Thursday, September 29, 2011

Science and Astrology

You’ve probably noticed I bang on about Science a lot. I’m going to do so again today, but with more astrology than last time. I think. Why do I bang on about it? Probably because I’ve got Sun in Aquarius, which gives a natural interest in science. But also because I have Sun opposite Pluto, which makes me acutely aware of anything I find disempowering. I struggle against it until my head emerges above the water.

Some people find it difficult to understand that one can be critical of something without being agin it. I find science to be a beautiful and useful creation. But I am strongly against its tendency to usurp its place, its evangelical tendency to oppose anything in society that does not see truth in its own narrow terms. And the collective brainwashing that comes with it, so that many people feel, maybe despite themselves in many cases, that scientific reality IS reality.

I don’t think views are that important. It’s the way you hold them that matters. A failing of the ‘alternative’ section of society can be to assume superiority because of the views they have adopted, usually green, left wing, ‘spiritual’ and often anti-government.
In my experience, these views can sometimes be rigidly held, not thought through, and adopted as part of a package. Much more impressive to me might be, for example, a wealthy Tory-voting businessman who has come in his own way to feel a degree of responsibility to society.

My job as an astrologer is to help people develop and trust their own judgement, rather than foist my views on them (which are many!) Human development has nothing to do with whether your political views are left or right wing or the degree to which you believe in green energy or alternative medicine. It is the degree to which you have made your experience your own that matters, and the degree to which you are able to observe and use, rather than unconsciously take on, trends in the collective.

So this is why I bang on about Science: because I feel it has a collective power over people’s minds that is not healthy, that is a form of brainwashing (just like Christianity was in the Middle Ages) – the Enlightenment idea that everything needs to be reduced to reason, and reason in the particularly narrow, lab-rat form that science takes for truth. Don't get me wrong - as an Aquarian I am in love with reason. But it has its limits.

This is why in my piece last Friday I was expressing delight that the speed of light appears to have been broken. Because it meant a foundation stone of modern science had been undermined, an 'immutable' truth was slipping away.
__________________________________________________
Ad Break: I offer full webcam astrology readings (£60) and written responses to specific questions (£30). Price negotiable if you’re hard up. Contact me on Dharmaruci71(at)hotmail.com.
__________________________________________________

What I wanted to do was to look at some of the astrology around current developments in Science.

First of all, Einstein’s chart. Charts of famous dead people continue to work because their influence continues. Einstein’s Mercury, his mind, is still around.

Click to Enlarge

Saturn can make you old for your years (or the opposite: you may need to wait till you are old for that aspect to come to fruition.) In Einstein’s case, his Mercury-Saturn conjunction gave him a precocious intellect (that became Saturn in the negative sense – conservative and closed to new ideas – as he grew older.) And this conjunction is in Aries (fresh and groundbreaking) and in a yod with the North Node in Sagittarius (universal vision) and Uranus (radical and original science).

Click to Enlarge

And what do we find now that his idea about the absoluteness of the speed of light appears to have been proved wrong? By transit, Uranus is conjoining his Mercury, and Pluto is squaring it. By Progression, Mercury is moving up to conjoin his natal then prog Uranus! And the Prog Node is moving towards opposing his Prog MC.

All this suggests to me that indeed the speed of light has been broken, and there is more to come over the next few years as the progressed aspects become exact. More of Einstein’s thoughts, so fundamental to the way modern science sees the world, will unravel.

Uranus is the planet that rules Science, and at present he is in Aries in a square to Pluto in Capricorn, which will continue for at least another 4 years. So this is the bigger picture behind the breaking of the speed of light: the destruction (Pluto) of established (Capricorn) science (Uranus) and the creation of a new vision (Aries).

But Capricorn is also about limits. Science is a model of reality, rather than reality itself. This gets forgotten. Maybe Pluto in Capricorn will have a lot to do with science realising its limits.


