SATURN-PLUTO in CAPRICORN: 1518 and 2020

I wrote about the next big alignment, the 2020 Saturn-Pluto conjunction, a few weeks ago, and I feel inclined to go at it again, but from a different angle. The conjunction will be in Capricorn in early 2020, and I suggested it would reflect an era of big business, when the multinationals would gradually become the biggest political force in the world, more powerful than national governments.

And maybe there’s another possibility, if you consider this: the last time there was a Saturn-Pluto conjunction in Capricorn was in January 1518, 2 months after Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg and began the Protestant Revolution.

But firstly, the natures of Pluto and Saturn.

Pluto is death. He is also power. His meanings are quite raw. He is sex. He is taboos. And he is not under our control. We can propitiate him by recognising him, and by yielding to his demands – and they may be to give up everything we have, in the interests of something that is truer about who we are. Pluto doesn’t care if things are comfortable in mere human terms. He is Necessity, that deep impulse in life to slough off the old and to renew itself. It is a process that can take years. It just seems to drag on and on sometimes. And it may not be that we are holding back, it’s that the new isn’t ready to be born, we are in the chrysalis phase.

But when we are ready, it is definitely a new power to live that surges up: something that was always there, but not yet ready to be lived.

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And if you watch your Pluto transits, or recall them, and enter your experience with that lens, you’ll start to understand astrology on your pulses, it’s real knowledge on which you can build. Learning the signs and houses etc is necessary, but it is seeing it work deeply for yourself, that is the real initiation into this esoteric knowledge. And all esoteric means is seeing how things really work, seeing through the illusion of our all-consuming sense experience to the dreaming behind it.

And these transits can occur on a collective, as well as a personal, level.

And then there is Saturn. Saturn is the worldly taskmaster. We often find him difficult when we are young, because he’s a planet of age: patience, discipline, practicality, responsibility, finding your place in the world. These aren’t necessarily easy things when we’re young, and they’re certainly not cool. And that’s why Saturn can seem difficult. But when we’re older, we’re often onside with all that stuff, and Saturn becomes our friend, a planet of abundance: but earned.

So Saturn gives form and shape to things: you put him next to the energy of an outer planet, and things happen. Outer planets, which are not visible to the naked eye (hence their late discovery), aren’t a part of our conscious endowment. They come from somewhere else. They certainly stir the pot. But it can be a difficult process translating that, integrating that into who we are. Put Saturn into the mix, Saturn who lives in the liminal zone between the inner and outer planets – one foot in this world, one foot in the other – and bang, you have Uranus, or Neptune, or Pluto transmitting their vast energies onto this plane.

Bet you hadn’t thought of Saturn as having a foot in the other world? He seems to be so much a planet of this world, in fact he often seems to deny the other world, that is his shadow. “You are what you earn”, rules Saturn.

Saturn needs to be turned into the protector, instead of the denier, of the inner world. That is the task of the US, with her Sun in square to Saturn, her Protestant Saturn that gives no-one a moment’s rest.

But just think about it astronomically. Not only is Saturn’s form-loving nature perfectly designed to be a bridge between the outer and inner planets. But one side of him inevitably faces towards us, the inner planets. And the other side faces fate, destiny, the outer planets. The demands of Saturn, at his best, aren’t just the rules of the world. They are tinged with our destiny, those things we need to do.

So when we put Saturn and an outer planet together, there is an immediate channel for those outer planet energies, you’re not waiting for years for the outer events. At the end of 1989, Saturn conjoined Uranus-Neptune, and the Berlin Wall came down.  In 2001, Saturn opposed Pluto, and we had 9/11. And in 1517, Martin Luther nailed his theses to the church door.

