The Sun Sets on Europe

EU officials are having another meeting to try and sort the Eurozone debt crisis. The monetary commissioner said: "We are now entering the critical period of 10 days to complete and conclude the crisis response."

8.05 am in 10 days time is the exact moment at which Uranus starts to move forward, after 5 months going backwards through the sky. There will also be a total lunar eclipse that day.

Uranus has had a way of being exact this year. On his last day in Pisces, 11 March, there was a tsunami off Japan. The next day, Uranus’ first in Aries, a nuclear reactor exploded as a result of the earthquake that caused the tsunami. Uranus describes sudden, catalytic, even cataclysmic events. Pisces is the ocean, Aries is the first fire sign. The symbolism and the timing were great, enough to make you believe in astrology!

So it looks like Uranus is doing it again, but with the debt crisis. Many people in the markets expect Italy to default before Christmas. The 10th of December looks like being a crucial date. It’s a Saturday and the markets will be closed, just the right time to make an announcement without having immediate market panic.

It seems clear that Germany and France have decided to leave Italy to her fate. Their leaders continue to make noises about closer European integration etc, but they are not making serious moves to bail Italy out. It’s their actions, or lack of them, that tell you the real story.

And there is the total lunar eclipse as well that day. The Eclipse Moon will be at 18 Gemini, closely conjunct the Italian Sun at 19 Gemini. It looks like a defining moment.

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If and when Italy defaults, the foreign banks to whom it owes money will lose out. We will probably see another banking crisis and another recession. After that there will be a Spanish debt crisis, and France could also be in trouble.

It’s a remarkable astrological line-up, that Uranus should change direction on the day of a total Lunar Eclipse, and that the Eclipse should so closely aspect Italy’s chart. The Eclipse will occur as the sun sets, sets on Europe’s vision of itself and, quite possibly, on the post-war world of the last 66 years.

The fabric of everything is a little loose right now.

Vladimir Putin, the most powerful man in Russia, was booed at a boxing match yesterday. This would previously have been unthinkable. The President of Yemen has just agreed to step down. The President of Syria is under intense pressure to do the same. The King of Bahrain is making concessions to protesters. In Egypt, they have had one revolution this year, and now they are having another one against the military. Libya has deposed, after a long struggle, its leader Gaddafi. As a result of the financial crisis, the governments of Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Greece have all been toppled this year.

Meanwhile, the American government is paralysed yet again by partisan politics, unable to reach agreement on budget cuts to control its huge deficit. The previous bout of paralysis downgraded the country’s credit rating in the summer. Like the booing of Putin, this had been previously unthinkable.

And then there is the biggest crisis of all, in the Eurozone. The world’s biggest economic bloc has huge debt problems, and is unable to deal with them because it has an unworkable shared currency. Solving the problem through bail-outs by richer countries is becoming politically impossible. And unravelling the Euro is, again, unthinkable.

But it’s probably the unthinkable that will win out, because those are the sort of times we are entering. Outer planets do unthinkable things. We have Uranus squaring Pluto: Uranus catalysing the world into Pluto’s shadowy lair, a world that appears the dark opposite of our own, but which contains the seeds of renewal.

We have all these individual crises occurring simultaneously, but what will probably drag us all in together are events in the Eurozone. The most likely scenario is that a large economy like Spain or Italy will no longer be able to borrow the money it needs to repay loans and to keep functioning. That is the point beyond which it is hard to think.

But it doesn't do to try and second guess. Look, for example, at the Libra New Moon Chart set for Washington:

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Libra is a political sign, and this chart is extraordinary. The New Moon conjunct the Asc in an Angular t-square with Uranus and Pluto. OK, this New Moon period is well over, but it is a catalytic chart, and suggests that the present Congressional impasse over the budget will be a mighty clash, and the political landscape is going to shift. It may be political events in the US, rather than the obvious candidate of Europe, that change the game. And it may also have to do with Newt Gingrich's emergence as the Republican front-runner.

