THE GREAT RECESSION: Plus ca change

I was watching a 2010 documentary called Inside Job the other night. It is the story of the worldwide economic crisis of recent years, and particularly about the bad guys in the US system who made it happen. Of course, that is a very particular view, because it was happening here in Europe too, and we had our own bad guys. And it wasn’t just bad guys, as the film made clear. It was also a herd mentality.

The main point, though, was that it happened because the

financial system had been deregulated from the 1980s onwards, leading to a series of increasingly big financial crises. And in the US, despite what has happened, no-one has been prosecuted and new regulation has not been brought in to stop it happening again. I had not realised this, and it is shocking. Wall St has become too big and too powerful for legislation to be politically possible.

Well, almost. I did my research afterwards, and it seems the Dodd-Frank Bill of 2010 (too late for the documentary) was intended to produce the greatest ever reform of the financial sector. But 3 years later, less than half of it has been implemented, and according to an 11 part series in Forbes Magazine, it is not sufficient to prevent another meltdown. Key sectors have not been reformed, and there is no plan to do so in any effective way.

Eg the banks that are Too Big To Fail (creating issues of moral hazard) are now bigger and more complex than in 2008, and the retail and investment arms have not been ring-fenced, endangering ordinary customers and small businesses. The ring-fencing requires international agreement for reasons of competition, but the US is usually able to get what it wants, and Europe in this case seems quite willing. The problem with the US megabanks is worse than it ever was.

Unregulated derivatives trading also leads to crises, and there is a loophole in the new regs which would allow the megabanks to continue their trading abroad. It is being fought ferociously, and it’s not clear who will win. But the megabanks tend to.

(I read a very good book on the financial crisis, ‘How do we Fix this Mess?’ and the author, Robert Peston, was astonished in 2006 to find that the boards of banks did not understand their derivative trading arms, let alone monitor them. This was when he began to suspect a major crisis was on the way – and the BBC (for whom he is the Business Editor) tried to stop him saying so!)

Five years after the meltdown, and they are still only starting to talk about higher capital requirements for banks.

There has been no bill to reform the credit-rating agencies, who were responsible for giving AAA ratings to junk securities.

Nothing has been done to reform the mortgage providers Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac, who played a key role in the sub-prime housing crisis.

There seems to be no prospect of the regulators required to oversee any new rules being given the extra funding to do so.

So there it is, a dismal list.

Deregulation has made the financial sector vastly more profitable and therefore more powerful, so maybe it is too late to do much (though the European Parliament has passed some new financial regulations.) But to what degree is it really creating wealth, and how much is it just sucking wealth from everyone else? After all, the sector doesn’t actually MAKE anything. Sure, it enables, and that is good, it enables business ventures to get the loans and insurance they need, for example, and a host of other things. We really need this sector. Let’s not blindly knock it and demonise it, which too many people seem inclined to do. There are such people as bankers and fund managers who are good guys doing necessary jobs.

But all these extra profits of recent decades…  Before deregulation, the American economy expanded steadily for 4 decades. Since then it has continued expanding, but the gap between rich and poor has widened, there have been a series of economic crises and now, for the first time, the younger generation of Americans has lower economic expectations than its parents’ generation.

So has deregulation done anything other than undermine an economic prosperity which would have continued anyway, yes with the odd recession, but you expect that? Look at all the people who have lost out, the home-owners in the US who should never have been sold loans in the first place and who have therefore lost everything.

When Obama first became President, the money-people he appointed were all establishment high-flyers who had been intimately part of the system that led to the crash. This sent the immediate message to Wall St that nothing was going to change, and it hasn’t. Obama was first elected under a tsunami of reforming rhetoric, but one of his first acts was to show how conservative at heart he really is.

So where does this leave the astrology of the Great Recession? The Great Depression, which occurred under the last Uranus-Pluto Square, was also a result of lack of financial regulation. And there was the destruction followed by rebirth which is so characteristic of Pluto. A more regulated and therefore more stable financial system was created.

This time, however, no such Pluto rebirth seems to be happening. Yes, there is a rebirth in the sense that we seem to have climbed out of recession. But it is the same old system, so it is not a true rebirth. So next time there is a hard outer planet configuration, we can probably expect another crisis. Maybe not as big as this one. But still a crisis, caused for example by another housing bubble, the sort of thing the Fed used to lean against, any sign of ‘froth’. Watch out for the Saturn-Pluto conjunction in 6-7 years’ time. Or even Saturn square Neptune in 2 years time.

