ISRAEL, THE NUCLEAR CHART and IRAN'S MID-LIFE CRISIS

Scorpio is the sign presiding over the current Middle East conflict, suggesting a side to it that is hidden. An obvious place to look is Iran. I am thinking of an unspoken nuclear threat from Israel.

Some technicalities. Natally: Iran's Moon in Gemini is on the 'nuclear axis', as it is known, of the chart for the 1st nuclear chain reaction. Its Uranus at 20 Scorpio is 1/2 a degree off the nuclear Mars. 

 

By transit: The lunar eclipse of 28th Oct was on Iran's Chiron/MC. The New Moon of 13th November has Sun, Moon and Mars all on Iran's Uranus/the nuclear Mars, and on the MC too in Tel Aviv, while the MC in Tehran will be on the nuclear axis. All opposite transiting Uranus, giving Iran a Uranus opposition, a mid-life crisis, in which this New Moon will be a key point.

We know that Iran is implicated in this conflict. Trump warned Biden some time ago not to unfreeze $6bn of Iranian funds, because they would use it for terrorism. I know a lot of people cannot accept that Trump can be right about anything, but that is their own wilful blindness. We are seeing the results of Biden ignoring Trump's advice right now.

This Scorpionic war is about survival for Israel, Mars in Scorpio being defensive rather than offensive. The bogeyman behind the war, Iran, denies Israel's right to exist. I don't think Israel would hesitate to use nuclear weapons to take out Iran's deep underground nuclear facilities if it felt there was an imminent likelihood of them having nuclear weapons.

I am not concerned that there will be major escalation of this conflict. What can anyone in the region do against Israel backed by the US? Iran would be obliterated, and knows it, and the astrology suggests a nuclear dimension to that awareness.

There is another chart for Iran, the symbolic founding of the Islamic republic, based on when Khomeini returned from exile on Feb 1 1979. It similarly has a Uranus opposition, but here Uranus rules the Aquarian Sun, enlarging its scope. And in the next few years, Neptune will hard-aspect all its Angles.

So even though there are gruelling Scorpionic times to go through in the short-term, I am hopeful that it will lead to long-term change in Iran, as its Aquarian religious fundamentalism is shaken by Uranus, and its incarnation through the Angles is dissolved by Neptune.

After that, maybe, the Abraham accords, which began under Trump as a way of normalising Israel's relations with the Arab world, can be revived. They were low-hanging fruit waiting to be picked, and Biden ignored them, because they were Trump's achievement. By enabling this war, which was always going to be hopeless for Hamas, Iran has achieved the wider objective of halting, for now, any possible return to these accords.

 

 

SATURN GOES DIRECT

 

Saturn will go Direct on Sat 4th Nov, after 5 months in retreat. You can probably feel it already. It is time to begin incarnating those nebulous Saturn in Pisces dreams, step by steady step, for that is Saturn's way. You don't have to know the goal, just the next step. Things are starting to become concrete, you know where you stand, what you want. Trust (Pisces) in whatever is or is not (Saturn).

 

 

THE ASTROLOGICAL TASK OF OUR AGE 

The chart below is for the day that Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published. It tells us something important about the theory of Evolution, for the Sun was in Sagittarius: namely that this theory is a belief (Sag) rather than a fact (Gemini). The Sun is opposite Uranus in Gemini, showing the ground-breaking nature of the theory, but also the presence of a trickster in the form of reason. 

 

The word 'fact' is nowadays used to give authority to scientific beliefs, in the same way that 'God' or 'the Bible' was used as authority for religious beliefs in the middle ages. But what is the world apart from our collection of beliefs and interpretations about it, as created by the brain, itself an artefact of our perception? As astrologers, we use sky stories, and they work. That is good enough for us. And it should be enough for science that science works. 

 

The bigger astrological theme around this state of affairs is the 490 year Neptune-Pluto cycle, the presiding influence, the context for all other astrological considerations. The last conjunction, in 1891, was in Gemini, as was the one before it. So we live in a Gemini Age: an age of facts. It is hard, by definition, for us to see collectively the shadow of that, which is the opposite sign of Sagittarius. 