It is not just the speed of light that has been broken. In the last few weeks the evidence has started to go against both dark matter and supersymmetry, theories which are foundational to our understanding of the macro and micro universes. This is happening again under the Pluto-Uranus square, which suggests it is not just one or two theories being proved wrong, but something more fundamental that is happening.

To me, it is obvious that Science must sooner or later start to find its limits, because apart from being a mere a model of reality, it also confines itself to rationality. Maybe this is what is starting to happen. You push a model to extremes – in this case to the extremely large and the extremely small – and it starts to break down, it becomes harder and harder to make progress.


That said, in the ‘middle-ground’ where Science works very well and will no doubt continue to work very well, we are seeing a string of developments brought on by the creation of superior instruments. There have been a series of new space telescopes, and the building of the Large Hadron Collider, the biggest ever atom-smasher, at Cern.

As I have said before, my dream is that every schoolkid will learn the wonders of Science, but will also be taught that it is just a tool that eventually breaks down, perhaps when faced with the extremely large and the extremely small.

For most of last year, there was a Jupiter-Uranus conjunction, which is particularly associated with scientific advance and breakthrough. This conjunction overlapped with a Saturn-Uranus opposition, the time when these new instruments were being built.

So Uranus as Science has been considerably activated over the last few years: firstly by Saturn, a time of planning and building; then by Jupiter, when the new instruments started functioning and results – such as lots of new exo-planets - started coming in; and now by Pluto, suggesting a radical overhaul of our scientific understanding, as well as an empowerment of Science.

The Jupiter-Uranus conjunction took place at the end of Pisces and at the beginning of Aries, the last and first signs of the zodiac, suggesting the beginning of a new era. If we were to find signs of life on other planets, now would be the time: the incredible newness of Jupiter-Uranus at the beginning of Aries, followed by the transformation of vision under Uranus-Pluto that would result. And the new, cosmic dream of Neptune in Pisces.

Some would say they know there is life out there anyway, because aliens have been visiting for years. I tend to think these experiences are real, no less real than material reality, maybe even more so, but they belong to Neptune. An Indian friend once told me that when you have a visionary experience, it appears at the time as just as real as everyday experience, and it is often only afterwards that you realise what it was. I think experience of aliens falls into this category. Otherwise it’s like why do they ALL play hide and seek?


It seems to me just a matter of time before we scientific evidence out there of life-as-we-know-it, as we are now finding so many new exo-planets. What you need to find is light that has the signature of complex organic molecules. It’s going to be inference, rather than actual sighting.

Site Meter

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Humanity Enters the Dreamtime

Neptune began to change sign earlier this year, from Aquarius to Pisces. Neptune governs the underlying myths, the underlying dreams by which we live. This is not just an overlay on ‘objective’ reality: these myths ARE the objective reality. They generate it. It requires a certain amount of subtlety, however, to see this. Naïve literalism, with black and white values, is a much easier and more certain way to live.

A simple example would be the experience of space as a real 3-d box within which everything happens. If you think about it, 3-d space is just a way in which the brain builds relationships between the objects it experiences. It is not literally there, it is just a story. It is a story which, to us, is real.

When Neptune changes sign (about every 14 years), our dreams, our mythologies change. They change anyway as Neptune moves through a sign, they gather momentum. But particularly when Neptune enters a mutable sign, and particularly when it is Pisces, the 12th and final sign of the zodiac, old dreams and mythologies fall apart. Humanity collectively enters the dreamtime, the land where all things are possible, but where all is spirit and it can be hard to manifest.

Humanity is embarking on a big bit of dreaming for the next 14 years, but we will not be properly ready to live it until Neptune enters Aries, the 1st sign of the zodiac, the place of new vision, in 14 years time. 

Neptune is leaving Aquarius, the sign on a collective level of Science and Democracy. And what do we find? In America, the home (as they see it) of Democracy, the system is ceasing to work. In July and August, at a time of financial crisis, the government was paralysed by partisan dispute, and as a result America for the first time had its credit rating reduced. In Europe, another proudly democratic continent facing a financial crisis, the collective government is also paralysed, not this time by partisanship, but by a system that was a product of political idealism that got carried away with itself. The system that is working and that is on the rise, and which is anything but democratic, is Chinese totalitarian government.