There are of course all sorts of dimensions to this Uranus-Pluto transit other than the economy. Like the ‘Arab Spring’, which could take decades to work through, and who knows which way it is going to go. Egypt being paradigmatic – desires for democracy vs desires for a theocracy vs the traditional certainties of the army in charge, with the West putting in its oar along the way according to its own interests.

But economically, it is interesting that you can have a transit of this magnitude – Uranus square Pluto, hard aspecting the Suns of nearly all the major powers (unlike the 30s)  - and you end up with the same system. At least, in the US. In Europe, we have had the Eurozone crisis, which is still to be resolved, but which was probably always about Germany being ultimately willing to save the situation but having to pretend otherwise. Moral hazard again. Angela Merkel’s masterly fudge.

We are coming up in November to the 4^th of 7 squares between Uranus and Pluto, so we are at the midpoint. The worst seems to be over, and the rest of the transit looks like it will be a working through of what has already happened.

As I say, the classic Pluto transit involves death and rebirth. But the rebirth involving a step forward usually needs some kind of consciousness brought to bear for it to happen. And this is difficult on a collective level. The US managed it with its financial regulations of the 30s. But Germany didn’t manage to move forward from the Great Depression, it just spiralled downwards.

With the current square, Europe seems to be moving forward in its currency crisis, though there is plenty of fudging left to do, and it has left Germany all-powerful. But the financial system itself that led to the crisis is still in place. OK, Europe has passed some regulations, but we can’t separate ourselves financially from the US.

So Uranus-Pluto has provided a tremendous shock to the financial system. But the ideology which led to de-regulation is still there, and for the US I guess it is tied up with its broader resistance to what it sees as ‘big government’. This in turn goes back to the rebellion against authority that occurred at its inception, and which is actually still an issue for it, expressed by the Sun-Saturn Square in the US Chart.

The thing is, you have to have government, and if the government itself isn’t doing a complete job, then others step in, in a less conscious sort of way. So you end up with big business and Wall St to a large extent ruling the US, instead of Congress doing so. (Last week there was the news that “former head of the SEC enforcement division Robert Khuzami has taken a $5 million-a-year job with Kirkland and Ellis, where he will no doubt spend a great deal of time defending Wall Street firms against SEC charges.”)

The US is at a point in the Uranus-Pluto square where it can still make choices, for the exact aspects to its Sun-Saturn will not occur until 2014-15. And then after that, some years down the line, it will have a Pluto Return, a reckoning of who holds the power in the US.

But looking more globally at the Uranus-Pluto Square, there is a death and rebirth going on, in the sense of a shift in the global balance of power away from the West and towards the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China), particularly, for now, China.

So in that sense there is a rebirth for the West gradually coming about as Uranus-Pluto completes over the next few years – a return to prosperity in the old way, but with a key shift in of global power, pointing the way to a further diminution in the years to come. And hastened by the decadence of a system which has been wealthy for so long, that it has forgotten it needs to earn that wealth, a system which in important ways benefits the few at the expense of the underlying health of the economy.

Living with The Outer Planets; the post-war Neptune-Pluto Ages

Pluto takes about 100 years longer to go round the Sun than does Neptune, but its orbit is highly eccentric, meaning that it goes a lot faster through some signs than others. For about the last 65 years the 2 planets have been travelling at about the same speed through the sky, and this will continue through till the 2030s, when Neptune in Aries will at last start to pull clear of Pluto as he brakes through Aquarius. (Pluto is an ‘it’ when I’m talking about the lump of rock, but when he turns up behind me, as he often does when I write, then I say ‘he’!)

Coincidentally, Neptune and Pluto began travelling at the same speed when they were near enough 60 degrees, or exactly 2 signs, apart. Since then, therefore, they have always entered a new sign within a few years of each other – not long on their time scales.

Uranus, Neptune and Pluto are the outer planets. They are not visible to the naked eye and they therefore represent that which is unconscious, both personally and collectively. When one of them enters a new sign, humanity undergoes a shift, even a transformation, according to the nature of the outer planet and the sign it is in. It usually takes some years, however, for the planet to establish itself in the new sign, and possibly some years after that before we mere humans can look back and see what it was about.