Uranus has slowed right down, ready to change direction in 2 weeks time, beginning a run-in to an exact square to Pluto next June, the first of 7. When an outer planet slows down, its effect intensifies, and it draws to it the next phase of its influence. Uranus brings instability and crisis.

In the summer I wrote a number of pieces called The Crisis Season part 1, 2 etc. I expected the Crisis Season to end for a while, as Uranus and Pluto separated over the autumn, but it hasn’t, it has got more intense. You start running out of superlatives.

We are living in a kind of limbo, a bit like the ‘phoney war’ in Britain at the start of WWII, when not a lot happened for a while, but huge events threatened. None of the major powers were militarily engaging with Germany. And then she invaded France.

So I think we are all waiting for something to happen. And it will probably be disorderly default, brought about by political paralysis, of one or more major European countries.

The world is in the early stages of the biggest change in our lifetimes. The astrology is very clear. Over the last 120 years we have had the 3 outer planet conjunctions: Neptune-Pluto, Uranus-Pluto and in the 1990s Uranus-Neptune. Between them they have sown the seeds of a new 5 hundred year era. Now, with Uranus in an opening square to Pluto, we have the first dynamic expression of this new era. And the first thing that is occurring is the death of the old. The old really is going in a very big way. This change will be bigger than the 1930s, which also had a Uranus square Pluto, because that square was closing a cycle, it occurred 5 times instead of 7, and crucially it did not aspect the charts of the major powers in the way that this one will be.

Yes, appearances are still the same, but what is hard to see is how much the old has already been hollowed out, how much it is just a shell that remains that cannot possibly recover because the life is being drained out of it. This is how Pluto works when there is resistance, he eats you up from within, until one days the husk collapses.

And that is the stage we are at now. We are carrying on in the same old way in a kind of dream, waiting for something to give. The change in direction of Uranus in early December will probably mark the end of this period of waiting. Meanwhile, in cities across the world, people are camped out, asking for change. It is a quiet groundswell. Part of its integrity is in not claiming to know the answers. All they know is that the present system, with its injustices and poverty and uncontrolled greed, needs to go. It’s that big. It’s not just a tweak here and a new law there, it’s the whole thing. It’s systemic. It’s not often in history that we reach that sort of point.

As June put it, the fabric of everything is a little loose right now.

The Kissing Pope

Benetton have put up a series of ads of prominent people kissing. There is Sarkozy and Merkel:

And there is Obama and the Chinese leader:

And then there is/was the Pope and a leading Imam. Benetton took it down after the Vatican said it was taking legal action. No sense of humour, these Catholics. While it's still available, here is the offending image:

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The Pope has natal Venus in Taurus square to Neptune. He is sensuous and indiscriminate with it. But his Venus is opposite Saturn, so he is afraid of his sensuality and lets Benetton (and paedophile priests) do it for him. Unfortunately, his Saturn is in 9th House Sag, so he gets legal about it. With Nodal Mars in Gemini opposite the MC, he likes to pick a fight in public. Because his Mars is square Mercury-Jupiter in Pisces, he is not good at knowing which fight to pick, and with Mars square Uranus, he can be impulsive.

For a history of the pope and his potshots, see my blog from nearly 3 years ago, which begins:

Pope Benedict has done it yet again. First in 2006 it was the Muslims: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

Then just before Christmas he announced that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour was as important as protecting the environment.

And then last week he reversed the excommunication of a bishop who is a holocaust denier.

In any normal job, he'd have been sacked years ago, and many of his priests would be doing lengthy jail terms for the sexual abuse of children. The Pope and many of his colleagues would also be in jail for concealing it. But this is religion, where the rules are different.

Italy and the Scorpio New Moon

There is a New Moon once a month, when the Sun is in the same position as the Moon, and this creates one of the most basic cycles in astrology. A New Moon doesn’t show you the major currents passing through someone’s life – you have to look to the outer planets for that – but it does show you events and phases within those larger cycles.