As Neptune leaves Aquarius, so is the dream of Democracy starting to fade. With Neptune’s dying breath in Aquarius, we have this year seen the ‘Arab Spring’, the widespread and sometimes successful revolts against autocratic, secular leaders. But as in the Iranian revolution 30 years ago (which took place with the Sun in Aquarius), the eventual outcome seems just as likely to be theocracy: you don’t even need a majority vote for this, just a determined minority, and the Islamists are certainly determined.
__________________________________________________
Ad Break: I offer full webcam astrology readings (£60) and written responses to specific questions (£30). Price negotiable if you’re hard up. Contact me on Dharmaruci71(at)hotmail.com.
__________________________________________________

Only yesterday on BBC News there was an article entitled ‘Dark matter theory may be wrong’. A few days ago there was an article in which the idea of supersymmetry was brought into doubt. In both cases the doubt came as a result of experimental evidence. These theories have become fundamental to the way science sees the universe at the galactic and quantum levels respectively. Science has been stuck for some decades now in trying to develop theories, backed up by evidence, as to how the universe works when faced with the extremely large and extremely small.

I have always doubted the existence of dark matter. You could say Dark Matter is a projection onto the universe of our own ignorance: there’s lots of it – 96% of the universe – and it’s impossible to detect. It’s a case of the Emperor’s New Clothes.
It’s been as though any theory that will explain major gravitational anomalies, however outlandish, is better than no theory. It’s based on a primitive need for certainty.

As Neptune leaves Aquarius, so it seems to me is the dream of Science as in principle able to explain everything, fading. I, for one, am delighted!

There is a difference between ignorance and not knowing. Not knowing is a wonderful place to be: the Universe opens up as a ‘Great Mystery’, and wisdom flows from it. Socrates claimed to be the wisest man in Athens because he knew he didn’t know. In the West, we have become addicted to certainty, whether through the claims of Christianity, or latterly through Science and political ideologies. And this is ignorance, which comes from the word ignore, suggesting something wilful: it’s obvious when you think about it that there’s very little, if anything, that we really know. But we don’t think about this, we feel about it, and it feels uncomfortable and insecure. So we ignore it, we choose to be ignorant. Ignorance is thinking you know.

So this is where Neptune is starting to take us as he enters Pisces: into the place of not knowing which, for humanity as a collective beast, is a very uncomfortable place to be. I think this is why the prophecies around 2012 are so popular: they provide a sense of certainty and even hope in a world which is increasingly uncertain, and in which we are rapidly destroying the environment and resources we need in order to have a future.
To this extent I think the 2012 mythology is a cop-out, a collective delusion. To sort a situation you need to head straight into it, taking the time to re-dream it as you go, on an individual level. There are no inevitabilities in either direction. 2012 mythology is not mainstream, it belongs to the ‘alternative’, more ‘enlightened’ culture, which in this respect is showing itself to be just as superstitious as any collective is in times of insecurity. Some 2012 mythologies are apocalyptic, others describe collective spiritual transformation. In either case, they produce disengagement from the actual problems while we wait for the causeless big event that will change everything.

All the big ideas of the 20th century are failing: communism and democracy as political absolutes, scientific knowledge as metaphysical underpinning, the inevitability of economic progress. Neptune in Pisces is underscoring this. The Great Recession, which seems about to double-dip, and the rise of China, have given the West a tremendous blow to its self-confidence, and this has not fully played through yet by a long chalk. We are still hoping that things will go back to what they were.

