Visual Astrology: the UK Election, the Oil Spill and the Euro

Below is the latest visual astrology newletter which you can sign up for here (it's free). I find visual astrology quite awe-inspiring, as it is simple and visible and frequently very accurate, using myths that go back to the beginning of astrology. This proved true with Bernadette Brady's prediction for the outcome of the UK election, posted last month, for which she gives herself a deserved slap on the back in the first part of the newletter. In the second, she concentrates on the US Oil Spill and the Euro crisis and concludes: What is being suggested is that the first few weeks of June will see big developments in both these stories - things moving to a resolution or a point of no return.

Visual Astrology and Elections

A brief recap on the British Election
by Bernadette Brady

A bit of praise for Visual Astrology - Last month we talked of the forthcoming elections and also of the unique feature of the UK latitude and the way the ecliptic slopes to the horizon which gave us a long and extended Sulpa'e Jupiter. This is a Jupiter that is seen to rise in the early dawn light. This combination suggested that, firstly, the battle was between the two Crown Princes, and that, secondly, as the Moon was going to ride over over the top of Neptune, Jupiter, Uranus, Mercury, and the Sun, we suggested that this indicated that no final decision was going to be made for some days after the election.


Prime Minister David Cameron (left) of the Conservative Party with his coalition partner the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg (right), leader of the Liberal Democrats.

Thus in the April newsletter we concluded that, in this period 'some form of compromise will have been made politically between these two "princes".' Now it should be noted that this style of parliament, the joining of two political parties to form a majority, had not existed in Britain since WWII, so it was not the expected outcome of the election. The point to be underlined I think is that visual astrology painted a simple picture of the election results, just as we did in September 2008 with the US elections. It removes all personalities from such events and enables the astrologer to examine the way that the 'celestial wind is blowing' without all the distractions of press releases, natal charts of candidates, possible charts for a country, and the many factors with which astrologers can become enmeshed. Indeed for mundane events visual astrology provides the astrologer with a powerful tool.

The two 'crown princes' are in a honeymoon period and the media in the UK will be quick to pounce on any signs of tension or stress. However, adding to this story is another simple fact - Venus grows brighter every evening. To whom does she give her light? What or who is she radiating? Venus is radiating the heavenly twins, wonderfully and metaphorically encapsulated by the 'double-act' of the current English Prime Minister and his Deputy, portrayed in the media as almost equal strength.

Of an evening between now and the middle of June go outside and have a look to the west and see for yourselves Venus shining on Castor and Pollux.


Oil Spills and Greek Bailouts
by
Bernadette Brady MA

There are two events which are running in parallel at the moment. On 20th April an explosion occurred on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Eleven workers were killed and since then oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico has caused an unchecked environmental disaster. At the same time in Europe another system broke down - the Greek economy. By late April the Greek economy suddenly collapsed. To prevent the disaster from spreading to Spain and Portugal, the rest of the European Union was required to find a large and fast 'bailout' in order to keep the Greek economy 'afloat'. By 3rd May the EU had agreed to a total of $146 billion of funds for Greece, the largest single 'bailout' of a country in history.


Left: The oil spill as of 26th May; and right, the 'spill' in the Euro zone: Greece (red) Spain and Portugal (pink).

The shock waves and anger in the US over the oil spill is shaking up the whole concept of underwater drilling and the oil industry; the shock waves and anger in Europe is threatening to break up the European Union even unto suggestions that the single currency of the Euro needs to be abandoned. These stories are running parallel, in timing as well as in the style of language used to describe them. It would seem that money and economics have language similar to those of the oil industry. We all know that whatever the outcome of the above two situations, there will be serious consequences, for Europe, for the economy, for the oil industry and most importantly also for the environment.

The sky map in next few weeks

Whilst some astrologers have been blaming Mercury going retrograde, a deeper story emerges in the sky map, not one we can use to predict but instead one we can use to seek to understand.

These crises and their consequences can be understood in terms of the current Uranus, Jupiter, Saturn pattern but we can also understand it as a part of the story of Neptune. Currently Neptune is transiting through the stars of Aquarius and will continue to do so until 2017. As many readers would be aware, the stars of Aquarius are connected with bountifulness and in the West this translates to money matters. We have dealt with this in detail in previous newsletters (see March 2008)

But now possibility we can see Neptune in the Great Water Bearer as emphasising the need to understand that oil and water do not mix. The slow movement of Neptune could be considered as a part of the background statements about this issue as well as the current global financial crises and even suggest that the consequences from both these issues will not resolve until 2017. This would not be a surprise to many readers.