The chart for Italy has the Moon at 4.5 degrees Scorpio. The New Moon on 26th October took place at 3 Scorpio, while Italy’s Progressed Midheaven was at 4 Scorpio.

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Italy has an unserviceable debt, and austerity measures in these circumstances are usually counter-productive, slowing the economy down and making repayment harder. Greece was small enough to be bailed out, sort of, by the larger economies. Not so Italy, and the European Central Bank isn’t even trying. Events are going to move very fast over the next couple of weeks as Italy fails to borrow the money needed to keep going and pay off old loans.

In a way it was unfortunate for Greece to be small enough for a protracted pseudo-rescue. Boils need lancing, unwelcome realities have to be faced, and this is Scorpio’s territory. The Moon in the chart is the people, and the current New Moon cycle indicates that the Italian default is probably about to occur. Scorpio is associated with surgery and healing, and this is what it will be for the Italian people, who have had this amazing triple conjunction of natal Moon, New Moon and progressed MC. The MC is the institutions of government, suggesting not just a new leader (which we all know about) but a new type of government. This is reflected in the larger, outer planet cycle, in which Neptune will next year oppose Italy’s natal MC at 1 Virgo.

There is a Full Moon half way through every New Moon cycle, when the events concerned reach some sort peak. The Full Moon at 18 Taurus/Scorpio was on 10th November, coinciding with Berlusconi announcing he would stand down as leader. It ran along Italy’s Asc-Desc axis at 19 Scorpio/Taurus, while the Full Moon Mars at 29 Leo was less than a degree off the natal MC. This remarkable set of line-ups shows the significance of the events. And there is so much Scorpio involved: it is about purging and ultimately about healing.

(The natal Moon in 12th House Scorpio, square to Pluto, is also the Mafia and the widespread corruption which no doubt has contributed to the present state of affairs.)

So Berlusconi has agreed to stand down once a load of austerity measures have passed through both houses of Parliament. It has pacified the markets, giving some hope that the politicians are in control of events. But no-one in the markets really thinks that any more. As Uranus slows down to a standstill over the next few weeks, intensifying his influence, so will the crisis deepen further (if that is possible), and the game will change.

Without any pretence at rescue occurring, there is going to be a major train wreck very shortly. I’d say before the next New Moon, on 25th November. This New Moon, in early Sag, will be a degree off the ascendant in Rome. In a way it shows a liberation, a new optimism, albeit in very difficult circumstances.

We are seeing a series of New Moons in the early cardinal signs at present, meaning they are hard-aspecting Uranus and Pluto. The Cardinal Ingresses are also doing this, which is why world events have been so dramatic – remember we had the US debt crisis immediately before the European one. This is a good example of using inner planet events to predict points of change and crisis within outer planet transits. I thought events were going to ease off in the autumn due to Uranus and Pluto separating for a while, but if I’d looked at the New Moons and Ingresses I would have thought otherwise.

And after the Italian train wreck, what next? More train wrecks, maybe even bigger ones. Maybe France at some point. In a way it is exciting, it is high drama. I encounter some people who are enthusiastic about it because they are rightly so fed up with the old system. But we really don’t know what is coming afterwards, we are right at the beginning of the avalanche that Uranus-Pluto is ushering in. That is my point here: people assuming that the world will be moving in a direction they want it to move in, that because the ‘bad’ is self-destructing through its own contradictions and excesses, that whatever comes after will be in some way better. This way of thinking is much wider than the 2012 movement. Well the ‘good’ also has a way of coming to an end under Uranus-Pluto. I don’t think we can assume anything. Look what came out of the last square: the Great Depression followed by WWII.

As astrologers, we watch in a hopefully detached way and we detect patterns that are reflected in the heavens and we can to some extent predict. We can probe quite deeply into the nature of events, using planetary symbolism. But there is too much chaos and complexity with world events, certainly at present, to be able to predict much. Later in the Uranus-Pluto transit, maybe, but right now we are at the chaotic, destructive start. The future really isn’t written in the heavens, it really could go in a number of directions.