SATURN OPPOSITE PLUTO

Pluto energies either empower, or overturn, the entrenched status quo. Pluto is about new life, a new paradigm. It isn’t necessarily something we attach value to, particularly on the collective level. I think the outer planets show that there ISN’T a collective evolution going on. How would one judge that anyway? Was the world post 9/11 ‘better’ than what came before? This may be the case on a personal level too. We always have the choice to resist the deeper truth that Pluto wants us to live by. America, for example, could have seen 9/11 as its chickens coming home to roost, as Obama’s erstwhile mentor the Rev Wright later put it. That would have been a collective insight. But she chose, by and large, not to see this obvious truth (and this includes Obama):  her response instead was to lash out at Afghanistan.

So because the collective tends to be unconscious in its responses, the events around Saturn-Pluto can just be a swing in the opposite direction. The last conjunction at the end of 1982, in Libra, could also be seen in these terms. It was the beginning of laissez faire economics, the empowerment of (relatively) rule-free capitalism. Essentially that was just a reaction to the rules around finance that had been brought in as a result of the Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed. Libra, losing our hard-earned balance. And of course the result of that was the Great Recession.

But it doesn’t have to be all bad! And maybe the good stuff doesn’t always get seen. Saturn-Pluto in Capricorn can be an empowerment of the rigid structures and hierarchies. But it can also be a revolution against them. This was what Martin Luther did to the Catholic Church. His actions contained a very powerful seed, which is often the way with Pluto.

If we look at the Saturn Pluto conjunctions of 1518 and 2020, they both have the Sun at 21/22 Capricorn. This suggests a connection between the 2 conjunctions, and that the successful opposition to entrenched establishment - in that case the multinational church - could, in 2020, see the beginning of a successful movement against multinational companies whose only interest, like the church at the time, is themselves. Below are the charts for the 2 conjunctions.

So I think the coming conjunction is likely to be both an empowerment of big business – there is no obvious way of controlling it as it gets bigger – but also protest against it.

There is a choice we can all make about what dream we live by. The big business dream is one of them, and seems to be getting stronger. But Saturn-Pluto also gives the chance to create other dreams, and make them practical (this is a very practical conjunction, with both Saturn and Capricorn present.)

Ecstasy and the Limits of Mundane Astrology

9/11 evokes strong views/feelings in probably most of us. So how possible is it to read a chart in those circumstances? Many think it was a US government conspiracy, and when they read the chart, that is what they see. I don’t think it was a conspiracy, and when I read the chart, I see something closer to the ‘official’ explanation.

Maybe this is a problem that applies particularly to mundane as opposed to personal astrology, because we often come in with strong views. Take the Ukraine. Lots of astrologers have been analysing that country’s chart in the light of the recent political events. We may not know much about the Ukraine, but Russia is playing a decisive role in events, and how can we not feel one way or the other about that?

So again, can we really do astrology effectively in those circumstances? I think we can, but it requires considerable self-mastery.

It’s like doing a reading for a close friend or family member. To read effectively we need both emotional neutrality and emotional engagement. But with close friends and family how can we be neutral? There are things, for example, that annoy us about them, that we probably see as their faults, but our view of those ‘faults’ is coloured by our emotional response. And if someone is your wife/husband/partner, well it’s a tangle of smoke and mirrors, it’s a crucible that we are in looking out of, and to do astrology we need to be out looking in.

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I’m not ruling out astrology for family and close friends (by close, I mean you know them well enough to behave badly towards them, and you still remain friends!) Not at all, I do some good astrology round the dinner table with a few glasses of wine in me. But maybe I need the wine to take me out of myself in that context?

Astrology is divinatory. It is grounded in certain rules of interpretation, but that is just the launch pad for the really powerful stuff, when something speaks through you, your intuition, the gods, guides, whatever. In a good reading this always happens to some extent, and you may not even be aware you are doing it. I’m liable to protest: “But I can justify what I said in terms of the rules, I wasn’t being intuitive!”, but that’s just my rational bias.