Pluto is usually considered to be the planet of ‘power’. And he is that, he gives us the power to live and the power to transform and unfold. His power is basic and raw. But Neptune has his own power, which is the mythologies we live by. People will live and die for them, they are that real to us. There is something human about Neptune that Pluto does not share, because animals and plants do not live by mythologies: they just live, they know what they are, and they get on with it. Pluto lives in the Underworld, he is not human (though he still has a very important role to play for us.)
Neptune, in a way, is also not of the human realm, because he is god of the ocean. But while we cannot visit the Underworld – not, that is, if we hope to return – we have always sailed the seas, we have always visited the life-giving waters of the Imagination which Neptune represents. For humans, Pluto alone does not enable us to live. Without Neptune, we will die of a different kind of thirst.

So Neptune in his own sign of Pisces is tremendously powerful. It is a cauldron of the Imagination. His Ingress into Pisces represents the old certainties failing, and that creates much collective anxiety. We can inevitably expect a retreat into right-wing governments and fundamentalist religions as a response, for now, to that anxiety and insecurity (as well as into millenarian, 2012-type prophecies.) And that is described by the Uranus-Pluto square which is occurring concurrently: the empowerment (Pluto) of radicalism (Uranus), whether of a left or right wing variety. Uranus is an archaic god, and can describe a collective retreat into primitive, less conscious forms at times of insecurity: look at the rise of Fascist regimes under the last Uranus-Pluto square in the 20s/30s.
Rick Perry, Mr Texan Death Penalty, who is starting to lead the Republican race in the US, is an appropriate expression of this.

There is an issue of survival which has not filtered through to the collective yet, blinded as we are by advertising and politicians. The survival issue is of course based around environmental degradation and the profligate consumption of limited resources. Perhaps the larger a collective is, the stupider it gets. Any intelligent individual can see the danger, but what can they do? Preach to the converted? Any ‘primitive’ tribe would have acted by now.

And unfortunately, the party isn’t over yet. There are still enough resources left so that when a humbled West picks itself up again some years down the line (as Uranus finishes its square to Pluto around 2015), it can continue for a while as before, albeit less sure of itself, less dominant in the world. This shift in the world balance of power, away from the West and in favour of the BRIC countries, seems to be much of the meaning of this Uranus-Pluto square.

But all the while Neptune will be in Pisces, a subterranean collective re-dreaming on the part of what is now a global tribe. Uranus-Pluto will come to an end in 4-5 years, but Neptune will remain in Pisces for a further 9-10 years. The party will be continuing, but not with the old certainties: they will be in Neptune’s cauldron.

Interestingly, Neptune’s passage through a sign, 14 years, is about the same time as Saturn takes to complete half a cycle round the Sun. Saturn is the opposite of Neptune, he is the planet of manifestation. When he is opposite himself – opposite where he was when Neptune entered that sign – then there is a strong impulse to manifest. In this way Saturn brings Neptune’s dreams into reality, makes his visions grow corn.

Uranus-Pluto is not just about the shift in the world balance of power. Its influence will be felt at many levels, locally as well as globally. And the empowerment of Uranian radicalism, which is so central to the meaning of this transit, will feed into the re-dreaming of Neptune in Pisces, in the progressive sense of Uranus. Pluto is about survival, and while one response to the current crisis will be a retreat into right wing governments and fundamentalism, another will be a growing awareness of the real threat to our survival.

So there is this other, more hopeful, side to Uranus-Pluto which is kind of inevitable, because Pluto is there to ensure our survival. He is the life-force. You put that together with Neptune in Pisces, and you can see a growing current in the collective, determined that we should survive (Pluto), open to radical solutions (Uranus) and quietly dreaming the sort of world in which this is possible (Neptune.) As I said earlier, there are no certainties, and if we do build a slightly saner world, there is no knowing at this stage what form it will take. But if the outer planets teach us anything, it is that there are powers beyond us, creative depths to nature that in our hubris we overlook. The present situation is certainly an outcome of hubris, and you cannot avoid the eventual cost of that; but the outer planets, nature itself, has a way of surviving, and humanity is part of nature.