 

Have you noticed how upset and angry people can get if you question eg the climate crisis narrative? It shows that they feel their belief system to be under attack. This does not make them right or wrong about climate. It is that it has become a belief that tells them who they are, that I am pointing out. It is the Sagittarius shadow of their Gemini scientific facts. 

 

Returning to the theme of Evolution, it has to be said that it is a good story and a useful story. But its mechanism is a mathematical impossibility. It is like the monkey at the typewriter producing Shakespeare. Life has such a complexity at the cellular level that it could not have happened in the time available. (Watch mathematician David Berlinski on this) So around the story of Evolution remains the bigger mystery of life and its origins. 

 

There is nothing wrong with beliefs. We need them. The point is to be conscious of them, to choose them. Don't treat them as ultimate statements about the universe. Then you will have Sag and Gemini in balance: you will have accomplished the astrological task of our age. 

 

The collective can't help but have beliefs that are to an extent rigid. Our job is not to buy into that, but dance around them. As astrologers, our task is Uranian: to be the skilful trickster who can open up other, softer and more whole ways of seeing, without provoking a reaction.

 

 

URANUS-PLUTO and ENVIRONMENTALISM

The Uranus-Pluto conjunction in Virgo of the 1960s is as good a place as any, astrologically, to trace the beginnings of modern environmentalism. There is the deep feminine, as found in the cycles of the natural world, Virgo as nature goddess: she gives us the power to live, and that is Pluto. It is Virgoan nature, which is seen as pristine, fragile and in need of our protection, rather than nature red in tooth and claw, which is more like Scorpio.

Then there is the counter-cultural rebellion aspect, which is Uranus, that often brings its own anti-authority, anti-technology, anti-capitalist and even anti-humanity undercurrents, that has little to do with environmentalism, but uses it.

And there is the hair-shirt aspect of Virgo, which understands sufficiency and the inner joy to be found in moderation, but can go too far in her renunciation of the world: we see this at its most extreme in the reckless 'Just Stop Oil' attitude. The shadow of Virgo is compassionate Pisces, which would not be denying western levels of prosperity to Africa, by restricting their use of oil, as has been the case for many years now.

The apocalyptic thinking around the environment is very Uranus-Pluto also: a disaster (Uranus) that threatens our survival (Pluto).

The environmental movement is a complex thing; it is like a religion in many ways, and I think a lot of it can be unpacked using this 1960s conjunction.

 

 

THE ASTROLOGY OF CREATION (PART II)

 I recently wrote a piece in which I generated some astrology around the 2 main modern Creation Myths: the Big Bang and Evolution. But then I realised that Evolution is not truly a Creation Myth. It tells us how human beings came about, but not how life itself came about. For that we have no story, for we have no idea beyond improbably complex and unknown events in the primeval soup. This is remarkable. What culture apart from us has not had a story about how life came about? We do not know where we came from, and as such are truly impoverished. I do not wish however, to damn modern culture. We have a lot going for us.

As ever, Astrology can provide a story where Science cannot. Astrology is bigger than Science, for it uses all 4 elements of Fire, Earth, Air and Water to describe the universe, as opposed to Science's limited emphasis on just Air and Earth (theory and data.) Science is the younger brother of Astrology, and needs to defer to it if it is not to get out of balance.

In my previous post, I talked about the Big Bang from the point of view of the year it was theorised (1931). Before that, I also wrote about it as the combined action of Uranus (the creative spark, the blue touchpaper), Neptune (the primordial imagination that dreamed a universe into being) and Pluto (the tremendous power contained in that tiny singularity that keeps the universe unfolding even now.)

By the same reasoning, we can create an astrological mythology around the beginning of life. What are these stories other than mythologies? The universe is dreamed into being - it is, if you like, an artefact of the brain - there is in reality no special realm called 'fact' that Science likes to pride itself upon.

The Universe was dreamed into being by gods - Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. And so was Life itself, but with consciousness, the inner dimension of matter, having more primacy. Uranus was the spark when, as it were, God reached out and matter awakened. It then dreamed forms for itself - Neptune - with an irrepressible drive to live and keep unfolding (Pluto).

With this kind of mythology behind life, how can we possibly reduce its continual unfoldment to the brutal and reductionist 'survival of the fittest'? Ruthless Pluto might not blanche at such a mechanism, but Neptune, with his feeling for beauty, would certainly have something to say. As would creative Uranus, offended by his reduction to blind chance.