For those of you who don't go on my Facebook, here are some of the pictures that have been doing the rounds over the last month:

The End of Capitalism?

The Greek Prime Minister, George Papandreou, has been very clever, but not clever enough, if you look at the chart for Greece. What’s happened is that he needs to get the latest EU bail-out deal through Parliament, and he only has a wafer-thin majority. The opposition were going to vote against it, and so were some rebels within his party. So he said he would call a referendum. The people, of course, could give the wrong answer, which would be “No” to a further round of austerity measures, and which would effectively end Greece’s membership of the Eurozone.

So the opposition were forced to go OK, we didn’t really mean it, we were only playing politics, we will vote with the government on this issue. So Papandreou got his way, and has just survived a vote of confidence, and has promised a government of national unity.

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But there is a price to pay, because he told the people they could have their say, then took it away again. He played with them for his own ends. And Greece has a Moon-Pluto conjunction. The Moon is the people. You cannot play with Pluto this way. We have already seen riots in Greece over the austerity measures, so the people are prepared to make their case. The chart I am using for Greece is the 1974 chart for the new democratic Greece that arose out of the old military dictatorship. The Moon-Pluto conjunction shows that history, a disempowered (Pluto) people (Moon.) But also a people who reclaimed their power, and will not be treated in the same way again.
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With Moon-Pluto, it is not a matter of if the people lash back at Papandreou, it is when. (Since writing this, an opinion poll has suggested the people want a national unity government rather than the present one.) Mars is often a good planet to look at when considering confrontational or military situations. Right now, the country is having a Mars Return at 27 Leo. The Greek MC, the institution of government, is at 24 Pisces. Mars will move into the sign opposite, Virgo, next week, and will gradually approach the exact opposition, stationing at 23 Virgo in January. Progressed Mars is already at 21 Virgo. Meanwhile, Uranus will change direction next month and start moving towards an exact opposition to the natal Moon. Pluto is moving away from an exact square to the Moon, but it is still highly influential.

The people are going to be restless (Uranus) and demanding power (Pluto), and the state itself (MC), not just the government, will be under siege (Mars by both transit and progression.)

Pluto and Uranus are also hard aspecting the Greek Mercury and Venus, and starting to hard aspect Saturn and the Ascendant. Greece has a long, hard road ahead of it. It could easily be that the country goes into some sort of meltdown (Pluto opposite Saturn) and the military takes control again, especially when you consider its history and the current actions of Mars: the pressure on the MC from transiting and Prog Mars will be intense right through until June 2012, due to the retrograde cycle of Mars. Moreover, the Progressed MC has just changed sign, another indicator of a change in the form of government. (Italy, where the real debt problem lies, has MC at 1 Virgo, which Neptune is about to oppose, again suggesting a change in the forms of government, even perhaps meltdown.)

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Military governments have a bad name, and like all governments they enjoy the taste of power and want to stay on regardless. But if a country goes into meltdown, I think sometimes the army has to take control. It can sometimes be better than a chaotic, corrupt democracy, such as you get in Pakistan.

Greece, though, is just the start of something much, much bigger. It will be the start of an avalanche. Uranus square or opposite Pluto is the toughest, most dramatic and most transformational configuration in the heavens. And a series of exact squares will begin next year.

The last time this aspect occurred was in the early 1930s, at the time of the Great Depression, German re-armament and the Japanese occupation of Manchuria. At that time there were 5 exact squares in just under 2 years; this time there will be 7 exact squares in just under 3 years, beginning June 2012. Last time, the squares occurred quite late in the cardinal signs. This time, they are occurring in the early to mid-cardinals, which is where so many major powers have their Suns. This one, therefore, will be much further reaching in its effects. Look at these Suns: the US at 13 Cancer; the UK 10 Capricorn; Germany 9 Libra; France 13 Libra; China 8 Libra; the EU 10 Capricorn.