The planets as gods (a modern, sometimes controversial, astrological identification) exist outside of time and space. The results of their actions, the past, present and future, are instantly clear to them. If we are intuitively gifted, then those patterns may be clear to us too, at least to some extent, maybe in flashes now and again. We, however, are creatures of clay, our journey is through time and space: those flashes can be helpful, but it is not our place to know the minds of the gods, to see too much of the deeper patterns of development that we are passing through individually and collectively, or else we would not be able to live them.

This is why full-time psychics and ‘spiritual’ teachers are often a bit wonky (technical term), because they try to live too much in this intuitive dimension, they over-identify with it, at the expense of other aspects of being human. (This can be why some of them go on about ‘embodiment’, because that is exactly what they have forgotten.)

Saturn is the planet that balances this out. He is the bridge between the inner and outer planets, he shows us how to be an ordinary physical human, yet also connected to the wider, deeper, more meaningful patterns that are also part of being human.

As astrologers, discovering the deeper patterns, the hidden meanings, behind existence is precisely what we are about. It needs, however, to be in a way that is physically lived – the astrology is a mere pointer. I said it is not our place to know the minds of the gods, but at the same time nothing is more important. It’s a matter of how you go about it. If it emerges organically from the way you live, from attempting to understand your experience, then that is balanced, that is Saturn. If you grasp after it, or if you identify yourself as that sort of person, whether as bishop or mullah, shaman or astrologer (!), then that can often suggest an attempt to bypass the actual living of it.

Incidentally, some shamans and astrologers love to say how unlike e.g. Christianity, their path is not a religion or a belief system. Stuff and nonsense! In my experience they are just as prone to religion as anyone else.

Anything can be a religion or not a religion. The essential point is whether your understanding comes out of your experience or from what someone else has said, whether on this plane or another one, and whether you can tell the difference. If you’re religious, what some authority has said comes before your own experience. If you’re the real deal, it’s your own considered experience that is the authority. Of course, everyone likes to think their understanding is autonomous, that they are their own authority. And there are degrees of it. But that sort of independence, which is an emotional as well as a cognitive quality, is rarer than one might think.

You can also be a one-person religion. Yes, it’s your own thoughts, but along the line you’ve got rigid, you’ve turned what was originally a fresh insight into a stale dogma that you refer back to. It’s hard not to do this to some extent if you’re a teacher repeating the same stuff over and over, or an astrologer doing several readings a day.

Knowing the meaning of an outer planet transit to our chart is not easy, nor should it be. Astrology helps us see that there is meaning in what is happening, it is not just random, and it can even point us roughly in the direction of what it means. But it is just a map, sometimes brilliant and inspiring and mind-boggling, but still just a map. It is not a substitute for the actual exploration.

And it is the same with the meanings for the collective of the outer planet transits. Our lives are not just a personal journey (I don’t like that over-used word, especially since Tony Blair called his memoirs ‘A Journey’.) We are intimately tied in to where the collective is going, whether we like it or not. Getting some sort of separation, some sort of distance from the collective is necessary if we are to understand anything, but not in such a way that we can pretend to ourselves we are not part of it.

This is why mundane astrology – the astrology of the world, of countries, of collectives – is of great importance. It tells us where the world is going, and it reminds us that we are part of it. We are not just our personal chart. We are also our personal chart, for example, in relation to the chart of the country we live in, and in relation to the charts of our parents and so on. The personal chart cannot be fully understood in isolation.

It is not easy to understand the meanings for the collective of an outer planet in a sign, particularly at the time. We may have flashes of insight, and certain events may have an obvious connection, but the wider understanding takes time and cultural awareness and probably a lot of plodding through historical data.

Neptune and Pluto have been entering new signs within a few years of each other for many decades now, and coincidentally Uranus has also been part of that process. This means that the ages we have been passing through have been quite clearly defined.

So between 1955 and 1956, Uranus began to move into Leo, Neptune into Scorpio and Pluto into Virgo. This process took a few more years to complete and establish itself, but all 3 outer planets moving into new signs suggests a clearly defined new era, which is indeed what happened in the 60s, as the West moved economically from the post-war effort to re-establish itself into years of boom, and socially and politically into a rejection of old values and all sorts of cultural awakenings.