I had a dream some years ago in which I was shown a peppered moth, perfectly adapted to his surroundings (the classic example used in biology lessons.) But I was also told that the mechanism we are given for evolution only describes a very thin slice of how this moth came to be this way.

My criterion is, in a way, aesthetic. The true is the beautiful, and vice-versa, as Keats declaimed, and to which pure mathematicians would readily assent. There is nothing beautiful about 'survival of the fittest'. It is brutal, and reflects the Victorian capitalism of its time. It also reflects the one-sided mythology of 'nature red in tooth and claw' (Tennyson), but leaves out the Rousseau-ian mythology of benign, pristine nature (which can itself be one-sided, if we look at modern environmentalism and its revulsion at human impact upon the natural world.)

There is no way that the very slow and haphazard micro-changes of 'survival of the fittest' is adequate, even scientifically, as a description of the ongoing unfoldment of life and the rapid flowering of new species. We accept it because it 'has' to be that way. How about the idea that life unfolds according to the beautiful (Neptune) and the co-operative (Uranus)? And where does that irrepressible impulse to survive come from if not Pluto?

So let us have another look at the chart for the publication of On the Origin of Species (time of day unkown) from the point of view of the origin of life itself.

Sun in Sagittarius, which is perfect for a Creation Myth. Sun opposite Uranus: there is the divine spark in the primeval soup that started life. Sun trine Neptune and Jupiter: the dreaming (Neptune) that creates a multitude (Jupiter) of species. And then there is Pluto, unaspected. The power is missing. In other words the mechanism of 'survival of the fittest', which is very Plutonian and central to Darwin's thesis, does not provide the power to move life forward. QED 😆

It is archetypal forces from deep within consciousness that created, and continue to create, life. Matter and consciousness cannot be separated. Previous cultures understood this. As I said earlier, I don't want to damn modern culture, that is too easy and we have a lot going for us. But in our technological triumph we have lost our archetypal bearings. Astrology, through which the universe continues to remind us of who we are, speaks the language that we have lost. I think it is a language that speaks to everyone, for what is more basic and ancient than our relationship with the sky?

 

Meanwhile let us have faith, that even in the midst of the huge transition that humanity is undergoing, with its extinctions and environmental degradations, that the outer planets have their bigger schemes: the renewals of Pluto, the re-dreamings of Neptunes, and the new opportunities of Uranus.

FATE and the RELATIONAL SELF/ THE ASTROLOGY OF CREATION

FATE and the RELATIONAL SELF

For indigenous peoples worldwide, the self is seen as relational rather than as autonomous, which is how we tend to see ourselves in the modern world. Hence the right way to live is by finding balance between oneself and the world, for they are not separate.

This perspective was held - or should I say experienced, for it was a reality for those people - by the creators of horoscopic astrology. ChatGPT is very definite about this! It also makes the point that astrology "is inherently relational, as it posits that human beings are connected to the larger cosmos and are influenced by cosmic forces." Well said Chat GPT!

Of course we do our best to cram astrology into a free will/autonomous/psychological model, because for us that is reality. Given the choice, I always go with the universal outlooks of early peoples. That is why I am also Shamanic. I have faith in those ideas.

So we distort the foundations of astrology when we emphasise free will and choice. It is Fate that needs to be emphasised, in the sense of that which is writ in the stars, the reading of which is our job as astrologers. Fate in this sense is magical rather than deterministic. It says "the universe knows you", and that is a moment of enchantment for the client. You don't, in a sense, need to tell them anything about themselves they don't know already. Just the fact you are able to say things about them they consider to be true enchants them, and that is sufficient. And it shifts them from being isolated and autonomous - which one could view as a modern disease rather than as a valid alternative - to being relational. And we breathe a big sigh when we experience that connection with the universe.

The Fates were living presences for the ancients

In this way astrologers are healers. As well as teachers and goads: showing people their callings, why it is the universe wants them here (our callings are not personal), and nudging them to have the courage to live them.

Free will is doing gladly and freely that which one must do (CG Jung).

So where does that leave the planets? Are they different bits of us, as I admit I usually say in readings? No, they are not, and I must change that. They are gods and goddesses, forces at large in the universe, and the chart shows the pattern of callings that they make upon us. It is not ours to question why we have been given that pattern or - reductively and I think falsely - reduce that pattern to our childhood experiences.

