation (Sag) has, for now, had its day, I think we are likely to see a collapse of the international banking system in the very near future. This will lead to a huge slowdown in world trade: even now, commercial shipping rates have halved.

It will be up to each country individually to sort out its own banking system. Trust between countries can then be slowly rebuilt. Collapses can happen very quickly, as we have seen. Because of its political cycle, the US is in a very dangerous position, and their collapse may well go much further than it needs to. This will, of course, dramatically increase the slowdown in the rest of the world.

I think it is a Depression, not a Recession, to which we are headed. How Great it is remains to be seen. We will be poorer. People will lose their jobs. But maybe also, in the smaller countries, there will be less of a sense of being part of a huge international machine that is out of our control. And more of a sense of national self-reliance, more of a connection again between work and what it produces and the need to conserve resources. All good Capricornian stuff.

Mercury Retrograde and my modem; Gordon Brown's Brownie points; David Cameron's Venus.

“I’m sorry, but you were given the wrong information. Your Sagem Modem is not compatible with Windows Vista,” the Tiscali troubleshooter told me. This was me trying to get my laptop connected to a modem again, after a year of a troubled wireless connection. I’m the awkward one that’s trying to step back into the Dark Ages. “How do you know it’s not you that’s wrong rather than your colleague?” I replied.

We went round in circles for a while, each repeating our positions, with the Tiscali operator occasionally offering me a free wireless router. Eventually she gave in and offered to try and help me connect to the internet, in order to prove her point. Within 2 minutes I was connected. I was roaring with laughter, and she seemed a bit nonplussed. But it shows what you can achieve under Mercury Retrograde.

Gordon Brown has been going up in my estimation recently. I still think he’s a crap leader and always will be. Having half your planets, including Sun and Mars, in 12th House Pisces, does not lend itself to having a strong public presence, which a leader needs these days. Personally I don’t mind that too much if I think the Prime Minister is able to make the right decisions and get them through Parliament.

Gordon Brown got his first Brownie points for bringing his arch-enemy Peter Mandelson, the so-called 'Prince of Darkness', back into the cabinet. Admittedly it came out of desperation, with his leadership under serious threat and the banking system collapsing (we need a name for what’s happening now, like we have ‘9/11’, or ‘11/9’ in English English. Any suggestions?) Mandelson, with his Scorpio Mercury square to Pluto, may bring his old poison back with him. Already there are reports that a few weeks ago he gave George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, a detailed account of Gordon Brown’s faults. So it may not work, but credit to Gordon Brown for not being his old divisive self.

Gordon Brown also gets Brownie points for the £500bn bailout of the UK banking system. It is larger than the US bailout, and in an economy 1/10 the size. So it is hugely bold compared to what the Americans have done. I think it probably won’t work, because there is an avalanche on the way that can’t be stopped. But governments still need to try and save the thing.

Brown’s other Brownie points are for threatening to use anti-terrorist legislation to freeze Iceland’s assets in the UK, in response to the Iceland government allowing £4.5bn of British savers' money to disappear along with some of its major banks.

Brown has Mars at 22 Pisces, which Uranus is conjoining by transit. And he is showing a surprising (Uranus) boldness (Mars).

Someone who has not impressed me lately is David Cameron, leader of the Opposition, and an apparent shoo-in as PM at the next election. He was filmed doing the rounds, visiting 'ordinary' people and discussing their concerns. He has this constipated expression which says 'I'm serious and I really am trying and I really am listening to you', and the effect it has is to make you feel he is shallow. His interest in social reform does appear to be genuine and longstanding. But the only policy intention he came out with in this programme was his desire to give married couples a tax break, which seems to me like a nasty right-wing thing to do.


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Cameron shares with Margaret Thatcher Sun in Libra and Moon in Leo. So there is some kind of strong and basic resonance there, even though it's not yet clear what that might be. Popularity in a politician is governed by Venus, which Cameron has at 7.32 Libra. This is interesting, because at the next election, probably in 2010, Pluto will be 2 degrees off a square to Cameron's Venus, and then exact the following year. This suggests that even though he may be the next PM, it will not be a shoo-in, there will be major issues emerging that he has to address to become electable. Barack Obama has Venus at 1 Cancer, which Pluto has been opposing this year. As Pluto began its first crossing, the Rev Wright issue blew up, and Obama was able to successfully deal with its threat to his electability. This was also, in my opinion, at the cost of a certain amount of integrity, for there was raw truth in some of what Rev Wright had to say. So the challenge is: to what extent do you sacrifice unwelcome truth (Pluto) in order to maintain your political popularity (Venus)? This may well be Cameron's challenge as well. And with Mercury in Scorpio square to his regal Moon-Jupiter, I expect to see him compromise the truth to some extent.

