THE WORLD IS CHANGING – AND ASTROLOGY TOO

With Uranus currently squaring Pluto, the world is undergoing one of those big shifts that happen every 20 or 30 years, when 2 of the 3 outer planets hard aspect each other. This present shift is intensified by the fact that Uranus and Pluto are also aspecting major points, particularly the Suns, of so many of the world’s most powerful countries.

The Sun, if you like, is our inner goals. Who am I, what am I becoming? These sorts of questions are raised in major transits to the Sun in both an individual and a collective. It is very clear in the case of the European Union, which has the Sun at 10 Capricorn, that it is going through this kind of self-questioning, which often takes the form of a crisis that forces the issue – people and collectives don’t usually make big changes willingly, we prefer to stay with the known.

America, with its Sun at 13 Cancer, has yet to experience the full power of Uranus-Pluto. But it will, and if it does have a crisis, I expect it to be political, a crisis of governability: who runs America, the President and Congress (with give and take), or the right wing of the Republican Party? The right-wing is usually ascendant when a country feels insecure, and this issue seems to have been going on in the US since the fall of Communism (under the Uranus-Neptune conjunction) and the loss of the old certainties about America’s place in the world and who are the good guys and bad guys. New certainties may be the answer. Or maybe the US will learn to live without them.

Just in case anyone thinks I’m being anti-American (I’m not!) the UK (with natal Sun at 10 Capricorn) also has its own identity crisis, particularly around its membership of the EU and the potential loss of Scotland next year. (I don’t think Scotland will break away, for reasons of “If it works, don’t fix it.” There is no crisis, no survival issue to push it into happening.) And also the perennial issue of Britain’s place in the world since it lost its Empire, still trying to punch above its weight on the one hand, and grovelling to America to keep its place at the top table, while tending to doubt itself and be overly self-critical on the other. There is plenty of grist for our mill, plenty to work through.

This is some of the political dimension of Uranus-Pluto (which is also clearly very active in the Arab world.) And there is the economic dimension: the Great Recession, and the historic shift of economic power from the West to the East.

But there is also a big cultural shift, with political implications, brought about by the power of the internet. The internet came about in the mid 90s, in the later stages of the Uranus-Neptune conjunction, the power of which went on and on as Uranus and Neptune, entering Pisces and Aquarius respectively, were in mutual reception for about 7 years*. And the internet, with Uranus and Neptune behind it, developed very rapidly – within a few short years of its creation, there was an internet bubble on the stock market.

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Uranus rules electricity and computers and networking, and Neptune is the imaginative power that can be expressed through the internet. And let’s not forget the creativity of Uranus, the unexpected developments that we wouldn’t have thought of along the way.

I think under Uranus-Pluto, the internet (Uranus) has begun to come into its own as an economic, political and cultural power (Pluto).  In the 2008 US Presidential Election, in the early stages of Uranus-Pluto (and these transits have wide orbs, big changes take years), Barack Obama was the first candidate to use the internet to build a grassroots support movement.

Politicians can use the power of the internet, but its power can also be used against them. Through the social media and the bloggers, people in countries where you can’t speak freely are speaking freely. An enormous power of social interaction and free speech has been unleashed. In China, the government keeps trying to censor it, but people will always find a way round. The internet is too powerful, and it is also an aspect of the globalisation that came into the world during Pluto’s transit through Sagittarius from 1995 to 2008.

It is probably the most powerful (Pluto) voice for democracy (Uranus) that has ever existed, and it is profound. I don’t mean democracy in the political sense of choosing your government by election, because usually the choice is very limited, and you don’t really know what the candidates will do once elected. And you have no choice between elections.

No, I mean it in the sense that people can connect with each other and express their opinion and keep informed in ways they couldn’t and exert pressure on governments.

But it is not just political, it is cultural. And it applies to the astrology world. Just a few years ago, if you were yer average astrologer, you’d probably have a few astro-friends locally to talk to, that you might or might not be particularly sympatico with, and that would be that. And once a year  you might trot off to a conference or a summer school for some wider contact and inspiration.

But in recent years, under the dynamic, transformative impact of Uranus-Pluto, all that has been changing. The old structures are still in place, but increasingly astrology is taking place on the internet, allowing for a much wider ongoing interaction through Facebook and Twitter and Skyping, as well as allowing talents to emerge through the astro-blogosphere. For instance, I am a member of the Exeter Astrology Facebook group. I am local to Exeter, but we also have lots of ‘country cousins’ on the site, mainly from the UK, but also from across the world, and we share all sorts of astro-stuff on a regular basis.

Previously, to establish yourself as an astrologer you’d need to do a course and get a certificate and then advertise locally and hope a few people might be interested and that your old course tutors might send a few people your way. And I’m not criticising that at all, it has its strengths and it was what was needed. To become more widely known, you’d probably need to write a book and be invited to speak at conferences.

With the internet, all you need to do is to write an astro-blog or vlog and be good at it and keep it up. Of course, being ‘good’ at it isn’t easy. And you end up with readers and friends from all over the world, and doing readings via skype all over the world. What a change from a few years ago, what a wonderful change, who would have thought it?

And no formal qualifications are needed (I don’t have any) and it’s understandable some people may feel uneasy with that because formal training does have its place (unless like me you have Mercury in Aquarius opp Uranus!) And the internet also has its own style that is different to the traditional books and prepared talks and magazine articles. It is short, it is informal, and it is to the point. If you don’t do that, you probably won’t have much of an audience. OK, we can complain about people’s lack of attention span. But there’s also something good in it. And the blogosphere seems to be where a lot of people are now learning astrology, and one day you find they've been reading your blog for years and you never knew.

Like it or not, the internet  is the way astrology is going. A big part of astrology, probably more than we know, is already happening via the internet, and it’s only going to get more so. And bloggers have emerged who are good at what they do and they seem like a separate world to the prominent figures in the establishment astro-world, and it would be good if that divide could somehow start to be bridged. Bloggers and internet groups are a big part of astrology’s future. That is why in the US it is so good to see Rick Levine and Jeff Jawer ’s regular astro-vlog on youtube. And bloggers were on at least one occasion specifically invited to speak at a conference in the US. And The Mountain Astrologer Magazine presents a digest of astro-blogs. In the UK, there seem to be no such bridges. Like, maybe the AA newsletter could present a digest of some UK blogs?

How astrology is done, how we think about it and write about it, is being re-defined on the internet. There are a lot of very good, very experienced astrologers in the ‘establishment’ who would have a lot to offer in the blogosphere.

Politically, the internet works very differently to a traditional institution – it is more bottom up than top down. In the establishment, credibility as an astrologer comes from the top – you are awarded a certificate, you are maybe asked to teach or give talks. Nothing wrong with that. But the internet works very differently: you gain credibility because people read you and they like what you write and they talk about it and discuss with you and link to others. And everybody has a voice. And this is part of a wider cultural shift that is going on as the internet develops.

* A mutual reception occurs when 2 planets are each in a sign the other rules. Uranus was in Neptune-ruled Pisces, while Neptune was in Uranus-ruled Aquarius. It acts a bit like a conjunction.