We are not just another species, we are a new development, and maybe we won’t last, or maybe most of us will be wiped out, only to repeat the same mistakes, as in Battlestar Galactica, some millennia down the line.
But what we have forgotten is that there is a deeper knowing within us, that knows where to go from here on a collective level, and Neptune in Pisces can take us there. It comes down to whether collectively we are prepared to listen. We ain’t there yet, but as we emerge from the Uranus-Pluto reckoning of the next few years, and as Neptune – as we collectively - have time to dream deeply from there on, a way forward will gradually present itself. Neptune is, after all, the planet of redemption.

The chart for Neptune’s first entry into Pisces, on 3/4 April 2011 (depending where you live) is quite remarkable, for it has 6 planets, including a New Moon, in Aries.

Click to Enlarge

It sends a strong message that out of the collective re-dreaming, the search for new ideas/mythologies, of the next 14 years, something very, very new will be born. As if to underscore this point, the Ingress chart for Neptune into Aries in 2025 also takes place under a New Moon in Aries. Spooky!

I want to be fanciful for a moment, but I have talked about Neptune in Pisces in terms of the Dreamtime, which is an Australian aboriginal idea. And Uluru, or Ayers Rock has come for us westerners to most symbolise that dreamtime. So what was happening at Uluru when Neptune entered Pisces?

Click to Enlarge 

As you can see, the Ascendant was at the midpoint of Pluto and the North Node, both of which were within 5 degrees of the Ascendant. This suggests the power (Pluto) and significance (Node) of the idea of Neptune in Pisces as humanity's Dreamtime.

Site Meter

Thursday, September 08, 2011

Rupert Murdoch’s Balls

Wendi Deng, Rupert Murdoch’s young Chinese wife, recently revealed that Tony Blair became godfather to one of their children earlier this year. The baptism took place on the banks of the river Jordan, at the spot where Jesus was said to have been baptised. Further, Tony Blair is said to have been robed in white for the ceremony, but I think that bit of the story could easily be someone taking the mick.

You can see that Blair could have been behind the river Jordan idea. There’s nothing wrong with the idea in itself, but when Blair is involved, you start thinking of his visit to the Pope to try and get a blessing for the Iraq War. Only the best will do for someone so spiritual as Blair.

I think that Blair’s religiosity is described by his Mars-Jupiter Rising. A pronounced Jupiter or Sagittarius (which Jupiter rules) is likely to give a religious/philosophical temperament. The US, a nation which is more religious than most, has Sag Rising. What the chart never tells you is the level on which that attribute will be expressed. Is this the chart of a subtle philosopher or a fundamentalist bore? Or is it the chart of a sacrificial chicken?

What were Rupert and Wendi thinking of? Wendi is Chinese, and there is no mention of Christianity in her wiki bio. The daughter, Grace, was 10 years old. What did she make of this strange occasion? Let’s hope she has a sense of humour.

All these relationships are based on power, whether between Wendi and Rupert or between themselves and Blair. Even the daughter’s baptism seems to be part of some PR stunt. OK, who am I to comment on the Murdoch’s marriage, but when you read Wendi Deng’s relationship history, you get the impression she uses men. And Murdoch needed an entry to the Chinese market. I’m not condemning them, because this is perfectly normal behaviour for many people. And the real motives remain hidden. At least, in earlier times, people didn’t have to pretend it was romance. It was because the wife brought a big dowry. Or, as the young Genghis Khan was advised, choose a wife with sturdy legs. It was a practical approach for practical people.


 In his memoirs, Blair says that he came to like and admire Murdoch, despite disliking many of his views, because “he was an outsider and he had balls.” Well, Hitler was an outsider (Austrian) and had balls. These monsters can be impressive. You have to admire the Israelis, particularly the way they fought off invading Arab armies immediately after they were founded. You have to admire Thatcher for her ruthless determination. And the Terminator. And Roy Cohn in American Angels. But would you invite these people to dinner?

When you sup with the devil, use a long spoon. The reason these people are so impressive is that they will stop at nothing to get their own way. Monsters are fascinating, and any good story needs one.