To add to the picture in the more immediate future, in early June Mars moves over the top of Regulus in the Heart of the Lion, and at the same time forms an opposition to Neptune. Mars moves across Regulus every orbital period (every 686.98 days or every 1 year, 10-to-11 months.) However, a Mars-Regulus combination was not viewed favourable by the Assyrian astrologer priests of the 7th century BCE. There are two references to this combination in Hunger’s translations which read:

'Mars stands in it: fall of cattle is all lands: the plantation of dates and sesame will not prosper.'[1]

'If the Wolf star [reaches] the Lion star: far-off days[…] for the land.' [2]

The complex picture is that this problematic Mars with Regulus opposes the difficulty of Neptune in the stars of Aquarius.

Now consider the phase of Mars.

The Phases of Mars

Like all planets Mars has phases, and the mythology of Nergal (Mars) and his union with his lover Ereshkigal (Venus) talks of three types of Mars.


The Mesopotamian Nergal

Firstly there is the peaceful hard-working Mars when he is in the heavens with the rest of the gods (planets). However, Mars' nature changes to anger and frustration when he descends down into the Underworld through the seven gate-keepers to join his lover. In this part of his story, Nergal simply kills the gate-keepers that block his path. When he is finally in the Underworld with his lover he is focused and passionate, only to once again become agitated when leaving the Underworld to climb back into the night sky as his lover, Ereshkigal, calls for his return.[3] See the newsletter for April 2006 for this mythology in greater detail.

Thus in the first 10 days of June, as Mars moves over the top of Regulus, opposing Neptune, it is in the phase of descending into the Underworld, so is more inclined towards anger and rash action. This by itself should not raise any concern, except that there are two others 'players' on the stage at the moment.

On 3rd and 4th of June a bright moon moves into the stars of Aquarius just as a radiating Venus moves over Wasat, in Gemini, the star which is in itself a 'turning' star, a place where the world changes, a place of beginnings and ends.


Sky map for 5th June 2010 showing Mars on top of Regulus in the stars of Leo and a bright Venus radiating Wasat in the stars of Gemini

These two stories - the Gulf oil spill and the Greece Bailout - are 'hot', so to speak, being reflected or reflections of the sky story. What is being suggested is that the first few weeks of June will see big developments in both these stories - things moving to a resolution or a point of no return. For those of us seeking a greater understanding of visual astrology it is a time to watch with 'sky awareness'.

In your own life, at the moment, you may well find that things are happening in pairs which seem to be running parallel in their development. If you are struggling for the resolution of an issue, then it is highly likely that around the 5th to 10th June this issues will take a sudden turn which forces the issue one way or the other.

Buddhism, Bon and Egyptians

Last night I was in London for a talk by a well-known Tibetan Dzogchen teacher, Namkhai Norbu, who doesn’t visit England very often. The hall was packed with at least 300 people. I’d sort of gone along for the ride, because I’d done some of this guy’s practices about 11 years ago and found them quite powerful, and the people around him aren’t, on the whole, too earnest.

The talk was rather long and his English isn’t very good and the hall was rather hot. And I couldn’t really argue with what he had to say, particularly as he doesn’t advocate renunciation. In fact, as a re-born bigwig, he was under pressure when he was 20 to become a monk, and he stood up to the Karmapa and various other archbishops and said no, and I thought that was impressive.

He’s also been a scholar for many years, and one of his points is that the Dzogchen teachings are also to be found within the Bon tradition, which pre-dates Buddhism within Tibet; and that Dzogchen was not physically taught by the historical Buddha. When he first started saying these things, a deputation of high lamas came to see him to try and shut him up, because Tibetan Buddhism is a religion and religions like to have an exclusive hold on their teachings and do not like their authenticity questioned. But he insisted as a matter of intellectual integrity, though also for another reason: the usual story is that Buddhism came to Tibet and gave it a high, ‘spiritual’ culture that had not been there before. His Dzogchen finding contradicts this. In a way, it gives Tibetans their self-respect back, whereas the usual approach by Buddhism is to denigrate, or even demonise, the Bon tradition. This is no different in principle to how Christianity dealt with the pagan religions in Europe. As I say, religions like to have an exclusive hold on the truth. It’s about power.

The rather long talk amounted to a basic introduction to Buddhism, concluding with the Dzogchen teachings, so it was familiar ground. As I say, I didn’t feel inclined to disagree with the teachings except for one big, telling point. Apart from banging on and telling stories about the need to listen to the teachings (which kind of infantilises the audience), it was clear that Norbu thought everyone needed a path and a set of teachings, and that the Dzogchen teachings are about the best available.