Neptune Stations: The Deluge

Neptune is starting to station, which is just what we don’t need as governments try to take steps to halt the developing banking crisis. Last week all the talk was of the US government’s $700bn bailout of its banking system. Would Congress let it through and save the world, or would it not?

Now that bailout seems almost irrelevant as the crisis has spread to Europe and Asia, with governments always seemingly one or two steps behind. Mercury is Retrograde at the moment, which is a bad time for launching new projects, but in theory a good time for sorting stuff. The trouble is, what we have is an avalanche that is gathering momentum, that seems to be beyond any government’s efforts to stave off. That is perhaps what stationing Neptune is telling us: we can never get a grip on this situation.

Neptune does not describe the overall situation – we need to look to Saturn, Uranus and Pluto for that (see my post of Sept 30th
) – but it does seem to describe the particular phase we are in. As Neptune slows over the next few weeks, reaching a standstill on 1st November, I think we can expect the avalanche to intensify and reach a sort of initial completion. Further evidence for this is that the Saturn-Uranus opposition is also intensifying and will reach its first exact opposition 3 days after Neptune stations. Uranus is the crisis from the point of view of its unpredictability and series of sudden shocks. Neptune is the crisis from the point of view of the deluge that is starting to sweep over the world.

The US election is taking place on November 4th, with Neptune stock still and Uranus exactly opposite Saturn. When a planet is stationary in a birth chart, it is extra powerful in the life of that individual. So this election will be taking place in a time of great uncertainty and confusion (Neptune), as well as one of great shocks (Uranus) to the stable society we know (Saturn).

At the same time, I think the election will be taking place not so much during the bombing raid, which is happening now, but in its immediate aftermath, when we will be surveying the wreckage. So there will be a lull for a while, which is just as well. A week or so after the election, however, Uranus will begin to station, so there may be a series of aftershocks to the world financial system.

At the end of November, Uranus turns round and begins his long journey forward that will bring him by next June to within 5 degrees of a square to Pluto. Saturn-Uranus is big enough, but Uranus-Pluto is the big one, the big re-shaper of the world over the next decade. Personally I have a sense of intense storms sweeping through the world over the coming years, and that what seems like such a huge crisis right now will come to be seen as the opening shots in something much bigger. The astrology is similar to the 1930s, and I think the events will be similar in magnitude. The world has become so extremely out of balance, so inconsiderate of its resources, of its future, of other forms of life, of the human cost of modern ways of living, that something has to give, and the banks are as good a place to start as any.

Attitude

From Attitude – wanna make something of it? by Tony Allen

‘… I was watching Tony Blair recently on the telly addressing a conference. He walked on beaming and waving and then, while the crowd were still applauding, he ‘apparently’ recognised someone in the audience, pointed at them and made like he knew them and clearly hadn’t seen them for some time. I first saw Clinton do it. I’ve got my own version of the same thing. It’s a ploy. What comes across is ‘Hey! Good to see you. Glad you could make it. How’s the family? Nice one. Catch up with you later.’ What is really going on is the performer is demolishing the fourth wall and bonding with the room – ‘I don’t know you, I’ve never met you before and let’s keep it that way. But hey, I’m an opportunist and you are my way of establishing a connection with this audience.’ Politicians are learning the skills of the live performer. No big surprise there, until I saw the news footage from Serbia and Vuk Drascovic was using the same technique. What next? The Indonesian Generals? ‘Hey! Good to see you. How’s the family? Do you want to see them again?’

Boris Johnson, Peter Mandelson and Saturn-Uranus

Saturn and Uranus are lining up for the first of a series of 5 exact oppositions, beginning on November 4th. In my last post I referred to the US Congressional bust-up over the $700bn bail-out as an example of Saturn-Uranus. Politically, we have also had a couple of examples over here in the UK, both in the last few days.

Firstly there was the sacking of Britain’s top policeman, Sir Ian Blair, by the new Tory mayor of London, Boris Johnson. This was a sudden and surprising event (Uranus), carried out in a highly unusual manner (Uranus), that abruptly separated (Uranus) the head of London’s police force (Saturn) from his job.

There has been quite a lot of fall-out, partly because the post of Metropolitan Police Commissioner is seen as having become politicised by this decision. It sets a precedent, for it means that in future the mayor of London can say to the police commissioner (like Boris did) that he no longer has confidence in him, and that will be enough to make his position untenable.