It is clear that what Tony Blair really admires is power. He is drawn to it, and the possessors of it are no doubt charming enough to convince Tony Blair that he likes these people for their personal qualities. His ‘friendship’ with George Bush was an example. What is it in Tony Blair’s chart that gives him this fascination with power (and which is totally at odds with his professed Christian convictions?) It is Pluto, which forms a t-square with his Sun and (widely) with his Moon.

Click to Enlarge

Whenever you see a prominent Pluto in a chart, you are looking at issues of power, that can come out in a number of ways. It can come out as submission to others, or as a need to dominate. And it can come out, more consciously, as genuine power – as a connection to something real that other people instinctively respond to, and that transforms. And, if you have a prominent Pluto, it can be any of these at different times.

Pluto connects us to what one might call instinctual power, or simply to life itself. A wild animal wouldn’t need to distinguish Pluto like we do, because they simply are what they are. They are not separated from themselves by human self-consciousness and all the complexity and judgement that comes with that. And so they have the power to live their lives, to be what they are. Pluto gives them that.

Humans are the animals that do not know who they are. With a prominent Pluto, there is a need to forge a new relationship with the side of us that, on a simple level, has the power to live. But, as humans, it needs to become conscious, and it can get twisted along the way. And when it does, you get monsters and victims. The sheer energy of the monsters is a testament to the power of Pluto.

So the need to create genuine power is fundamental to Tony Blair. So far, he has seemed quite unconscious, as we can see in his choice of friends. He seemed quite unconscious of the submissive relationship he had with George Bush. We can chuck in the North Node as well, which is also fundamental to what we need to learn. Blair has it in the 10th in Aquarius conjunct the Moon. You can see him groping towards it in his international networking with the aim of saving the world. And who knows, he may have done some good (though in Iraq it led to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people.)

I find it fascinating when I see people who are clever and talented and who ‘achieve’ a lot, and yet who are unconscious and stupid in quite a basic way at the same time. It’s probably part of my prominent Pluto to see these people as they are, rather than feeling dazzled and disempowered by all they seem to ‘achieve’.

Site Meter

Thursday, September 01, 2011

Pluto in Capricorn and Neptune in Pisces: the New Reformation?

I’m starting to think that Pluto functions particularly powerfully in Capricorn. Look at the present transit: just under 4 years in, and we are in the thick of the Great Recession. Pluto’s last transit through Capricorn saw the American Declaration of Independence. And the time before that saw Martin Luther kicking off the Reformation.

Huge stuff that revolutionises the establishment, as you would expect from Pluto (transformation) in Capricorn (the establishment). In the first case, it was religious. In the second case, political (the French Revolution followed soon after.) And in today’s case, it is so far looking economic, though with clear political implications.

Why should Pluto function so powerfully in Capricorn? Maybe it is that Pluto, after his discovery, took on many of the attributes (such as death) previously associated with Capricorn’s ruler, Saturn. Maybe Capricorn, with its tendency to become encrusted and conservative, is like a red rag to Pluto who, underneath his demolition hat, is really concerned to bring about renewal.

In the 1520s, when Martin Luther was starting the Reformation, it was particularly the Church’s decadence, such as its sale of indulgences, that he was attacking. In what became the US in the 1770s, there was successful rebellion against the old-style established European Monarchy, heralding the rise of democracy across the western world.

Pluto in Capricorn destroys that which is decadent in the establishment. We don’t yet know what is being destroyed by Pluto’s present passage through Capricorn. Unlike the 1520s and 1770s, this transit is being intensified and made more dramatic by a square from Uranus. We can speculate: the West has had continual prosperity since soon after WWII. Taking it for granted, we have borrowed far too much and lived beyond our means. And growth has become an end in itself, a sacred mantra. That is decadence, an economic establishment that is no longer useful. The same with the American political system and European politics in the form of the EU. Both have recently shown they cannot work effectively in a crisis. That Democracy which was heralded by the last transit of Pluto in Capricorn has itself become decadent. America treats its political system as sacred and as an example to the world. It would be mega if that changed, but the astrological signs are that it will, particularly as the US comes up to its Pluto Return at 27 Capricorn in 9 to 10 years time.