I think very often we do need some sort of guidance or structure from outside ourselves, at least to start with. But there’s a very important stage that a lot of people go through of casting all that off and trusting in their own inner sense of guidance. This is what is so difficult for many people, and it is why you have religion (which performs a useful function for this earlier stage). It is why you get the Zen teaching “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!” You can see people teetering on the edge of this for years, half in and half out, not quite able to stick the knife in, to give up the seeming security of what they've been doing for so long. Or you see a kind of opposite, people going from one teacher to the next, searching for something that can only be found within. Of course, as astrologers we also encounter it regularly, people looking for answers, looking to be told the future, and our job is to help them locate their answers, or better their questioning, within.

Of course, there are people who don’t need that structure in the first place. But teachers of a traditional mindset often don’t seem to properly recognise this crucial stage, whatever their other qualities. And you can’t say it to people who are following a particular path, assuming it was your business to do so, because to them it would be offensive.

The real experience of the day, for me, was seeing the ancient Assyrian and Egyptian sculptures in the British Museum, particularly the animal sculptures, mythological or otherwise. They were big, yet very finely sculpted, and fully expressed their natural power. Like the 2 stones lions, life-size, at ease in the way that only an animal that has no predators can be, yet there was no doubting the power that was ready to spring; the heads held up, looking sideways at you, regal. The animal world has all these different characters with their unique powers that can be drawn on, that we resonate with. As humans we are not confined to one expression of power but many, though we do have to go out and find them. Give me that any day over being sat chanting earnestly in some foreign language, my mind set on an abstract idea of perfection. Or even remaining in my ‘natural state’, as the Dzogchenists do, which I think is much better than aiming for perfection. The Egyptians and Assyrians were obviously still connected to something raw and instinctual, yet there was no lack of refinement. But they also had their priests and hierarchies!

The Crisis Season and the Future of Europe

Europe is in crisis over the Euro. This situation keeps sending global shares tumbling, reflecting the possibility of a wider crisis. South Korea has just suspended trade with North Korea, in a crisis over the deliberate sinking of a ship by nuclear-armed North Korea. The oil-spill crisis off the US coast, the biggest ever, is over a month old and the oil continues to escape. Many airlines have been thrown into crisis by the volcanic ash coming from Iceland, which seemed to ease off, then it started up again, now they’re saying it’s easing off. The US is putting forward proposals for sanctions against Iran, the latest move in a crisis that has lasted years.

What characterises most of these crises is that they keep going, with no end in sight. Jupiter is rapidly approaching a conjunction with Uranus, which enters a new sign on Thursday; a few weeks after that it will begin to station, intensifying its presence. The crisis season is far from over. It leads straight into the well-known cardinal t-square of late July 2010, involving Saturn, Uranus, Pluto, Mars and Jupiter, joined by the Moon and Venus a week later. This will be a time of deep resolution of problems that have come to a head in the previous months. It could also be a very problematic time, with events turning against you unless you really know what you’re doing.

A crisis by definition is a situation that cannot be controlled: if it could be, there would not be a crisis. And outer planets are like this. The inner planets make up our conscious sense of who we are. A human life consists of getting to know our inner planets and surrendering to our outer planets, and learning to tell the difference. The outer planets perform a very useful function when humanity gets above itself, thinking of itself as god-like (which it is, but only partly.) I think that most of life cannot be known or controlled, which is why chaos can take over so easily, reminding us that we only have islands of knowledge in a vast unknowable ocean.

So Europe’s Crisis. Europe needs to act as one if it is not to be walked over by the US and China. But it’s not easy getting such old nations, with such a history between them, to unite. Look how hard it was for the original 13 US states, which had much more in common, to come together. It nearly didn’t happen. How much harder it is for Europe.

The crisis over the common currency, the Euro, provides one of those make or break moments for Europe. The crisis has arisen because insufficient provision was made in the original rules to deal with member countries that live too much beyond their means. The miscreants were bound, of course, to be the undisciplined Latin countries like Greece and Italy and Spain, and not us responsible – and less exciting – Protestant northern countries. To prevent such a crisis you either have to be able to force countries to live within their means, which means surrender of sovereignty to a degree we haven’t yet reached in the EU; or you have to chuck those countries out of the Euro (but not necessarily out of the EU).

It’s hard to see what the outcome will be. Germany has been the chief paymaster of Europe, and this is causing a political crisis at home, because Germans are getting fed up with bailing out other countries and they want more contribution from some of the other states. Britain, the second wealthiest along with France, is not a member of the Euro and has no intention of helping out.


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Astrologically, the Euro is undergoing a hard Uranus transit to its Angles that will not be over until Spring 2011 at the earliest (stage 1 of the resolution), but Uranus will come back to within a degree of the Angles in autumn 2011 (stage 2?). So whatever the EU does, the situation will remain unpredictable and unsettled until at least next Spring.