Astrology is in this sense ecstatic, a word which comes from the Greek meaning to stand outside oneself. And we probably all know that feeling of bliss that comes with it, how after doing a reading you feel like you’ve been somewhere else, and we all have our own ways of coming back and absorbing what has just happened.

Which brings me back to mundane astrology. You do not have a living person in front of you, you have a chart for a country that is perhaps thousands of miles away. I think it’s possible to read the chart ecstatically, to be a mouthpiece for the gods of that country. But I think it’s very difficult. It’s more natural to follow the rules of astrology in these cases. But then we are liable to interpret using our ordinary human emotions, and see what we want to see. Because any astrological configuration has a number of equally valid and even opposing interpretations, if we are just following the rules.

Mundane astrology can be one-sidedly rational. I was on a short course in it many years ago, and we certainly learned some of the rules, but at no point did we use them to delve into national character, which I had naively thought was the whole idea! I still do think that. To read accurately, you need to get inside the chart, you need a sense of what it feels like to be a Ukrainian, or its government, for example (which can just be an intuitive thing.) There has to be feeling there, like in any reading, but not too personal.

So with mundane astrology there seems to be an issue around bringing Fire and Water (intuition and feeling) into the reading, along with Earth and Air (accurate data and rational interpretation). For example, you could have seen at its inception that the EU was going to go through a major crisis around 2012. That is basic astrology. But would it cause the EU to unravel, or come together on a new basis? You would have needed Fire and Water, which go beyond the ‘rules’ of astrology, to be accurate about that.

Obama the White Man

I recently watched a film, ‘Pierrepoint’, about Britain’s last public executioner. He hanged hundreds of people, including 202 Germans after the various war trials. After his career ended in 1956, he commented that it left a bitter aftertaste, saying that, ”I have come to the conclusion that executions solve nothing, and are only an antiquated relic of a primitive desire for revenge which takes the easy way and hands over the responsibility for revenge to other people...”

Revenge is something that as a self-aware human one needs to forego. It is based on hatred and a desire to destroy. It is essentially life-denying rather than life-promoting. This doesn’t mean that sometimes certain people don’t need to be ‘taken out’ (one of a series of US military euphemisms that have entered our vocab in recent years – collateral damage; extraordinary rendition etc). But motive is all.

The desire for revenge is a natural human emotion, and when a nation is feeling it strongly, as the US has felt about bin Laden for many years, you cannot simply stand in its way. The job of the leader is to introduce some dignity into the process, to treat the enemy as human, and not to let people rationalise what is happening, saying ‘justice’ when they mean ‘revenge’.

This is not what President Obama is doing. His words on hearing the news of bin Laden’s death were “We got him,” a deliberate quoting of George Bush at his cowboy worst on hearing the news of Saddam’s capture. With Bush, it was merely a capture; it is far more distasteful to say it of a death. Obama has shown only joy at the death of his fellow human, and being a leader who is adept at using symbolism, has made a beeline for Ground Zero.

After he had hanged someone, Pierrepoint treated the body with respect and care as he prepared it for the undertakers. His point was that whatever they had done to deserve being killed, they had paid for it and were now innocent.

From a US point of view, bin Laden was an enemy who needed to be killed. The trouble with America is that they don’t have much conception of treating your enemy with honour. They are so convinced of their own rightness, of American 'exceptionalism', that anyone who opposes them is simply a mindless terrorist to whom the normal rules of war do not apply, they are ‘illegal combatants’.

It is well known that during the First World War, there would be ceasefire on Christmas Day and you would even get enemy forces coming out of their trenches and playing football with each other. Wars aren't what you'd want, but it is a case of each soldier fighting for his or her own country, and you can’t begrudge them that. It is what most of us would do if it came to it, however pacifist we might think we are. And honour among soldiers involves recognising that your enemy is in the same position as you are in. He is not ‘bad’, not the demon your government would have you believe. You would still kill him without blinking if necessary, but because you have to, because your country’s security is at stake, not because you hate him.

