Uranus-Pluto Update

I haven’t been around for a week because I’m busy making arrangements to acquire a new home on Dartmoor. So I may be a bit sporadic for the next month or so.

The big sky story now and for the next few years is the square from Uranus to Pluto, which last occurred in the late 1920s/early 1930s. The difference between the 2 squares is that the 1930s square was the closing square in a Uranus-Pluto cycle, and this one is an opening square. They are both very dynamic and transformative, being squares, but the 1930s square was dynamically ushering in the end of an era, whereas this one is dynamically ushering in a new era, whose seeds were sown at the conjunction 40 years ago.

For the West, the 1930s square ushered in the Great Depression, World War II and then 20 years of unprecedented peace and prosperity, which has continued beyond the end of that Uranus-Pluto cycle through to the present day. So that, maybe, was the final outcome to the old cycle: the transformation necessary to bring about a long period of peace and prosperity.

But that period, which we are sort of still in, is starting to show its own cracks, at least for the West. It cannot be sustained indefinitely, for environmental reasons, for reasons of energy and resources as well as over-population, and because power is shifting eastwards. We do not know what type of world is being ushered in, but we do know it is coming. The post-War world, you could say, was just the pre-War world working right. We’d finally got capitalism to run more smoothly, along with enough international co-operation to keep it all going. It’s that underlying model, with a new cycle now presenting itself forcefully, that is being challenged.

In the 30s, Pluto was in Cancer, and now he is in Capricorn. They are opposite signs, forming an axis of homeland and government, which are related themes. The 30s square from Uranus obviously resulted in the destruction of many homelands, while the German notion of Lebensraum was very Pluto in Cancer.

The present square – which is in its early stages – could involve similar themes. But governments have taken action to avoid another Great Depression, which was one of the major causes of World War II. There could, however, be considerable restructuring of national boundaries (Capricorn). A couple of days ago the UN Court (a Pluto in Cap institution) ruled that Kosovo’s secession from Serbia was not illegal. This will doubtless help legitimise the claims of dozens of other breakaway regions around the world. The ‘breakaway’ is described by Uranus in its square to Pluto.

There are 2 opposite themes running concurrently today: the world is increasingly dominated by the big 3 of the EU, the US and China (also a Pluto in Capricorn theme), and yet many small regions want to break away. The US doesn’t have this issue, for historical reasons, but it is starting to rear its head in China, which is made up of many different peoples. Russia has it with Chechnya, and through its treatment of its neighbours as mere satellites (like the US used to be able to do in South America – see John Pilger’s documentary The War on Democracy.)

We are likely to see both of these themes intensify over the next couple of years as the Uranus-Pluto square moves towards becoming exact in 2012.

Last Sunday's Eclipse: What Happened Next

The Explosion that created theDeepwater Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico occurred on 20th April, with the Moon at 22 Cancer trine to Uranus in Pisces. The Moon and Cancer are both indicative of the earth and the environment, and the trine to Uranus describes the disruptive explosion that occurred. (The breaching of the levees in New Orleans under Hurricane Katrina also had Moon in Cancer trine to Uranus in Pisces!)


Click to Enlarge

Last Sunday’s Total Eclipse occurred with the Sun and Moon 3 degrees off the Deepwater Moon at 19 Cancer. Eclipses catalyse significant events, and it seems obvious that part of the meaning of this Eclipse is the cap that has just been put on the well, that one way or the other should ensure that no more oil leaks into the ocean.

Eclipses come in cycles that have their own charts, based on the first in the cycle, and Bernadette Brady describes this one as: “It will bring successful outcomes to long-term worries or illness. An issue which has worried or drained the individual for some time will at first seem to be worse and then clear, with generally successful outcomes.”

This is spot on for the Oil Spill, even to the “will at first seem to be worse and then clear”, because to put on the present cap, they had to let the spillage get worse for a while.

Some astrologers say that Eclipses need to be used with just one degree orbs. This one has a 3 degree orb to the Moon of the Deepwater Chart, but it works so well that I think we have to allow such orbs.