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The EU (or EEC as it then was) and the Euro both came into being on the 1st of January at midnight in Brussels, though obviously in different years. This means they have the same Sun and Angles, and it means that the future of the EU is now intimately tied up with the future of the Euro.

What is striking about the chart of the EU is the degree to which it describes an economic union rather than a political one (where I would expect to see lots of e.g. Aquarius and Libra). It has Moon in materialistic Taurus conjunct a Scorpio-Taurus Nodal axis, in the 2nd and 8th Houses of wealth and shared wealth. The EU seems to have reached a point where further economic integration is not possible without more political union, so that there can be budgetary control.

We see the connection between the economic and the political through Venus in Aquarius: the planet of wealth in the sign of idealistic group enterprise. So there are attempts at political union. But that poor Venus is conjunct Chiron and square to the Moon and Nodal axis, suggesting a conflict between the economic and political aspirations in which the economic wins out. Add in Uranus in Leo, and we have a Grand Cross which makes this attempt very unstable.

We also need to consider the Sun in Capricorn. This trines the Moon and sextiles the North Node. This suggests to me what the outcome might be, for Capricorn is a hierarchical sign (which we already see through the dominance within the EU of the Franco-German axis.) I think we have to forget about political union, and look at a hierarchical economic union. That will work, according to the chart. You have the richer countries that can be relied on to live within their budgets forming a close union, perhaps including currency union, and then you have the rest forming part of a larger European Free Trade Zone.

The EU will be going through deep change over the next few years as Uranus and Pluto hard aspect the Sun (and Pluto trines the Moon). It will be a different organisation, and in a way it makes sense that it will be one in which the richer countries will no longer be obliged to bail out the more profligate ones, because that is just the way people and countries work. It will be an organisation of first and second class members.

Pluto brings up survival issues, and having come within 5 degrees of the EU Sun, those survival issues are starting to become apparent. There is a very strong motivation for the EU to survive in some form in a world divided into superpowers, and therefore a very strong motivation to divide up the EU according to economic criteria, so that some countries cannot threaten the well-being of others and of the whole organisation.

What to Watch Out For in David Cameron's Chart

The 1922 Committee is a committee made up of the Tory backbench MPs, i.e. those who are not in ministerial positions. They have their own decision-making process, and the Prime Minister needs to keep onside with them. The date is a reminder of the time in 1922 when the backbench MPs forced the party to withdraw from a coalition government.

On 19th May the Committee was reformed, at the suggestion of David Cameron, and by a vote of all Tory MPs, so that ministers also have a vote in the decisions of the 1922 Committee.

This effectively neuters the backbench MPs as an independent power within the party, and MPs were only given a few hours notice that it was being put to the vote. Many backbench MPs are angry about it.

It seems to me to be an authoritarian move by David Cameron, both in itself and in the way he went about it, and by sitting on his MPs now (so as to protect his coalition with the LibDems) he is storing up trouble for the future. The backbench MPs are precisely those who have not been elevated to positions of ministerial power, and Cameron is taking away the bit of power that they do have. A wise leader does not treat his people in this way. Yes, take away power from those who have too much and do your best to smooth it over, but don’t take it away from those who struggle to hang on to what little they have.


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Scorpios understand this, and just how bitter it makes people, how fundamental it is to people that they have their say. But David Cameron is not a Scorpio, he is a Libran who has not behaved very diplomatically. I think that Libra, being a sign of opposites, also has the potential to be divisive, to polarise. Margaret Thatcher, like Cameron, is a Libran, and as time went on, she became an extreme example of a polariser, and in the end it was her downfall.


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Margaret Thatcher, also like Cameron, has Moon in Leo. This is fascinating, because Cameron is her heir, and because the 2 people are apparently so unlike each other. Maybe it is the Rising sign: Thatcher with her judgemental Saturn Rising in Scorpio, Cameron with his more serviceable and thoughtful Virgo Rising (Virgo seems to be the consensus from my piece last week.)

It is early days yet for Cameron as Prime Minister, but there are certain points in his chart that are worth watching:

(1) Moon in Leo. His is conjunct Jupiter, and Thatcher’s is conjunct Neptune. In both cases there is the potential for a sense of entitlement, of regal airs, of taking power for granted.

(2) Unaspected Mars in Leo. When a planet is unaspected, it can act independently of the rest of the chart. Disempowering the 1922 Committee was an act of assertion, even of aggression, that did not seem to have the usual Cameron thoughtfulness behind it. George Bush has an unaspected Mars, and he went to war against Iraq without thinking through what you do with the country once you’ve won.