Our demons are in the chart, they have been given to us, and it is our job to come into relationship with them and let meaning and perspective reveal themselves over time.

You have your own unique chart. But Mars is not 'your' Mars. He is much bigger than that, he is vast, and if you honour him, he will work well for you.

So I would see the real purpose of the chart to be religious rather than psychological. It is not so much about understanding yourself in a narrow sense (though that has its place) as it is learning to honour the gods that call upon you. They are your friends, your allies, your sky spirits, and an element of awe is always required if our approach to them is to be balanced.

The self which we cling on to so tightly is, from this point of view, a necessary but illusory prop in a much bigger cosmic drama. As any decent mystical tradition will tell you.

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URANUS TRINES PLUTO

Uranus is starting to trine Pluto, the latest unfoldment in a long cycle that began with the conjunction in Virgo in the 1960s. The power (Pluto) of technological (Virgo) inventiveness (Uranus). The trine, which won't be exact for 3 years, could be seen as the natural outcome of past efforts, catalysed by the square of 10 or so years ago.

In recent years an enormous amount has gone into areas such as sub-atomic research, nuclear fusion, renewable energy, AI, space telescopes, quantum computing, DNA technologies and theories of everything. We could be entering a golden era of scientific and technological advance. When the trine is exact, it will have moved from Cap-Taurus to Aquarius-Gemini. Pluto in Aquarius especially suggests powerful new inventions.

 

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THE ASTROLOGY OF CREATION

Creation myths sit at the foundation of who we are. And we are probably the first peoples in history for whom our primary creation myths do not have magical or miraculous elements. For the material universe, we have one story: the Big Bang. And for life we have another story: Evolution.

I once asked a Native Canadian guy if his people (the Chippewa-Cree) got fundamentalist about their Creation Myth, and he said no, because they had more than one story, and they contradicted each other. Which I thought was a great answer.

We don't just have a story. We have a 'fact', what 'actually' occurred, leaving room for no other stories, and creating rigid minds. The tyranny of facticity, that is what I call it. As if everything is not the Great Mystery, in the last analysis. IMO, it is better to believe in both the Big Bang/Evolution AND the Biblical Creation rather than just one of them.

The Biblical Creation

Preamble done, I thought it could be interesting to try to generate some astrology around our 2 creation stories.

Evolution came first as a theory. Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species was published on 24th November 1859. We don’t know the time of day, so I have done a midday chart. What is immediately striking is the New Moon at the beginning of Sagittarius. Both the New Moon and the early degree suggest the start of something. The mutability suggests the new start comes out of the dissolution of something rigid (the sign before – Scorpio). The Moon may still have just been in Scorpio, we do not know, but it was about to leave, at any rate.

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Sagittarius declares loud and clear that Darwin’s book is a religious narrative. Which it is, for it tells us where we came from. The Sun is opposite Uranus: that is perfect too, for it was a deeply disruptive and controversial thesis. No prizes for guessing that Darwin was an Aquarian. He most likely had Moon in Capricorn – one foot in the past, straddling 2 ages. And a Mercury-Pluto-Jupiter stellium in Pisces: a mind (Mercury) that delved to the root of things (Pluto) in the sea of life (Pisces) and found a new meaning/story (Jupiter).

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The Big Bang was first proposed in 1931 by George Lemaitre, a Belgian Catholic priest. He said that the universe began with a ‘primeval atom’. We do not have a date of publication of his paper, so I will have to make do with the year itself, through the whole of which there was a t-square between Saturn in Capricorn, Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Cancer. As a divinatory astrologer, I trust in the fact that I have just been given a year, forcing me to focus on the outer planets.

Lemaitre claimed that his theory had nothing to do with religion, and as a scientific theory, I am willing to accept that. But emotionally/intuitively/metaphysically, I think it had everything to do with religion. How could it not? Religion comes from a root meaning to bind together, and that is exactly what creation myths do: they give a point of reference, a foundation, for the whole people.

To digress, one could argue more widely that the scientific quest with its particular kind of truth is itself an essentially religious quest, with its origins in Christianity. “The truth shall set you free”: that is the religious belief behind the scientific endeavour.