Another “long-term worry or illness” has been the US financial system, and this week, in the wake of the eclipse, legislation passed through the Senate (having previously been passed by the House of Representatives) that is designed to prevent a recurrence of the recent financial crisis.

Not that this will help Obama much in the upcoming mid-term elections, significant as his legislation is. 38% of Americans have not heard of it, and 33% have heard of it, but have very little idea what is in it! And this is an issue that has intimately affected the financial security of just about everyone! If I was Obama, I’d just feel why bother? It unfortunately plays into a European stereotype of what most Americans are like. But stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason, so Italy has a corrupt clown for a leader, who is also very popular; the French president has married a well-known model; and the British PM went to Eton. Meanwhile the German leader exudes stolid fiscal responsibility.

Back to the Eclipse. I have found Bernadette Brady’s interpretations of eclipses to be very accurate when applied to my own chart, and also in the above mundane instance. She uses midpoints, with which I am not very familiar, to make her interpretations.


Click to Enlarge (Ignore House Cusps and Angles)

In the case of this Eclipse series, she uses two midpoints: Jupiter on the New Moon/Mars midpoint (‘successful outcomes’) and, to use the correct terminology, Neptune = New Moon/Saturn (‘long-term worries or illness’). Neptune is opposite rather than conjunct the midpoint. The involvement of the New Moon, the eclipse itself, in both midpoints, is testament to the power of this eclipse series.

I’m not sure why Brady says ‘an issue… will at first seem worse then clear’. Perhaps she sees Neptune/Saturn as in a way more powerful than Mars/Jupiter. To start with Neptune/Saturn is therefore emphasised, but is then lifted into its more positive form by Jupiter/Mars?

Why Astrology Shouldn't Work

The whole point about astrology is that it ‘shouldn’t’ work. That is why it’s so wondrous. It catapaults us into a different sense of how the universe works, a universe that has its mystery and charm back. This is half the reason that readings can be so powerful: it’s not just that what is said is true, it’s also how the hell can the astrologer know this about me?

I’ve spent quite a lot of time struggling with the fact that astrology ‘shouldn’t’ work. A simple demonstration of this is the zodiac, the various signs in which we find the planets. Several thousand years ago these signs were all declared to be thirty degrees each, yet nature is of course not regular like this. And then the signs have slipped along the ecliptic by 23 degrees since then, so that what we term 10 Pisces, for example, is in fact about 17 degrees Aquarius.

So the signs are pure hokum. Any notions of ‘energies’ and 'vibrations' (the last refuge of a New Age scoundrel) are out the window. And yet the signs work, and work very well.

The planets themselves can be a bit misleading, because they are real bodies in real places, and their relationships to each other do tell us a lot about ourselves. This can lead us to conclude that astrology is somehow rational, that there is a subtle physical relationship between the astronomical bodies and ourselves.

You even get astrologers who try to iron out the ‘irrational’ bits – i.e. the signs – and just stick to the planets and the asteroids. But this is to miss the point. The fact that the signs work when they are hokum needs to be faced, because it tells us a lot about the nature of astrology and indeed all divination systems, which is that we are dealing primarily in symbols. We may need to be able to put the meanings of these symbols in a rationally coherent form, but their fundamental function is not rational: their function is to awaken the imagination, our sense of an expanded and meaningful universe; and to awaken the intuition, our sense of knowing that precedes sense-based evidence.

It is the same with Tarot. There is no ‘reason’ a bunch of symbols picked out blind should tell us anything useful. But they do, and they are the ‘right’ symbols; you can easily imagine cards that would not have been appropriate for that person. Why the 'right' symbols should turn up, whether in astrology or tarot, is a mystery to be lived with and to be awed by. We could of course call it the Law of Attraction or something, but that just beguiles us into thinking we have an explanation when all we have is a name and a description.

The imagination and intuition precede the rational mind, though it is easy to forget this. The sense-based, ordering mind performs a very necessary function, but it also has a tendency to think it is in control, and that reality can be reduced to its terms. This is the Scientific Materialist Fallacy. When life is very busy, as modern life usually is, it is natural to think of the imagination and intuition as at best adjuncts to our advanced rational endowment, which has been so successful at bringing material benefits and improvements and a certain type of understanding.

