The Greek Referendum

The fate of the world seems to be hanging in the balance – yet again! – over the debts of just a few countries. The presiding planetary influence is the square from Uranus to Pluto, which won’t reach exactitude until next year, and which is in fact currently separating. The financial crises began in early 2008 when Pluto first entered Capricorn. But they’ve really ratcheted up this year as Uranus and Pluto have come within one degree of the exact square.

The EU leaders keep trying to patch it up, but you can’t patch up Pluto. It looks like it’s going to be huge when the defaulting begins. Greece is covering for the bigger economies of Spain and Italy. Greece could be bailed out indefinitely, but not Italy, no way.

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The chart for Greece that seems to work best at present is the 1974 chart, when the country shifted from a military dictatorship to a democracy. It has a Moon-Pluto conjunction at 4 Libra: this describes the initial empowerment (Pluto) of the people (Moon) when it became a democracy. But it also describes the depth of suffering that is potential in this combination and which is being activated now by the square from Pluto and the opposition from Uranus. The Greek people are being torn apart by the impossible austerity measures being imposed on them.

With natal Pluto conjunct the Moon, and transiting Pluto squaring it, the people are probably feeling betrayed. Betrayed by the EU, which is imposing cruel austerity measures as a condition for remaining part of the club. And betrayed by its own government for allowing such huge debts in the first place and then for being the willing agent of these measures. With Pluto, issues of survival come up, and even whether you want to go on surviving. And under a Pluto transit, you can reach a point where you go no, I’ve had enough, I can’t, I won’t go on living like this anymore. The life leaches out of the old way of being.

And it seems that Greece is reaching that point. The Prime Minister has been astute enough to see which way the wind is blowing, and has called a referendum for next month on the austerity measures. And it seems probable that the Greek people will say no, we are defaulting. We can’t, won’t go on like this anymore.
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This has caused turmoil in the financial markets and a huge uncertainty in the EU, just when they thought they had wrapped up the latest deal to hold a lid on things. The immediate planetary aspect governing the referendum declaration is Mars in Leo opposite stationing Neptune: an assertive action that has caused confusion. And Mars is currently conjunct Greece’s natal Mars at 27 Leo. Greece is standing up for itself. Greece's Solar Return chart for this year has Neptune-Chiron on the MC trine to Mars Rising: this suggests that the state itself in its present form will undergo some sort of dissolution.

The Greek people are probably feeling betrayed. But it was the overspending that did it, and whose fault was it? With Moon (the people) in pleasure-loving Libra sextile Sun (the government) in indulgent Leo; and with Moon square to disciplined Saturn Rising, you can kind of see how it might have happened. One response to a Saturn square is to shrug off responsibility, like the Greeks have done; another is the opposite, which is to worship work and achievement like the Americans, with their Sun square Saturn. (Actually, I’d say the Americans are a mixture of the 2 extremes.)

But it wasn’t just the Greeks. Joining the Euro gave the country access to far cheaper borrowing, and being a collective it was inevitable that it would give in to temptation. There would have been big pressure on the government to give in to popular demands for more spending. This was foreseeable, yet the Eurozone went ahead anyway. And now there is no central political institution that can sort it. It’s a mess.

But you have to expect these big messes. You got a huge mess in the 30s due to an unregulated financial industry, and then we did it all over again in the noughties. It seems to be the nature of large collectives. That’s why I’ve never been very political: intelligent change seems very hard to achieve, and even then you never quite know the consequences. The least a country can do, in my opinion, is to have people properly trained in government, which the Chinese seem to do, but democracies do not.