COVID and SATURN-PLUTO
On 23rd March, Pluto will move into Aquarius. A major event for the collective. A new age slowly dawning, especially with Neptune also changing sign in two years. About time too. Covid was a rubbish time for so many people, occurring under the Saturn-Pluto conjunction of 2020, and therefore an event of great significance, whose implications will be with us for years. When Saturn and Pluto team up, Pluto’s darkness, often ultimately restorative, is given a channel into the world. The loss of education for many children, that will impact on their futures. The economic hardship. The enforced isolation.
But why should this type of school education matter so much? And many people in the so-called 3rd world would die for what we call hardship. Maybe, in an extraverted culture, we have learnt to be with ourselves and question ourselves more. There is depth to Pluto’s darkness. But it is also usually painful.
The Saturn-Pluto conjunction occurred in Capricorn, the sign of government. The governmental response to Covid was almost universally totalitarian. Very Saturn-Pluto. I have heard the US government’s response to Covid traced back to the totalitarian response to 9/11. Very interesting, because 9/11 occurred during the preceding Saturn-Pluto opposition. In both cases, it was governments acting scared, over-reacting like a spooked herd of horses. I don’t think we need read darker motives than that into the governmental responses, even though they make for a conspiracist’s dream. Nonetheless, totalitarian responses are a bad habit for governments to get into.
In the case of 9/11, there was not a single terrorist attack on the US mainland after that event. And Covid turned out to be much less of a threat than was initially feared. Like I said, over-reactions by government. But that is what herds of prey animals do. And that is what we are, as human collectives. Pluto is a collective planet, and he can show us our collective nature.
PLUTO IN AQUARIUS, COVID and GENETIC ENGINEERING
Pluto, however, is moving into Aquarius, and that is what I want to talk about, having already written two blogs on the subject (Jan 24th and Feb 5th). But I had a reason for talking about Covid first. This is because Aquarius is a sign of human inventiveness, of new technology, for better or for worse. So I have been on the lookout for hints of those technological advances in the run-up to the Pluto Ingress. That was the idea behind this piece.
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| THE WUHAN LABORATORY |
It has recently come out that Covid in all likelihood did indeed escape from a Chinese lab. It was the product of genetic engineering, and caused a worldwide pandemic. What better example of Pluto in Aquarius could you get? Of course, it happened some years before Pluto in Aquarius, but the conclusion that it was human-made is only now starting to be drawn more conclusively. Great advances can come from genetic engineering, it is a very powerful technology. As well as disasters. These are the 2 sides of Pluto, its destructive as well as its creative power, in the realm of technological inventions (Aquarius). Technology itself I prefer to think of as Virgo, but the initial genius behind it is Aquarian.
There was always suspicion Covid had come from a lab, some people because they wanted it to be true, others because there was a plausible scientific possibility. Trump continued to call it the Chinese virus: he wasn’t just being childish, he had a point. As ever with Geminis, sometimes what look like lies turn out to be truths. Trickster Mercury.
The Chinese were engaged in ‘gain of function’ research with a virus, speeding up, through genetic engineering, the process of it becoming highly infectious and transmissible in humans. This was one of the giveaways, because this new virus became so infectious so quickly. Proper safeguards were not in place. Scientist Matt Ridley lays all this out in proper detail in his interview with Jordan Peterson, which you can find on youtube.
It was cock-up that caused the pandemic, and herd panic was the response. So much can be explained in these kinds of ways. I think it is psychologically more sound to do so, firstly because there is a lot of truth in that way of explaining things; and secondly, because once you start attributing dark motives to unnamed individuals, you are usually giving them powers they do not have, and projecting your own malignity and agency (Mars) onto them. Saturn-Pluto and the pandemic was a notable time for this kind of shadow projection, as might be expected. Same with 9/11, another Saturn-Pluto era, and the idea that it was a US government set-up.
So we might expect genetic engineering to make considerable advances in the coming years, for better and perhaps for worse, because it has been flagged up as Pluto advances towards Aquarius.
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NUCLEAR FUSION
Nuclear fusion is the Holy Grail of energy research. It had been 30 years away for decades. Until now. In a recent youtube interview with Lex Fridman, research physicist Dennis Whyte claimed that, due to recent advances, the first working fusion reactor is only about 4 years away.
Energy produced from nuclear fission – the splitting of heavy atoms – is currently the only realistic alternative to fossil fuels, for the intensity and reliability of energy needed for our major cities: major cities is where humanity is mostly headed. Those ongoing giant cultural melting pots. But many people have been unnecessarily spooked by nuclear energy since the end of the Cold War, when the fear of nuclear war faded, and the fear passed over to the peaceful use of nuclear energy. This was as Pluto moved towards the nuclear axis at 2-10 Gemini-Sagittarius.