So astrology, tarot etc remind us of how the universe really works, precisely because they ‘shouldn’t’ work. Reality precedes rationality. Reality is to be felt and wondered at, and then thought about.

If someone asks you to explain or justify astrology, I think the honest starting point is that there is no reason that it should work, and that we don’t know why it should work, but for some weird reason it does.

The logical fallacy that astrology’s debunkers are prone to is that astrology doesn’t work because it can’t work. The problem is not that astrology is non-rational but that its opponents are irrational. These are 2 different things. The non-rational is that aspect of things that cannot be described by the sense-based reasoning process. To be irrational is to ignore inconvenient evidence. (By the same token, it is irrational for astrologers to ignore the fact that the zodiac signs are hokum.)

Astrology doesn’t work because it can’t work. This is the assumption going on in the mind of many people who dismiss it. What you’re up against is religion, in the sense of metaphysical beliefs that are not open to question. It is the religion of scientific materialism, which perhaps produces a higher proportion of fundamentalists than Islam or Christianity. In these cases there’s no point trying to convince people, because they can’t listen to evidence.

What’s great about astrology is that it’s not a belief system. Astrologers have all sorts of beliefs, and it doesn’t stop them being astrologers. Astrology is practical, you can see it working. Of course, you can create a belief system around it to do with rays of energy and harmonies of the spheres etc if you want to. But I think it’s most helpful and honest to remain in that slightly uncomfortable place where you admit that you don’t know and can’t know what’s going on, but which also therefore occasionally opens up a sense of the unknowable and mysterious nature of the universe.

Sunday's Eclipse and the Destruction of the Catholic Church

On 11th July there is a total eclipse of the Sun, but only visible as such over the South Pacific Ocean and the tip of South America. Eclipses are catalysts for the deeper undercurrents in the collective that are always moving humanity one way or another, sometimes at faster rates – like now - than at others.



Eclipses come in cycles that can last 1500 years or so. They start off as a partial eclipse and gradually grow until after say 500 years they reach totality, then they start to wane.

Sunday’s Eclipse cycle began in 1541. What we are seeing now should bear some sort of relationship to, or represent some sort of fruition, of events in 1541, particularly as we have reached totality.

Looking through the Historical Ephemeris and Wiki, one theme that jumps out from 1541 was the progress of the Reformation - the replacement, if you like, of the Catholic Church with the Protestant Church in many parts of Europe. In the Ephemeris for 1541 we see: John Knox leads the Calvinist Reformation in Scotland; Henry VIII assumes title of king of Ireland & head of Irish church; John Calvin founds reformed church and puritan Protestant order in Geneva. And in Wiki we read: Iceland adopts the Lutheran faith.

What we are seeing currently is not so much the progress of Protestantism as the destruction of the Catholic Church, which has been particularly intense this year as the paedophile priest scandal has gone worldwide. The forms and the shell remain, but the heart – if it ever had one – is being torn out of it.

A Chart for the Christian Era can be generated, using the 1st of January 1AD at midnight, set for Jerusalem. This chart has transiting Pluto beginning to conjoin its Sun, just as it did at the beginning of the Reformation. The Church is going through a big change.


Click to Enlarge

Sunday’s Eclipse, set for the birthplace of the Christian Era, has the Cancer Sun-Moon conjunction in the 5th House: the care and nurture (Cancer) of children (5th House); and Neptune-Chiron Rising: redemption (Neptune) and healing (Chiron). The Eclipse Sun-Moon conjunction at 19 Cancer also exactly trines the 2nd House Scorpio Neptune of the Christian Chart, showing how money is involved in this issue: the loss (Neptune) of wealth (in which lies much of its power, Scorpio) through the big payments to victims – as well as, perhaps, loss of money through the collection box. What person in their right mind would give money to an institution that breeds and protects paedophiles? Plenty of people still give, no doubt, which shows what religion does to people’s minds.