And this applies to bin Laden. 9/11 was a terrible thing to do. But so was invading Iraq without proper forethought, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths (a hundred-fold more than 9/11), all for the purpose of controlling a region because it supplies your oil. Meanwhile allowing your people to wrongly think Iraq had been involved in perpetrating 9/11. This is the nature of war. People and nations do terrible things. And yes, if you can you will probably kill the leaders of the other side.

And sometimes you can take the moral high ground, particularly when your enemy is not fighting for its own security, but in order to expand its sphere of influence and control.

But this was not the case with bin Laden. America cannot take the moral high ground, not after what it has done, and not when you consider that bin Laden’s desire was to fight American control in the Middle East, and that he was fighting an enemy that vastly outnumbered him.

There are plenty of Americans who can see this. Famously, or notoriously, Obama’s erstwhile mentor Rev Wright, who said about 9/11 that, “America’s chickens are coming home to roost.” Obama would not have any of this, and disowned him.

I think events around the death of bin Laden are very revealing about Obama. His Mars at 22 Virgo conjoins the US Neptune at 22 Virgo and squares the US Mars at 21 Gemini. Mars-Neptune is the cowboy aspect in the US chart, the glamorisation of violence, the delusion of America’s undiluted rightness.“We got him,” says Obama after the gruesome death of his enemy codenamed ‘Geronimo’, another glamorisation.

Like bin Laden, Geronimo was a warrior fighting the expansion of US control over his people. And like bin Laden, he did some terrible things, evaded capture for many years and pulled off some stunning feats. So you can see the connection, and Obama needs to own up to it. (Obama’s Mars squares the Sun of Geronimo the Gemini and opposes the Sun of bin Laden!)

Obama needs on the one hand to own up to the grudging respect it shows for his enemy, and at the same time the racism it shows towards the Native Americans, the way they were treated like vermin to be removed from land the Americans wanted.

An Afro-American aware of his heritage would never have used the term Geronimo. Obama is half Kenyan and half white American. He does not have in his black background the centuries of racism and brutality that white Americans have inflicted on other races. If he does have it, it's in his mother's white background. He thinks like the white American who is able to believe that the US is essentially a good and religious nation with respect for human rights, that is promoting freedom around the world. He has had relatively little experience of being at the sharp end of America’s ability to trample over anyone and anything that stands in its way.

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We have had a lot of experience of the Obama who has Sun in Leo square Neptune. What we haven’t seen so much is the Moon in Gemini square to both Pluto and Chiron. The Moon isn’t so visible anyway, and in Obama’s case it is also hidden away at the bottom of the chart, and hidden by secretive Pluto. The Moon becomes more visible when you are familiar with, and at ease in a situation. I have often wondered about his Moon. Anyone who casts a light as bright as Obama once did has got to have a corresponding shadow lurking somewhere, and I always felt his Moon would have something to do with it.

Gemini is the twins, it is light and dark, it is Jekyll and Hyde, or at least can be. If you are not reflective, then it probably will be. And when it comes to America’s shadow, the way America treats others, Obama has repeatedly shown himself to be blind.

Obama’s Moon is at 3 Gemini, and Neptune has recently entered Pisces, the sign that squares Gemini. With the natal square to both Pluto and Chiron, this Moon can express itself in a really bad way if someone is not conscious. I think Obama’s unalloyed joy and cowboy attitude at the death of bin Laden, and his collusion with the US at its mob worst, is a sign of this Moon relaxing and becoming activated as Neptune moves in to square it. It is populist, and will likely win him the next election; but anyone who is hoping for more is likely to be disappointed. The fine words though, as always, will be there.

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In Obama's Progressed Chart, over the next year we will see Prog Mars opposite Prog Asc, and Prog Moon moving into Aries. So Obama the warrior is likely to become more prominent, and the Nobel committee will be wondering what they must have been thinking in 2009.