Last time, the square was closing, leading up to the conjunction of the 1960s. So even though it churned everything up, the same basic system remained: the continued rise of world powers and wealth under a capitalist system, fuelled by technological advance and limitless energy supplies. This time, we have an opening square. It suggests that the old system itself will be to a large extent destroyed. This is all in the next few years. I’m not hyping this up, my arguments are based on a straight reading of the astrology.

Some say it will be the end of Capitalism. It may be, but only aspects of its present form. I don’t think you can get rid of capitalism itself, in the sense of people’s desire to trade and create wealth for themselves, unless you have a feudal or a communist system. You can’t go against human nature, not indefinitely.

It is very hard to see what is coming next, after the avalanche. You can see a number of European countries defaulting as part of the avalanche, and Europe restructuring itself. Banks would take a huge hit, and there would be another banking crisis. And you can see the world being knocked back into recession as a result, probably more deeply than we have experienced already, if you look at the intensity of the astrology. (The previous opening Uranus-Pluto square, in the 1870s, was associated with what is called the Long Depression.)

And you can also speculate that there will be increasing levels of popular protest against a system that has brought us so low: Uranus-Pluto is associated with radical protest (Uranus) against power (Pluto). The Occupy protests may or may not last, but they will come to be seen as the precursors of much wider waves of protest in the next few years. Beyond a certain point, governments have to listen to the voice of protesters, for they are the electorate.

The protesters are the voice of the future, they are what is coming. And what will be required, at a minimum, is legislation against the excesses and unfairnesses of the old system. Against a growing super-rich class who pay little or no taxes; against the inflated salaries that directors pay themselves; against a speculative financial system that can ruin banks and ordinary people’s savings and pension schemes. Those are the obvious changes.

But even those sorts of changes can be relatively cosmetic, and reversed again a few years later. What we are talking about with Uranus-Pluto is deep structural change. So far, that has not happened, even remotely. We have not had an exact square from Uranus to Pluto yet, and we are still at the stage of hanging on as best we can to the old. Governments have talked about legislation to avoid a repeat of the 2008 crash, but it’s not gone much further than that.

Yes, there will be a shift in global power from west to the east, and that is a big part of the change. But that is still the same system re-arranging itself. Uranus-Pluto applies just as much to China, which has Sun at 8 Libra. The most important shift will be systemic. What is called the Second Industrial Revolution, or the Technological Revolution, occurred after the last opening Uranus-Pluto square in the late 1800s. A new phase in the economic history of the world will probably be opening up. But from this vantage point, it seems quite opaque as to what it could be.

And that is as it should be. Have you ever been able to see the other side of a major personal transit? I haven’t. I can get an idea of what needs to go in my life, but not what is positively going to develop out of that. It has to be lived. And I think it’s the same with this major transit that the world is going through. We are getting an idea of what needs to go. The Euro, or aspects of it, would seem to be part of that. But I don’t think we can have much idea of what is going to come out of the chaos that seems to be coming our way. Even when I talked about taxing the super-rich etc, that was as much wish-list as anything, which is not a good way to predict. Because the world that is coming will not necessarily be a ‘better’ one. What constitutes ‘better’ is often just a point of view anyway. ‘The end of capitalism’ seems another example of wish-list prediction.

I think it is possible to be influenced by the evolutionary idea that humanity is in some way advancing. That seems to be part of the ascensionist background to the 2012 Mayan prophecy movement (which is a bit like the Chinese taking up one of Merlin’s prophecies! I wonder what modern Mayans make of it all?) Even with a person, you cannot assume that they will progress when they have a transit. Will this be the point at which they hit the wall and give up on their life, or will they learn from their mistakes? That is the crucial point, learning from your mistakes, and that is what collectives are so bad at. What is evolution without that?

This does not mean there are not patterns to human history, and this is what astrology can be good at illuminating. And the pattern, like a kaleidoscope, is about to change. And it is changing because a life and a society are made up of lots of different forces and currents that reach a balance for a while and then gradually tip over into a new balance, sometimes painfully.