Bernadette Brady gives a meaning for this Saros Series (as they are called) of Eclipses, using the chart for the first eclipse in the cycle: “It will bring successful outcomes to long-term worries or illness. An issue which has worried or drained the individual for some time will at first seem to be worse and then clear, with generally successful outcomes.” This could be seen as the clearing of the culture of paedophile priests within the Church, which is an illness. It is systemic, and the Church seems very reluctant to address its systems, so the Church itself may have to collapse to bring change.

July's Cardinal T-Square and June's Lunar Eclipse

The aspects in the sky have been exceptionally intense for some time now, with Uranus-Jupiter at the start of Aries squaring Pluto and opposing Saturn. This is only going to intensify over the next few weeks as Saturn then Mars enter Libra. So here’s a bit of 12-step light relief in case you’re finding it all a bit much:

In terms of world events, I can’t necessarily say there's more going on than usual. We’ve got a world economic crisis, but that’s been going for 18 months. The Americans have just admitted they’re losing in Afghanistan, but we’ve been there before. Even the Deepwater Oil Spill appears to be out of the news. So maybe all this intensity is just going on in the heads of the astrologers, and it keeps their lives interesting?

I think that what the world is going through is intense uncertainty. The balance of power in the Middle East – in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran - looks like it’s tipping away from America, and Iraq is hardly guaranteed to remain America’s friend after the handover. At the same time the world economy seems to be teetering on the brink of a ‘double-dip’ recession, with no-one sure whether government spending cuts will help or hinder. America tends towards not cutting spending, Europe towards cutting.

For astrological reasons I think we will undoubtedly look back on this period as highly significant, even as a turning point, because astrology does actually work. What I guess the astrology is saying is that there is more going on than meets the eye, things are shifting in a big way, but we will only see in what way with hindsight. That said, it is quite possible that we will see some dramatic events or dramatic shifts over the next few weeks as the cardinal t-square intensifies.


Click to Enlarge

Cardinality is about action, about starting things, and the fact that the t-square is at the start of the Cardinal signs emphasises this meaning. It is a time of beginnings, but again beginnings are not always obvious, a seed first starts growing beneath the ground.

Last weekend there was a partial lunar eclipse, intensified by the Grand Cross the Sun and Moon made with Saturn, Uranus, Jupiter and Pluto. An eclipse occurs on a New or Full Moon when the Moon crosses the ecliptic, the path of the Sun through the sky. Because the Moon is at that moment on the same path as the Sun, you either get the Moon obscuring the Sun (Solar Eclipse and a New Moon) or the earth obscuring the Moon from the Sun (Lunar Eclipse and a Full Moon). The North and South Node are the points where the Sun’s and Moon’s paths cross. The Nodal Axis, therefore, brings together the two main planets in the chart, and so has an overall significance – even a deep, karmic significance. At an eclipse, the Sun and Moon will be lined up near the Nodal Axis.


Click to Enlarge

I’m saying all this because when I looked up the astrocartography of the eclipse, the Nodal Axis was along the Ascendant-Descendant just a few tens of miles from the Deepwater Oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It points to the significance of this event, which will reverberate and shape policy for decades to come. As if that wasn’t enough, Uranus was on the MC about 10 miles from the site of the Oil Spill at the moment of the eclipse, square to the Sun and Moon. Uranus describes the event perhaps better than any other planet: a sudden explosion with all sorts of consequences. The signs of the eclipse Sun and Moon seem to say something: Cancer (well-being at home and in the environment) opposite Capricorn (corporate interests.)

The Sun and Moon of the eclipse, at 4.50 Cancer/Cap, made a close square with BP's Venus, its wealth, at 3.45 Aries. Apparently the drilling of the relief wells is ahead of schedule, so the eclipse could also put some sort of boundary (Capricorn) around the cost to BP of the spill: uncertainty over this has hammered its share price. I think the best way forward is not to destroy these companies, but to change them. Rant: people often blame the big corporations for many of our woes, but who owns them? Pensions funds, for example, are big and influential owners, and that comes down to you and me. The big corporations are an expression of the collective will, and that is where the change needs to be. All else is shadow projection.

