Korea and Uranus; the New Flower Power

In the last day 2 deaths have been announced: Vaclav Havel, philosopher-king of the Czech Republic, leader of the Velvet Revolution; and Kim Jong Il, leader of secretive, paranoid North Korea, who had a fresh ‘joy team’ of schoolgirls laid on annually for his private amusement.

You can trace history through the hard aspects the outer planets make with each other. Until recently, we were living in an age defined by the Uranus-Neptune conjunction of the early 1990s. Havel’s death is a reminder that that age, which began with the collapse of Communism, and led to a New World Order (with the US as lone superpower), is over.

We are now entering a Uranus-Pluto era, and we are seeing protests against malign dictators and decadent democracies worldwide. It is a virus that is spreading quite remarkably. Every week, it seems, some new dictatorship comes under threat. In the last few days, it has been Kazhakstan. Kim Jong-Il’s death is very timely in this respect. Will the virus spread even to North Korea?

We do not have an accurate chart for North Korea, but we do know that the country has natal Uranus at 0.17 Cancer; by transit, Uranus has been stationing square to this point this week, at about 0.40 Aries. So a sudden, challenging transformative event for North Korea, that is what the astrology seems to be saying.

Outer planet-to-outer planet transits normally signify a transition from one phase of life to another (such as the well-known ‘mid-life crisis’, heralded by the Uranus-Uranus opposition of the early forties.) Uranus isn’t just about freedom and awakening; mythologically, he was a tyrant, born of the primordial chaos, who hated his children. In the sign of Cancer, this aspect is emphasised, but more usually as lack of parental urge. In North Korea’s case, the natal Uranus in Cancer could be read as infantilisation of the people by the dictator, and the transiting square from Uranus in Aries as a chance for something new and liberating. This transit suggests to me that the virus of political change, carried by Uranus in Aries, will soon reach North Korea.

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The chart for South Korea is a bit clearer than North Korea's. We can be fairly certain that the Moon is within a couple of degrees of 1 Capricorn, and that Uranus is therefore currently squaring it. Korea was split at the end of WWII by the ideological differences of its 2 liberators, the US and the USSR. The Moon is the people, and with natal Moon opposite natal Uranus, the South is acutely conscious of the separation. With both countries subject to Uranus transits, it is well possible, in the current climate, that Kim Jong Il's death may begin a process of re-unification. Because it is Uranus, it could be sudden. North Korea may collapse quite suddenly and go cap in hand to the far richer South.
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The protests within the westernised democracies are increasingly reminiscent of the 1960s, when there was a Uranus-Pluto conjunction; the current square is the dynamic awakening of the seeds sown by that conjunction. In the 1960s the Uranus-Pluto conjunction, which is idealistic but hard and confrontational, was sextile to Neptune in Scorpio: flower (Neptune) power (Scorpio). This Neptune placement was also the transformative power (Scorpio) of altered states of consciousness and of psychedelic drugs (Neptune).

45 years later, and Neptune is still in sextile to Pluto, rather more widely, but they will be within 5 degrees in the spring as Neptune finally arrives in Pisces, the sign of its empowerment, for the next 14 years.



As Neptune has changed direction to move forward into Pisces, so there seems to me to have been a shift within the Occupy protests: away from what people don’t want, which is the present system with all its injustices; and towards what they do want, which is a world of love and peace, in which you can dance in the Jefferson Memorial and not get arrested. This has to be Neptune in Pisces.

Etymological footnote: in the 16th and 17th centuries in England, 'Occupy' was a euphemism for sexual intercourse, and fell from polite usage. Maybe that gives a 'free love' 1960s connection to the Occupy movement?