Neptune is currently opposing Cameron’s Mars: combining this with the lack of natal aspects, and we may see him blundering when he has to take a stand, has to oppose others. I’d say we also saw this yesterday when Cameron took a stand effectively against Europe, stating in blunt terms that the UK would not agree to any further powers being granted to Brussels, or contribute to the Greek bail-out, which has put Europe in crisis. This may have been to mollify his bruised anti-Europe backbenchers, but it also reminded me of the Thatcher days and her blunt opposition to Europe. All he has achieved is to reduce further Britain’s say within in Europe, a continent that amongst other things takes half our exports.

(3) Weakly aspected Sun. All he has is a wide conjunction to Venus, admittedly its dispositor. I think this will emphasise the polarising side of Libra, due to insufficient contact with the rest of the chart, and also a tendency towards authoritarianism. I was a bit shocked in the MPs expenses scandal at just how vicious Cameron was with the MP who had claimed for a duck-house. There were much worse claims going on than this, but all Cameron cared about was how it looked because the MP was upper class.

(4) Mercury in Scorpio square to Moon-Jupiter in Leo. I don’t want to be too hard on his Moon-Jupiter, because I think it can give an ease and naturalness to his leadership. But on a bad day, when he is feeling entitled, there will be a deviousness (Scorpio) to what he thinks and says (Mercury) and a capacity for plotting. The way he dealt with the 1922 Committee was, I think, an example of it. Another way of putting it is that he could flatter you with his regal attention while at the same time slipping the knife in.

This Scorpio-Leo combination is reflected in the Angles of his Progressed Chart, where the MC is in Leo, and the Asc has been in Scorpio since he became leader of the party.

The Western Negative Saturn

Saturn sets boundaries and limitations and pushes us to achieve, to become good at what we do and to gain recognition for it. Negatively, he fills us with thoughts of what we ought and should be doing, and makes us feel guilty for not measuring up. Well, he doesn’t in reality push us or make us do anything, but he does describe those positive qualities and dysfunctions within ourselves.

The guilt for not measuring up is endemic within our society; it’s what I call the western negative Saturn. You see it in America’s natal Sun square Saturn, and you see it in the Capricornian Sun of the UK, the EU and all those other countries and institutions that were founded on January 1st.

I regularly encounter it in readings, usually in the form of a conflict between what someone wants to do and ideas of career and achievement, which invariably turn out on examination to be someone else’s ideas and not their own. But it’s very powerful, it’s deep within the culture, which is why people find it so difficult when for some reason (usually a major transit!) they can’t keep going like they used to and can no longer ‘justify’ their life to themselves by being busy.

Being busy and working hard: those are the 2 great virtues of negative Saturn. So and so worked very hard for many years, so he is virtuous. No doubt many drug smugglers, gangsters and tyrants have ‘worked hard’ to get to where they’ve got to. And keeping busy and working hard are often an escape from guilt, from the miserable loser-ship of being idle or poor.

Negative Saturn divides society into winners and losers, judges on appearance and never looks beneath the surface to see what is of real value. It does not produce happiness, but it does produce a wealthy country, in which people can be relied on to keep working, keep busy and not to think. It is like the drug that the queen bee produces to keep the workers working and serving the needs of the hive. It is a brainwashing. It is the real conspiracy, except it is collective and unconscious.

It is easy to appeal to people’s sense of inadequacy. Christianity has a lot to answer for, with its notion of Original Sin, as does the Protestant Work Ethic (in East Asia you get the Confucian Work Ethic).

On a bad day, I notice this sense of ‘not measuring up’ as a sort of free floating element within me, and whatever I say to myself, however much I say but I do this and I do that and I’ve done this and I’ve done that, it’s still there. And I don’t think it’s personal, I think I’ve absorbed it from the culture, even though there is also a pronounced Saturn in the charts of my family background.

And here’s an answer – Pine Flower Essence! It’s a remedy for guilt. I started taking it the other day and a few hours later I found myself wandering around the local supermarket in a wonderful contemplative state, happy with who I am. So for any of you out there who feel you ‘ought’ to be this and ‘ought’ to be that – is there anyone out there who isn’t like that? – here is a way out of it. As I say, it’s a deep thing; it vitiates our culture, if you start to sort this one you really are getting somewhere. Just do the things you love doing without any notion of achievement.

Married by a Robot

Aquarius is a sign of intelligent, humane humanity. It is therefore the sign most associated with science. But because it is an air sign, Aquarius’ humanity can be detached, it loses sight of individual people and their needs, and this is where science can go wrong.