So, the Big Bang and Saturn, Uranus and Pluto. Start with the outermost and most powerful planet as overall meaning and context for the others: Pluto in Cancer. Cancer is the mother, the womb of life. That is why Cancer is a cardinal sign, which begins things. And Pluto is the tiny but immensely powerful seed out of which the universe grew. Jupiter was conjunct Pluto until July 1931. Jupiter is exalted in Cancer, and arguably declares this to be a religious event.

Uranus in Aries was the divine spark that began this process. We take the universe for granted, it is just what is there. But if it wasn’t there, who could have imagined it? That is the genius of Uranus. And, being in Aries, maybe this is the first time a universe has happened? That is what Christianity would have us think, at any rate. Maybe it is indeed the case.

And then Saturn in Capricorn. Saturn is the planet that makes stuff happen. Until he intervenes, you just have the outer planets doing their profound cooking in the alembic. Saturn is in his rulership in Capricorn, so it was easy for him to let the energies of Pluto and Uranus flow through him and to create a universe.

Scientifically, the Big Bang was a purely material event. But as Terence McKenna said (paraphrase), “Everything suddenly coming out of nothing? If that isn’t a miracle, I don’t know what is. Science’s attitude is give us one free miracle, and we’ll explain the rest.”

Lemaitre was born 17 July 1894. He had a Cardinal t-square (and probably Grand cross, if you include the Moon in Capricorn) that overlaid closely the t-square of the Big Bang. It was like he was born to do it, the universe was using him to give us a new story about itself.

You could argue that, by showing that astrology applies to the Big Bang and to Evolution, magic has been introduced into those theories 😊 Certainly neither of them are very provable in the usual scientific way. Maybe they get a bit of a free pass because they are Creation stories.

Evolution vs the Perennial Philosophy

I don't believe that consciousness 'evolves'. Evolution is a 19th century abstraction that we impose on our experience. And I'm suspicious, because the primary mechanism for evolution is 'survival of the fittest', a harsh and unforgiving ethos that merely reflects the capitalism of the day. A Creation Myth (for that is what it is) that justifies the worst in human nature.

A few months ago I had a dream in which I saw a speckled moth, beautifully part of and belonging to its surroundings, and at the same time I understood that evolution as we know it told us virtually nothing about how this moth came to be.

I'm not a creationist. You could say I'm a metaphysical agnostic: I just don't know how these things come to be, and I don't think they can be understood in any simple 'rational' way.

I think that Evolution is generally understood mythologically rather than scientifically. This is because most of us haven't seriously studied the evidence, yet so many accept it as a fact that you don't seriously question. It is therefore mostly a belief. We accept it because it tells a story about how we came to be, that is more acceptable nowadays than the Biblical creation myth. We accept it more for emotional than intellectual reasons.

There is nothing wrong with this. We need stories about the world that are emotionally appealing. It has always been this way. These stories contain truths about existence, and ideally you need some of them to contradict each other, just so we don't think we are in possession of the 'one truth'.

The problem with evolution as a story is that it twists life into a brutal struggle, and reduces the scope of existence to the visible, material world. (As quantum physicists have asserted, it is consciousness, not matter, that is primary.) Evolution is a story posing as an unassailable fact, that continues in an inverted form the brutal creation myth of the Old Testament.

It is this resonance with what came before that contributes to the emotional appeal of evolution. Intellectually we are satisfied because evolution opposes the religion we have left, emotionally we are satisfied because it resembles that religion, with the added bonus that humans are now at the top of the Great Chain of Being instead of somewhere in the middle.

It is because of this emotional appeal that Evolution is firmly accepted as a theory on the basis of evidence that would be laughed out of court in most other scientific disciplines. There is more direct evidence, for example, of homeopathy working, but again for emotional reasons, that evidence is frequently rejected.

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No-one has seen evolution occur, the most we have directly seen is a bit of adaption to circumstances, which is not the same thing. The evidence is partial and circumstantial. Something has gone on, we know that from the fossil record. And DNA studies show that all forms of life on earth are closely related to one another, which is a wonderful result.

But how a whole new species arises is not understood. Assuming it is consciousness, not matter, that is primary (though that statement itself suggests a divide between matter and consciousness that I don't think exists), I think new species are dreamed into being by consciousness, as much as they are generated by physical processes.

