Greece and The Meaning of Life

In about a month Pluto will change direction, and 2 days later Uranus and Pluto will complete the 2^nd of 7 exact squares to each other. (The first was in June, the last will be in 2015.)

It is hard to time events with the outer planets. They are more to do with deep undercurrents, deep shifts in the collective rather than the individual events that express those deeper movements.

It is like the difference between tectonic plates shifting and the resulting earthquakes and volcanoes. The latter are what we surface-dwellers get to see, and they last a matter of hours or days. But the tectonic plates pull apart, or come together, over thousands and millions of years.

Nevertheless, I think we can say quite a lot about outer planet movements if we give ourselves a wide enough timescale. Pluto changing direction can often be seen in worldly events, but usually in the run-up to that change, rather than around the moment of change. And the same with the squares of Uranus to Pluto, which for now provide the widest astrological context.

A week before the 1^st Uranus sq Pluto on 24^th June, a crucial Greek election was held. Greece has been in crisis, and Europe with it, for a long time now. The timing of that election seems to tie the fate of Greece, and therefore of Europe, into the Uranus-Pluto squares, as if anyone needed telling.

As Uranus and Pluto move to their next square over the next month, we can expect a new development, a new phase in that crisis. Greece is in an unsustainable position financially, and Uranus-Pluto is not about bodge jobs. There had been bodges up until earlier this year, with Greece being repeatedly bailed out, though by the end few people expected that remedy to work. But with the first square and the election came a sense of yielding to the inevitable. Even the Greek right wingers were not pretending they would fulfil the bailout conditions. And Europe, and particularly Germany, were no longer offering more money.

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We’ve been waiting for the inevitable, which is a default by Greece and its exit from the Eurozone. Behind the scenes, all sorts of preparations will have been going on, and I am sure they will make quite a story. Greece, I have read, will run out of money later this month. Germany doesn’t want an exit until 5^th September, in order to get an agreement through which could help prevent ‘contagion’: i.e. uncontrollable market pressure on Italy and Spain, and a chaotic disintegration of the current Eurozone.

It’s unlikely that any status quo in crisis can withstand 2 squares from Uranus and Pluto. It has to start to give, it’s basic astrology. Greece’s exit will make it possible for other countries to leave, or be forced out by events. On the one hand we will know what it looks like when a country leaves; on the other hand, Spain and Italy are major in Europe. So the sense of crisis may only get bigger in the autumn.

The next square after Sept will be in May 2013. So one possibility is an extended period of crisis, particularly over Spain, that will have some sort of outcome next April/May. If Spain doesn't leave the Euro then, I would expect her to leave by the following square, in November next year.

Behind all this, and in a way giving meaning to all this, is Europe’s growing question about itself: who are we? This applies not just to Europe but to the individual countries within it. The UK with its Sun at 10 Capricorn, Germany at 9 Libra, France at 13 Libra, the EU itself at 10 Capricorn, all being hard-aspected by Uranus-Pluto. Beneath the surface, to a large extent beyond conscious awareness, our collective sense of ourselves is being re-forged. Is it the events causing the inner change, or the natural need for inner change catalysing the outer events? We knew deep down that the Euro was unstable when we built it, so why did we do that? 

The Euro was launched with the Angles at the very end of the mutable signs, just one minute before they turned cardinal. That is almost criminal if you want a project to succeed, it speaks of recklessness, or even a desire to fail. Like the Iraq War: why was that launched with the Sun at 29 Pisces? What foolishness was that?

Inner and outer events are like 2 ends of a stick, one underlying process looked at from different points of view. That’s where a consideration of the outer planets seems to lead me. Inner and outer are the same thing, it’s kind of a false distinction.

I don’t mean that everything that happens has an inner significance in a sort of observable way, that’s psychotic. Sometimes its observable, and it’s an art to be able to tell when. Even then it’s often a felt sense rather than something in words, and it points to that deeper identity of inner and outer. This is Pisces/Neptune territory.

How did I get here? I thought I was talking about money...