Neptune is currently in Aquarius. Neptune blurs the boundaries, and is also associated with romance, so what better time to be married by a robot? In the context in which it occurred, I think it was fun (see below).

But Neptune is also conjunct Chiron, which has just left Aquarius, so we are living in a time when the damage that science can do is also presented to us. Chiron was in Aquarius from 2005 to 2010, a period in which man-made environmental degradation reached the top of the political agenda; and a period which saw the explosion of electronic social networking, in which direct, physical interaction with other people has become less important.

Chiron was primarily a wise teacher, who educated some of the Greek heroes such as Achilles. He therefore has insight, and that is what he asks of us. Having just moved into Pisces for 10 years, and with Neptune soon to follow, we may be entering a time where fashion is all, where fashion in all areas of life goes to extremes. In moderate doses, fashion keeps life interesting; in large doses, it is a form of brainwashing, where everything is collective, and nothing is individual (ideas can be fashionable just as much as clothes!) Chiron’s function, if humanity does become reduced to a collective in this way, will be to point it out. Pluto in Capricorn could mean more control of people by governments – through e.g. electronic information gathering – and this is a similar theme.

Anyway, the nuptials:

Japan has hosted the world's first wedding to be conducted by a robot. The automated creature, known as the I-Fairy, oversaw the wedding of Tomohiro Shibata and Satoko Inoue in the capital, Tokyo. The couple decided to use the robot as they are both connected with Japan's thriving robotics industry. Since robots had brought them together in the first place, they said, having one officiate at their wedding was a natural choice. During the ceremony, I-Fairy - which has flashing eyes and plastic pigtails - instructed the groom to lift the bride's veil for the kiss. The wedding took part in a rooftop restaurant in the Japanese capital.

David Cameron's Year of Saturn

A while back I decided to go literal on my interpretation of Gordon Brown and David Cameron’s charts. I said that as David Cameron’s outer planet transits were more obviously ‘against’ him then Gordon Brown’s, that Brown rather than Cameron would be the next Prime Minister of the UK.

Well, as the Fonze would say, I was wr..wr..wr..wr..wr..wrong!

I’d decided to go literal because politicians are more mired in the collective and its currents than a lot of us, and things get a bit more deterministic when that happens, there’s less personal choice around.


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In a way, things are still against David Cameron (who has transiting Uranus opposing his ASC and squaring his MC, and tr Saturn conjoining Venus, the planet of popularity.) The people haven’t given him the full power that a Prime Minister usually has, in that he has had to form a coalition with the LibDems. And he has an economic crisis to deal with, without the easy backing of Parliament to take the necessary measures.

David Cameron has a Saturn year coming up, a year if you like of earning (Saturn) the right to govern the country. Venus is the planet of popularity in a politician, and at 7 Libra, Cameron has 4 months before Saturn crosses it, just 4 months in which people will be making an initial judgement of him as leader.

After that, Saturn will spend a year going backwards and forwards over his Sun, a time for establishing his position as leader. Uranus will remain strongly operative in his chart all this time, and I think we can read that as giving him the ability to respond creatively and in new ways to the challenges of running a coalition.

Now I don’t know whether the Tory-LibDem coalition will actually pass this proposed legislation about having fixed 5 year terms for Parliament, with a vote of 55% of MPs needed to dissolve Parliament. Because it seems to me that if David Cameron is able to use his Saturn transits effectively, he will be in a strong position by autumn 2011 to call an election and get an overall Tory majority, based on what the country has seen of him in an executive position.

And that will be his moment. Because the following year, 2012, Uranus will oppose his Venus and Pluto will square it, so he will be going through a tough and challenging time in the polls which could go either way. Uranus and Pluto then move on to oppose/square his Sun at 15 Libra over the following few years.

Interestingly, on the day of the next election on 7/5/15, assuming there is a 5 year term, Pluto will be stationing retrograde at 15.27 Capricorn, EXACTLY squaring Cameron’s Sun at 15.27 Libra. It looks like a very significant moment for Cameron, and kind of suggests there will indeed be a 5 year term.

Cameron has Sun and Venus in Libra, with ASC on the Virgo/Libra cusp. With Libra's ability to include the other's point of view and to negotiate, Cameron has the ability, more than most, to run a coalition government. It’s almost like, given the sort of person he is, this is his moment, as what may be a new type of politics, based on coalition, comes into Britain.

So with all that Libra, it is possible he could successfully manage a 5 year term as leader of a coalition government. This is interesting, as the astrology of the UK strongly indicates a big change in our political system in the coming years, with Uranus and Pluto hard-aspecting our ASC, then Sun, then Moon. But if it doesn’t go this way, as I say autumn of next year is the time for Cameron to call an election, when Saturn will have helped him earn the right to govern, but when Uranus and Pluto won’t have quite come along and changed the game. That said, the UK still has its Uranus Opposition over the next 18 months, making prediction that much harder. And David Cameron himself has plenty of time to run on his Uranus transits. So big question marks over all the above! This is not an easy time to predict anything.