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This axis, which has proved sensitive to transits, is based on the first controlled use of nuclear energy, in Chicago in 1942. The Uranus (splitting) -Saturn (matter) conjunction is very descriptive. The axis will next be activated in 3 years time, when Uranus in Gemini begins to cross the nuclear axis, and Pluto in Aquarius begins to trine/sextile it. It will also be the first Uranus Return of the nuclear chart, and this is highly significant, maybe suggesting a completion of the cycle of nuclear energy as fission (Uranus), as it moves on to fusion. But also, perhaps, a re-acceptance of fission energy for the meantime, on a needs-must basis, if we are to gradually wean ourselves off oil. The chart for the 1st Oil Strike in 1869 is having its 1st Neptune (oil) Return in the next 2 years, suggestive of this gradual shift – from oil, to fission, to fusion.
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Controlled Fusion needs its own chart, but we have yet to achieve it, so a chart will have to wait. But we do have a chart for the first uncontrolled reaction – ie the first H-Bomb – in 1952. That will have to do the job for now. And it does it very well, in that it has a Saturn-Neptune conjunction: the fusion (Neptune) of matter (Saturn). This is quite remarkable, given that the fission chart has an equally descriptive, parallel signature of Saturn-Uranus. Neptune will begin to oppose this fusion signature in 11 years time, as Saturn squares it. It too, has its own axis, for the Moon opposes Saturn-Neptune, so we have a tighter axis of 20-23 Aries-Libra.
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Just as remarkable is Pluto on the Midheaven in Leo: the power (Pluto) of Leo’s ruler (the Sun). It is fusion that powers the Sun and all other stars. Astrology can be eerily descriptive sometimes. The Sun itself is hidden by Sign and House, in 12th House Scorpio, showing perhaps the difficulty we have had in creating a technology to harness this energy, as well as its hidden power (Scorpio). But Pluto is coming up to square the Fusion Sun, and then he will hard aspect the Angles in 15 years time – as Neptune finishes with the Fusion Axis.
Putting all this together, something will be happening in just a few years as Uranus and Pluto activate the Nuclear Axis of the basic nuclear chart, and this is in line with the claim of some kind of working fusion reactor in 4 years time. But it will take another 10 years or so after that for the technology to reach some kind of initial maturity.
What has happened is that the Americans, spinning off from ITER, the giant international experimental fusion reactor, have used a new superconducting material that enables the prolonged sustaining of the magnetic field that contains the plasma of hydrogen nuclei, without using vast amounts of energy. This plasma, heated to tens of millions of degrees, hotter than the sun, causes a fusion reaction. And vast amounts of energy are released, with no radioactive waste, and no possibility of an explosion. Expect the news to get exciting in 2 years time, when Uranus first enters Gemini, and Pluto settles into Aquarius.
In another method of catalysing fusion, in which lasers are fired at pellets containing fusion fuel, more energy was released than was put in. This is a first, and was reported in December 2022.
This technology promises to transform humanity in the long-term.
QUANTUM COMPUTING/ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
A step forward in quantum computing was also recently announced. Data was reliably transferred from one quantum chip to another. This is another first, and holds the eventual promise of computational power of an entirely different order to what we have currently.
This raises the wider question of machine intelligence, a very Aquarian theme. Already, computers are producing useful answers to problems where, due to the complexity of the calculations undertaken, the operators/programmers do not understand how the computer has reached its conclusions. There is now a branch of computing dedicated to trying to understand what the computers are doing. This problem can only get harder as ever more sophisticated and demanding programmes are used. Already the machines are irreversibly more intelligent than us in certain ways: Pluto in Aquarius can only empower this trend.
A fortiori quantum computing. I don’t pretend to understand how it works. But there is already, to my mind, something a bit spooky about the ability of conventional computers to be beyond our understanding. Throw in not just the exponentially increased power of quantum computers, but the fact that they operate on the quantum level, a universe that is hard to understand rationally, if at all: the spookiness to come may be of a different order.
Another advance has been ChatGPT, which I covered in my February blog. It was released in the autumn, and had an electrifying effect due to the human-like way it was able to create essay responses to questions.
So these are 4 technological Pluto in Aquarius themes that I have noted activity around in the run-up to the Ingress: Genetic Engineering; Nuclear Fusion, and Quantum Computing/AI.
The dark side that we have seen already is a pandemic created in all probability by genetic engineering in a lab. This is an event of huge significance, but uncertainty over the scientific conclusions, lack of co-operation by the Chinese, and political considerations have kept the issue muted.