Though to what purpose they are dreamed into being is a mystery, part of the Great Mystery, the unknowability of existence.

This piece was prompted by an article by astrologer Glenn Perry, in which he sets the development of astrology in the context of a purported 'evolution' of human consciousness, in which he (wrong-headedly) declares "It must be emphasized that human awareness at this stage (4000 B.C.-1500 B.C.) was still quite dim, more like a toddler’s consciousness than a modern adult human."

Evolution has become central to the way we think about life, and it is natural to take the step of thinking of evolution as not just a physical process but as a mental/emotional process.

Evolution implies progress from an inferior stage to a superior stage of life. It is not just saying that change occurs - which would be fair enough - but that there is a value to it that makes the later stage in some way 'better' than the earlier stage.

It is one way of making sense of human history, but I think it is hard to get away from the implication that we are more 'advanced' than our forebears. I don't think this is justified, and if you junk that idea, then I think you have to junk the whole idea that human consciousness 'evolves'.

I used to have a Canadian Indian friend visit (yes, they call themselves Indians, not native this or that) and he was brought up speaking the language of the Chippewa Cree and immersed in their stories and philosophy. One thing that impressed me was their subtle understanding, through the stories of Wisahitsa, of the human ego and the tricks it gets up to: one of those tricks would surely be the self-important idea that we are 'superior' to our ancestors! Philosophically the tradition is keenly aware of how unknowable the universe is, refusing, for example, to take a position on what happens after death. And their philosophy and psychology is set in the richly imaginative context of the traditional stories, which my friend was able not just to tell but to expound on their meanings.

The usual patronising evolutionary story is that early people had their wonderful participation mystique with nature, which we have lost, but that is the price we have had to pay for the development of self-awareness, individuality, a strong ego and rationality.

In "The Passion of the Western Mind", astrologer Richard Tarnas says that it has been the task of masculine consciousness to forge its own autonomy and then come to terms with the great feminine principle in life, and thus recover its connection with the whole. This will constitute "the fulfillment of the underlying goal of Western intellectual and spiritual evolution." (p442)

In "The Philosopher's Secret Fire" (pp 263-6), Patrick Harpur takes issue with this position: "Evolution is a spirit notion which soul does not recognise. Traditional societies do not evolve. They live within a mythology which contains all imaginative possibilities, Earth Goddesses no less than Heraclean egos... Because we are changing, we think of ourselves as evolving. We are not. We are literalising the old myths...  If the rational ego is to disappear it is more likely to be destroyed by the ricochets of ideologies made in its own image."

My experience with my Indian friend suggested to me that early peoples are NOT lacking in rational egos - if you think about it, they needed to be a lot more creative and thoughtful than we need to be just to survive, apart from any philosophical sophistication they may have had - but rather, that ego has not become divorced from a sense of participation in nature.

As the poet Ted Hughes said: "The story of mind exiled from Nature is the story of Western Man."

I think that is the real story.

I think there are perennial truths about existence that have always been available to people from the earliest times, along with elements in our nature that can take us away from those truths. And the big truth we have lost is a felt sense of our participation in nature. What has gradually developed over the last few thousand years - ever since Plato and his separation of 'ideal forms' from nature - has been a massive loss of soul.

For a great exposition of this theme, see Anne Baring's book The Dream of the Cosmos. She explores this idea in the context of a well-researched account of the shift from lunar to solar mythologies.

There has been dazzling technological progress, and in a way it is natural to assume that makes us more 'advanced' than people who do not have that technology - as if we personally invented it! But I don't think it has made us more whole as humans.

What has developed has not been the rational ego - that has always been there - but the rational ego divorced from nature. Nature as something we can separate ourselves from and look on dispassionately, out of which has come at least as much harm as good, as the environmental crisis testifies to.


I think it is possible to view much of the technological progress of recent times as a mad dream created by an out-of-control rational ego. We didn't need all this technology for tens of thousands of years. It has been produced by a crazed mind, crazed because it has lost its roots in who it is.

The world we live in needs re-dreaming. We need to recover the perennial truths of existence, in which we are participants in, rather than observers of, the cosmos, and use that as a point of balance.