So this huge change that is about to happen as Uranus and Pluto make their exact squares has to be lived. Some psychics maybe can see the other side of it, to some extent, but that is their own experience. If you adopt it yourself because they have said it, it becomes a belief, it is not yours, it is not authentic, it is a hindrance to your own way of seeing.

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Uranus changes direction in a month’s time, and will begin its run-in to its first exact square to Pluto. At the end of November it will begin to station in preparation for turning round. I think from then on we will start to see events that change the structure of the system, like the Eurozone actually fragmenting, instead of just threatening to do so. The stage is set. As I put in a previous post, Pluto has already made at least 2 hard aspects to the Sun, Asc and MC of the chart for the Treaty of Rome, the vision behind the EU. That says to me that it is already an empty shell, it has been eaten from within, nobody really believes in it anymore, at least not in its present form, and probably all we are waiting for is Uranus to change direction.

The Crisis season (Part 6)

I’m going to put on my Joe Bloggs hat today and say why all the fuss about a few countries defaulting on their debt? You get companies within a country going bankrupt all the time, sometimes major companies.

A few very small countries in the Eurozone, and a couple of larger ones – Italy and Spain – have borrowed too much and will eventually have to default. Let’s ignore the small countries, and assume Italy and Spain default. Their total GDP is 3.5 trillion dollars per year, the world total is 63 trillion dollars*. Their total debt is 3 trillion, of which say half needs to be written off. It’s do-able.

The real problem is not that these countries will eventually need to default, it is that Europe isn’t allowing it to happen. Iceland effectively defaulted a few years ago, banks lost money, the country is struggling, but it is not a crisis any more. Iceland, however, isn’t part of the Eurozone.

Europe is throwing good money after bad in trying to shore up these countries, and is only weakening itself in doing so. Europe must go back in order to go forward. What is spooking the markets is not the prospect of default, it is the prospect of disorderly default, events happening in an uncontrolled way. It does not have to be like this.
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Behind the scenes, governments are planning for countries defaulting and leaving the Eurozone. But they are not allowed to say so, it’s like revealing your contingency plans for defeat when you’re fighting a war.

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This uncertainty is classic Uranus territory. He is currently going backwards in early Aries, and will slow down and change direction in early December. That will usher in a new phase. We are likely to see some sort of bubble burst in the period around the change of direction, something like Greece defaulting and Europe having to work out the implications. Over this period, transiting Pluto will square the Asc, and conjunct the IC of the chart for the Treaty of Rome, the founding vision of the EU.

It may be that Greece leads the way. If it defaults and leaves the Eurozone, then a precedent has been set, if you like the unthinkable will have happened. Because that is part of the problem: Europe has been on a trajectory of closer integration for many decades now, often against sense, and the dream has never been seriously questioned. And the resistance to doing so is the real problem. So a few countries leave the Eurozone and maybe come back at a future date. It would be expensive, but do-able.

Europe shows all the signs of being in the grip of an ideology, and that is why it cannot sort it’s house out. It’s like the free market ideology leading against all sense to an under-regulated financial industry, which sooner or later goes tits up. Or the Catholic Church’s inability to deal effectively with paedophile priests, because it is unwilling to question the priests’ training which arrests their sexual/emotional development.

The unthinkable is good Uranus-Pluto territory. We are forced, institutions are forced, to question the unquestionable. I think this is the real issue behind the Eurozone crisis, because the practical solutions are relatively straightforward, albeit expensive.

There may be a much bigger problem looming that doesn’t seem to get a mention: Japan. It is the world’s 3rd largest economy, and it’s public debt is 198% of GDP. Compare that to Greece and Italy, which are a mere 143% and 119% respectively. Japan is way more indebted than any other major country. It has almost as much debt – 8.5 trillion dollars – as the much larger US at 9 trillion dollars. If the markets lost confidence in Japan’s ability to repay its debts, and raised the interest rates on its borrowings, then there really would be a problem.

*Throughout I’m using statistics from 2010

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.