England's Mid-Life Crisis and the Uranus-Jupiter Effect

England is in a bit of a crisis at the moment. Economically we are in a mess, with huge public spending cuts needing to be made but not, for political reasons, having been made yet. And politically we are in a crisis, because we have no government, and when one does form, it will either be a minority government or a coalition government, of which no-one in the current generation of politicians has any experience. More widely, Scotland has been threatening to break away for some years, and the UK continues to sit on the fence over its involvement in the EU, in a world that is increasingly divided into big power blocks.

If the UK was an individual coming for a reading, he would be telling you that he had been living beyond his means for some years and that it had come to a head; that his business had almost gone under (but not quite); that his marriage was looking shaky; and that he was no longer sure of what direction he wanted to go in. You would take one look at the chart of this gentleman and think “Well, it’s his Uranus Opposition, what would you expect?”


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The Uranus Opposition occurs aged 40-42 in an individual, and corresponds to what has become known as the mid-life crisis (I guess in past centuries, the Saturn return aged 30 was the mid-life crisis, and the Uranus Opposition would have been the gateway to the last part of life.) It is by no means a crisis for everyone, but when Uranus is strong in the Chart (in the case of the UK, it is conjunct the Ascendant), it is going to be significant.

Uranus is the Great Awakener; he comes in with his bolts of lightning that illuminate the landscape in a new way, casting familiar landmarks into shadow and shedding light on previously obscure corners. The old values that we have lived by no longer make any sense: why am I with this person, do I know them any more? Does this job, and the promotion I could get, which were so important for many years, still matter to me?

There are no easy answers, and the crisis has to be lived through. It is like your life has been steadily building for 20 years, with a big shove forward from Saturn aged 30, and suddenly you want to walk away from it all, or it walks away from you. It’s like it happens to you, almost out of the blue, you could not have imagined it, and it can take years afterwards to catch up with yourself, as you go through Pluto square Pluto, Neptune square Neptune and Saturn opposite Saturn: all the outer planets seizing hold of us in the first half of our forties, and setting our life in a very different direction.

England has been without sure foundations since the end of the War. Our identity was bound up with having an Empire and being a world power. The Empire and our money went, but we have still insisted on trying to punch above our weight as our manufacturing industry declined and others overtook us. England is a Capricorn nation. Capricorn’s ambition can mean we get above ourselves, and this is what has happened for so long. The other side of Capricorn is solid realism, knowing your place in the world and feeling secure in it because you have earned it and it expresses who you are.

This is where England needs to be. We can blame the hung Parliament on the political parties by saying none of them quite matched up; that may be true, but we can look at it the other way by saying that England no longer knows what it wants, we are at a crossroads.

And as I say, a big part of the problem is pretending to ourselves we are a world power when we are not. It causes us to humiliate ourselves in front of the Americans with our ‘special relationship’ that is so one-sided, and it alienates us from our natural allies in Europe: being one of a number of wealthy European countries is not good enough for us. We also don't want to deal with the fact that if we were fully aligned with Europe, Germany would be more powerful than us within that alliance.

This is a classic Uranus Opposition problem. You’ve been living in the clouds for years, entranced by the allures of high finance and high status, and Uranus, with his lightning bolt, reveals the earth a long way beneath you, the earth of ordinary, grounded existence where you do not have inflated status, but where you do have self-respect, which is a different thing.

In the case of the UK, our Sun is in an earth sign at the bottom of the chart, on the ground: that is where we need to be. Uranus, who has 2 years to run in opposing natal Uranus, is at present simply exposing the lack of direction, the lack of knowing who we are.

The EU itself is of course also in crisis, caused by Greece’s debt problem threatening to spread, due to the common currency of the Euro. The Euro came into being 1/1/99 at 00:01 hours, and its Angles are all at 29 degrees of the mutable signs, which Uranus is currently exactly transiting (opposite ASC).


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Like Britain, the EU has its Sun at 10 Capricorn, which Uranus and Pluto will be hard aspecting in a couple of years. So there is a big journey just starting. The UK doesn’t know who it is anymore, and Europe is also going to have to define itself more clearly, pushed on for the moment by the Greek crisis.*

These crises are all the true beginnings of what astrologers have seen for years, namely the big changes worldwide that will be brought about by the upcoming Uranus-Pluto square. This is not so much because the aspect is unusually powerful: it is powerful, but not unusually so. It is because of the way it interacts with the charts of so many countries worldwide. An old world is starting to die, and the crises in the UK and in Europe are expressive of that.