Underneath his charm and bluff honesty, Boris Johnson is very right wing. This maybe suggests an emerging theme for the Saturn-Uranus opposition, which we saw in the USA, where Uranus is ‘right-wing’ as well as ideological and/or maverick, and Saturn is the ‘left wing’ establishment.

The obvious way to look at Saturn-Uranus politically is the forces of progress and liberalism (Uranus) versus an entrenched, reactionary establishment (Saturn). But being Uranus, it is not coming out as one might have thought. What I think we are seeing is Saturn at its best, as a sense of a wider responsibility towards society.

I think this applies in the case of Boris Johnson, whose action shows his inexperience. You can easily achieve quick results by being authoritarian, as he was in this case. Or as Bush was with Iraq. The point is not whether it was the right decision: in Sir Ian Blair’s case, he had lurched from crisis to crisis during his 3 year tenure, and was widely seen as not up to the job. On the day of the London bombings of 2005, for example, when he was supposed to be briefing the Prime Minister, his information was behind that which was appearing on the news.

The point is that Uranus without Saturn is likely to make decisions that are not properly thought through, or not carried out in the right way, that do not have a mandate from the collective. Boris Johnson has an unaspected Mercury at 19 Gemini. (This placement makes him prone to gaffes, often of a schoolboy right wing nature). With the Saturn-Uranus opposition coming up to square it exactly, and then moving on over the next 2 years to square his Sun at 28 Gemini, he will be forced to change his ways, to consider the divisive (Uranus) consequences (Saturn) of acting without collective assent (Saturn), while hopefully keeping the quirky, maverick style (Uranus) for which he is known.

Another Saturn-Uranus event was Gordon Brown bringing the ‘Prince of Darkness’, Peter Mandelson, back into the government. This took everyone by surprise, for they are old enemies. In this case, Brown is Saturn, the establishment; and Mandelson, who is known for being divisive and plotting and who many cannot stand, is Uranus.

Brown has Mars at 22.35 Pisces in the 12th House, which is not exactly a good placement for a leader. With Saturn-Uranus lining up along this Mars, he has made a surprising decision (Uranus) about an enemy (Mars) in the interests of effective collective government (Saturn).

Mandelson himself (born 21 Oct 1953) has Sun square to Uranus, giving him his misfit quality, which includes his homosexuality. His Sun in Libra is trine to Jupiter, and he is well-known for his love of fine things. This once included a house in London beyond his income, and paid for by a secret interest-free loan from a cabinet colleague who Mandelson’s department was supposed to be investigating! There is a well-known apocryphal joke about him that, visiting a chip shop in his northern England constituency, he asked for some of the ‘guacamole’, which was in fact mushy peas. The point of the joke is that it highlights what is seen as an aloofness from ordinary people, despite being Labour.

He clearly has the Libran diplomatic qualities, in that it was he as much as anyone who helped pull the Labour party back together again in the 80s/90s. But he also has Mercury in Scorpio square to Pluto, which no doubt helped him in the political manoeuvring required, but which has also given him the underhand ways that have been his undoing. With Mercury in Scorpio square to Pluto, it’s almost like why be straightforward when you can plot and play with people like chess pieces? He probably can’t help himself!

His Sun in Libra is conjunct Neptune, which gives him his political (Libra) idealism (Neptune). His Sun is also conjunct Saturn, which makes him the capable hard worker that Brown needs back in his government at a time of crisis both for the economy and for Labour politically.


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Mandelson has been on the receiving end of his own Mercury square Pluto, receiving reciprocal treatment from his colleagues. The fancy house, which he had to sell, led to his first resignation from government. The second time he resigned, a year or two later when he was Northern Ireland Secretary, was because he was alleged to have pulled some strings to help a couple of rich Indian businessmen get passports. He was forced out by this, though later cleared of any wrongdoing, and it seemed to be his colleagues who were stoking it up to get him out.

This was why, at the next General Election, when he was re-elected as an MP, he made his famous ‘I am a fighter and not a quitter’ speech. Which was appropriate for a man with Moon in Aries. He has the Aries fighter quality, but also its blindness. All he could see was the injustice, which was real, but not what he had done to turn people against him.

The paradoxical thing about his Mercury-Pluto is that on the one hand yes, he probably can’t help himself, he is a habitual plotter and manoueverer. But on the other hand, Scorpio at its best has a respect for truth and straightforwardness like no other sign, it will even be truthful about its own shameful, taboo sides. So this is Mandelson’s challenge. With natal Sun conjunct Saturn, he ought to be good at learning from his experience. With Neptune currently squaring his Mercury, he may be mellowing. And after 7 years in the wilderness, so to speak, he may have changed his ways.