The big question is what is coming next. Many people, astrologers and non-astrologers alike, can see a storm coming, particularly economically. In a way it’s obvious. My reading of the 2008 Pluto Ingress Chart is of a prolonged Recession coupled with deep structural change. I’m not thinking Depression, which suggests a much bigger drop in output and rate of unemployment. If Pluto was in Sag or Pisces, for example, I would be thinking Depression because you get boom and bust under these signs to a much greater degree, both being Jupiter and or Neptune-ruled.

Click to Enlarge

But Pluto in Capricorn is not like that. It is about creating solid foundations after an initial tearing down. In the Ingress Chart, Pluto is conjunct Venus and Jupiter and trine to Capricorn’s ruler, Saturn. I think this set of planets is probably a key to understanding the Recession. Saturn is Retrograde, suggesting Recession in order to restructure. Venus indicates that the economy is part of what Pluto in Cap will be addressing. Jupiter is the expansion that will return to the economy. And Pluto is gradually transiting all these planets. He will make his final crossing of the Ingress Jupiter in December 2012, a few months after the first exact square from Uranus to Pluto. This Pluto Ingress-Jupiter transit in Cap suggests the West re-formulating its ideas around economic growth, moving towards something more realistic and sustainable. For one, that means lower growth, and therefore new ideas around what matters in the economy: economic values, which is the Venus part of the stellium.

We haven’t hit bottom yet, but I suspect by the end of next year, after the Ingress transits and the first Uranus-Pluto square, we will be beginning to see a new kind of future; the Capricornian new foundation will be there, at least as an idea.

This, of course, is 2012 that we are talking about, a year that has its own mythology built up around it that can be quite apocalyptic. Remember the year 2000 also had this kind of mythology, and so have many years before that. Most prophecies do not come true, particularly these apocalyptic ones, and particularly ones that have become part of the collective and which do not have the proper discernment of a competent diviner behind them. When you are making a prediction, you are using intuition, but you have your own plumbing to pass it through first, and that needs to be clean. And there are all sorts of qualifications and justifications (if you are an astrologer) that need to be made around the prediction you are making. 2012 is a speculative prediction based on an extinct culture that has gained considerable collective momentum. I think that a lot of people probably do have a genuine intuition that a lot is going to happen in 2012, and western astrology backs that up, like it would for a lot of other years where a lot has happened.
I think it’s important not to let that genuine intuition be blurred by the New Age hype around 2012. These collective things do not have the discerning intelligence that an individual has, they scare people, and they are usually wrong.

I began this piece while thinking about the combination of Pluto in Capricorn and Neptune in Pisces, and when did that last happen? Because these 2 planets more than any other describe the age we are living in. The last time it happened was 1520-1531, when the Reformation began. This was a huge event, because the Church had so much power, and because it was so fundamental to the way people saw the world.

So not only was a major institution torn apart – Pluto in Capricorn – but people were also freed to have their own direct relationship to God, without the need for an intercessionary priest: this was Neptune in Pisces. Neptune is the mythologies we live by, and religion as myth (rather than as belief and dogma, which is Jupiter) comes under that heading. In Pisces, there are no barriers between you and God, it is the aspect of the mystic.

So that maybe gives us a clue as to the meaning of the age we live in now, which has the same signature as the Reformation. It is fascinating, because it is so unlikely, to find these 2 planets in the same signs so recently, and for such a huge and descriptive event to have occurred.

What we are looking for is the tearing apart of an encrusted establishment that leaves people free to experience reality for themselves. An establishment that has dogmas behind it. There are a few possibilities.

Politically, there is the dogma of democracy. We are led to believe that this is the most advanced political system, and that all societies will naturally evolve towards it, particularly if they get a helping hand, militarily if necessary, from ourselves. The democratic system, as I said earlier, is proving ineffective in the current crisis after 240 years, one Pluto cycle, in the ascendancy. To be ‘undemocratic’ is to be a bad person, and this dogma subverts free thought.