Jupiter is currently conjoining Uranus, expanding the possibility of crisis worldwide (e.g. America’s ecological crisis over the BP oil spill, which is bound to affect policy). We are likely to see this sense of crisis continue, and even intensify, over the next 2 months until Uranus changes direction. The crises will ease off, but the point is that they cause us to think and to change: the Greece debt crisis, for example, may have eased, but Europe will be forced into a bigger change about how it runs the Euro.

The word crisis comes from the Greek krisis, which means “turning point in a disease”. This is quite descriptive: it’s like something has been out of balance for a long time – economic policy, environmental policy, political structures – and eventually a point is reached where something gives, revealing the underlying problem but also forcing a change, where the patient either dies or recovers.

* Along with Pluto conjunct Sun in a couple of years time, the UK will also have Neptune conjunct Pluto. Pluto is your source of power and confidence. Neptune 'dissolves', for better or for worse. In 1929/30, Neptune opposed the UK Pluto, heralding the depression and the disempowerment that came with that; in the early 1970s, Neptune squared the UK Pluto, heralding our time as 'the sick man of Europe'. This time, who knows, but it would seem to confirm a dissolution of the unrealistic, 'punching above our weight', attitude.

New Moons and the Stock Market

I’ve just been sent a 2009 statistical study which shows that the various US Stock Market Indices – Dow Jones, Nasdaq etc – are on average higher after a New Moon than you would expect. In the case of the Dow Jones, the index was found to have been on average about 50 points higher.

The study was based on enough samples to make this statistically significant. But standing at only about ½% of the value of the shares (if we say the Dow is at 10000), it wouldn’t seem to me to be worth buying before the New Moon and selling just after it, because all your commissions and taxes would more than wipe out any gain you had made.

On the other hand, if you are making a longer term investment, it would seem to make sense to buy the day before the New Moon, because you would, on average, see an immediate ½% gain in the value of your shares. Also, wait to sell until the end of the next New Moon day, which is likely to be a short-term high.

A New Moon is a time of beginnings, a time of confidence and optimism, and this gives an astrological explanation for the phenomenon. It is well known that if you are planting something, it is best to do so while the Moon is growing; and if you are harvesting, do so after the ripeness of the Full Moon.

Some New Moons, I would have thought, would be better than others for investing, depending on the sign the Moon is in. The study does not use signs, and I don’t blame them, because any pretence of scientific method at that point goes out of the window. This is because the signs are not astronomically observable phenomena. For a start, they are each divided into a neat 30 degrees, and since they were formalised a couple of thousand years ago they have all shifted along the ecliptic by about 23 degrees.

For some reason, though, the signs work. My response to this on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays is to think that astrology is hokum; on the other days of the week, my response is a guarded realisation that the universe is not ultimately ruled by human logic.

Anyway, it would be interesting to see how a New Moon in Taurus, the sign of money, fares under such a study. (Vince Cable, the LibDem Shadow Chancellor, is a Taurus; George Osborne, the Tory Shadow Chancellor, has Moon, Mercury and Venus in Taurus; Robert Peston, the BBC business editor, was born on a New Moon in Taurus). The New Moon in Sag, however, is probably the one to go for. Sag swings from wild optimism to equally wild pessimism, so depending on the mood of the market, do your buying or selling the day before. The New Moon in Fire generally is likely to exhibit confidence. The New Moon in Capricorn is likely to be based on realism rather than mood, so don’t expect any gratuitous rises here. For the less scrupulous, if you want to start a rumour that will affect share prices, do it on the New Moon in Gemini! By the same token, beware the New Moon in Gemini!

Much of the statistical study I’ve quoted from is Aspergers only. It starts off, however, in a readable fashion:

Since ancient times entire civilisations have associated the lunar phases with specific human behaviours. Extensive research has been conducted over the years to see if there are any significant changes in human behaviour during lunar phases. As written by Paracelsus in the 16th century “mania has the following symptoms: frantic behaviour, unreasonableness, constant restlessness and mischievousness. Some patients suffer from it depending on the phases of the Moon.” More recently Lieber and Sherin reported homicides over 15 years from 1956-1970 given the lunar phase, and found it to be statistically significant peaking at times of a Full Moon and a secondary peak at periods just after the New Moon phase. If the Moon phases do affect human behaviour, can it also be said that they affect US financial markets? Id investors do react based on the lunar phases, it would be a complete violation of the Efficient Market Hypothesis, which states that all financial instruments reflect perfect information when being bought and sold. (more…)

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