A Wander Round Uranus-Pluto and the US Chart

At Glastonbury Festival last week I did a Tarot reading for a senior UK politician. The significator card was the High Priestess reversed, and crossing it was the 9 of cups. My take was that this person was ignoring their intuition, ignoring what they knew to be right, in order to remain popular with the party. My advice was to do what they thought was right with their governmental department, and to be less concerned with currying favour with the party leadership. I added that someone who knows their own mind and acts on it is attractive to a leader, even if there are, paradoxically, points of disagreement.

When I got home I looked the person up, and noticed that they had the Uranus-Pluto conjunction of the 1960s strongly aspected in the chart. That generation is now in its early to mid forties, and is starting to attain positions of power (David Cameron, the UK Prime Minister, has Uranus-Pluto conjunct his Ascendant.) What we can expect from this generation is idealism, or positions, that are sometimes not what you’d expect. Like the above politician, who takes positions that aren’t what you’d expect from the party he/she belongs to, which are very relevant to the department he/she runs. Or David Cameron ‘ring-fencing’ spending on the NHS: that is more of a Labour attitude. Nick Clegg, leader of the LibDems, has Sun in Capricorn trine to Uranus-Pluto. The coalition he made with the Tories is not what you'd expect from his party, who have more in common with Labour.

Barack Obama just about belongs to this generation: he has an 11 degree Uranus-Pluto conjunction, with the North Node between them. I think his idealism around health and the environment is fairly obvious. It took Uranus-Pluto, natally and in transit, to overturn what had practically become a 100 year tradition of US Presidents being unable to enact health reform. And then Obama will step out of the mould and do something right wing, like saying he thinks Jerusalem ‘should remain the undivided capital of Israel’, which is again Uranus, not what you’d expect. With natal Uranus conjunct North Node, it is his destiny to be a mould-breaker, he would feel deeply unsatisfied if he were not.


Click to Enlarge

We are moving into the opening square of the Uranus-Pluto cycle that began as a conjunction in the 1960s. Those who were born under its influence are attaining power, just as those seeds that were sown in the 60s are being either empowered or crushed by the current square. Freedoms (Uranus) that came about in the 1960s will be tested by a controlling state (Pluto in Capricorn), and may go under. Or they will be empowered. In a straight fight, Uranus will lose out to Pluto. What will happen to the environmental movement (Uranus in Virgo)? Will it be empowered or will vested interests crush it?

It has been heartening to see the way Barack Obama has stood up to the power of big business over the last 18 months, taking on the motor industry, the banks and now BP. This is Uranus-Pluto. A previous President who took on the power of big business, FDR, was elected under the last Uranus-Pluto square in the early 1930s. After his first term, he said that the power of big business had met its match, and that in his second term big business would meet its master! Obama, however, will have to be careful not to be seen as anti-business even as he opposes its excesses.


Click to Enlarge

The point in the US Chart that symbolises big business more than any other point is Pluto at 27 Capricorn in the 2nd House. In the 1930s, the Uranus-Pluto square took place further into the signs (Aries-Cancer) than we are seeing now, so that by the time FDR was into his 2nd term as President, the US was undergoing a Pluto-Pluto opposition, and it was timely for him to have a struggle with big business. This time round, we will not see the Pluto-Pluto aspect (conjunction this time) for another 11 years (2021), so it is not yet time for that sort of struggle, but it should be very interesting when it does come. Pluto concerns our sense of survival, and in America that is its institutionalised wealth (2nd House Capricorn) more than for most nations. A Pluto Return raises questions of survival, and reflection upon our notions of it. The US was dependent on generating wealth for trade from its inception, and it as if that survival mentality has persisted well beyond its sell-by date.

The people in a country’s chart are symbolised by the Moon, and in the case of the US the Moon is at 27 Aquarius. So the people have been susceptible to idealism over the last couple of years as Neptune has passed back and forth over 27 Aquarius. That mood, however, is likely to change next year as Neptune starts to move away from this point and into a new sign, Pisces. Next year’s sobering US Saturn Return confirms this. The people will want to see the practical results of all the legislation that has been passed, and they will want to see the economy improving. Being in the 10th House, the US Saturn Return is also about the US’ place in the world and the limitations of that, which the Afghanistan War is currently making very clear.