Economically there is the dogma of growth and free market capitalism. The economic success of the West has led to the belief that its political system, Democracy, must also be responsible for that success. So there is a tangle of beliefs here which will take a hit as the West becomes relatively less powerful and China, which is not a democracy, gradually becomes the leading superpower. The triumph in the Cold War confirmed the West’s belief in its own politics and economic system. The triumph of China will reverse that belief.

But if we are going to stick as closely as we can to the events of the 1520s, then we need to look for the undermining of a state-backed religious establishment that has undue power over people’s minds. That religious establishment is Science. The Ingress Chart for Pluto in Cap in 1515 had Pluto in a loose stellium opposite Jupiter, religion and belief. The current Ingress Chart also has Pluto in a stellium involving Jupiter, so a revolution in Science-as-Religion seems plausible.

Moreover, the Ingress Chart for Neptune in Pisces has 6 planets, including a New Moon and Jupiter, in Aries. This is very strong, and suggests new guiding mythologies.

Click to Enlarge

Science today provides the answers to the metaphysical questions that the Church used to provide. Like the medieval Church, it has state power behind it, and presents itself as the only possible reality. There is an enormous amount of freeing up of people’s minds that is needed here – it is a collective brainwashing as far reaching as occurred under medieval Christianity. Science, of course, has its validity: the brainwashing lies in the notion that it describes the only reality, the one true way of seeing the world.

The astrology is there, over the next 10 years, for this primitive way of seeing the world to start to fragment decisively (just as the events of the 1520s, dramatic as they were, were just a beginning – and beginnings are not always apparent at the time.)

The reason I think this may happen – and I am being speculative – is that we may be reaching the limits of Science at the micro and macro levels. In the middle ground, so to speak, Science continues to progress and technological developments occur apace.


But when we go down to the quantum level, or up to the galactic level, there are indications that the scientific paradigm may be breaking down. At the galactic level, there is the phenomenon of dark matter, an undetectable form of matter that allegedly makes up 83% of the universe. It has remained undetected ever since it was first postulated in the 1930s to explain the rotation of galaxies, which do not obey Newton’s Law of Gravity. In any other discipline, it would by now have been laughed out of court. I think it is a case of the Emperor’s New Clothes.

Science has also been stuck for a long time at the micro level. For decades this counter-intuitive world has been described by a model that involves the notion of supersymmetry. But there has been no experimental evidence for it. Evidence does now seem to be being gathered, but it leads away from the idea! The quantum world is one that no-one can ever see directly, possessed of numerous attributes that the mind can never fully grasp, and which seems to become more complex and fragmented the more it is pursued.

Then there is the Holy Grail of Science, the Theory of Everything, that would unite the micro and macro levels in one Grand Theory. For some decades String Theory has been the leading contender.
For some time there were 5 competing versions, then someone united them all under M Theory, which posits 11 dimensions, some of them existing at a nano level and wrapped up inside other dimensions. The theory is still not complete, and has been criticised for being untestable and lacking predictive power.

I think my point is clear! At the micro and macro levels, science seems to have been stuck for some time. And it doesn’t seem to me like some Einstein needs to come along and resolve it all. Science is and always has been a model of physical reality, and as a model it inevitably has limits: the model will break down when pushed to an extreme. Those limits seem to me to be being reached, and this will have a profound effect on the way we see the world. Every schoolkid will one day learn that Science no longer works when faced with the extremely large and extremely small, and it is therefore just a tool rather than a metaphysical system to which all other disciplines should bow. Pluto in Capricorn alongside Neptune in Pisces seems a good place to start: the dismantling of a rigid orthodoxy and the freeing of the individual to have their own perception of reality. This cultural impulse could be further established as Pluto moves on to Aquarius, the sign of Science; and as Neptune moves into Aries, a place of new mythologies. And let us hope that in the process the West moves on from its 1000 year love affair with monotheisms.


Site Meter