Exactly how this played out in terms of planets and signs would be very complex to analyse. You could say, for example, that the previous Pluto in Leo period had awoken a sense of the importance of the individual, the power of individuality, and Uranus coming into Leo furthered that process – heightened selfishness as well as opposition to authority. Pluto in Virgo ushered in a period where we began to rely much more on high technology (Virgo), where we could no longer survive (Pluto) without it.

Neptune describes the myths we live by collectively, the stories we tell ourselves (hence its connection to fashion), and this was the era when the Cold War reached its height; the Cuban missile crisis and its threat of nuclear war occurred under Neptune in Scorpio. The collective story (Neptune) we were living under was one of death and annihilation (Scorpio). It was also a period when fashion (Neptune) was used as an instrument of power (Scorpio) – the clothes and long hair of the 1960s counter-culture were a deliberate provocation of the establishment, a challenge to what men and women were supposed to look like. It was flower (Neptune) power (Scorpio).

All three planets came together as Uranus entered Virgo later in the 60s: you had the intense protest and revolutionary intent of the Uranus-Pluto conjunction, which was in turn sextile to Neptune in Scorpio, making protest in a way fashionable, and connecting it to the counter-culture.

The 2 most defining planets in this way at looking at our modern eras are Neptune and Pluto, being further out than Uranus and, for now, operating in tandem. With Pluto the emphasis is on the economy and the balance of power (Pluto is a god of wealth); and with Neptune the emphasis is on our underlying mythologies, fantasies and ideals, as well as the general mood.

The general post-war economic boom era lasted until 1970-71, when both planets again changed sign: Pluto into Libra, and Neptune into Sagittarius. As they established themselves over the next few years, so began the first recession since the war and the loss of the idealism of the sixties. In a way it was a balancing (Libra): the Arabs were asserting themselves economically, demanding a fair price for their oil; newly industrialised countries were competing with the West’s metal industries; and the US had been running at a deficit, partly due to the Vietnam War.

Sagittarius is a sign of excess in either direction, so while there was a feeling of despondency around the hopes of the 60s, there was also glam rock and the age of the gurus – Rajneesh and his 93 Rolls Royces.

In 1983-84, the Neptune moved into Capricorn and Pluto into Scorpio. There was a new economic boom on the way, not unlike the recent one, in which materialism became sexy – Neptune in Capricorn, combined with the raw power of money, of the bankers - Pluto in Scorpio. After a short recession in the early 1990s, the stage was set by the prolonged action of this materialistic combination to create the longest economic boom since the 1960s.

Also in the early 90s we had what must have been the biggest event of this Neptune-Pluto Age, which was the collapse of Communism and a shift in the world balance of power towards the US and the West in general. The suddenness with which the collapse happened and the move into a different future speaks of Uranus, which was conjunct Neptune and sextile Pluto. Neptune in Capricorn is dissolution of governments, and the ease with which it happened is described by the sextile to Pluto, functioning powerfully in his own sign of Scorpio.

America emerged as the world’s lone superpower under Pluto in Scorpio. America’s Pluto, its raw power, is in late Capricorn in the 2nd House of wealth: Neptune conjoined, and Pluto sextiled the US Pluto during this period. Neptune and Pluto also made soft aspects to the US Neptune at 22 Virgo around this time, creating a new mythology for the nation, which ‘lone superpower’, in the context of the ‘New World Order’, certainly is.

Pluto had been moving at it fastest for some time now, faster than Neptune, putting it inside its orbit, which meant there were 3 years between Pluto moving into Sagittarius (1995) and Neptune moving into Aquarius (1998). The collective has a short memory, and the prolonged boom set up by Neptune and Pluto in the 80s/90s inevitably led to excess and the feeling (as in 1929) that somehow the rules had changed. The first excess was the dotcom bubble, brilliantly described by Neptune (fantasy) in Aquarius (internet) and Pluto in Sag (economic boom). Pluto doesn’t find it easy to function well in Sagittarius, as he lives not just on the earth but below it, while Sagittarius, ruled as it is by the king of the gods, is the sign least concerned with earthly reality.

Pluto was being pulled along by his sextile to Neptune in Aquarius, another very unearthy combination, creating over time an economic boom so ungrounded and corrupt that it has broken the financial system.

(During both the 1980s and the Noughties economic bubbles, Pluto was inside the orbit of Neptune, in a way making Neptune the more powerful influence, adding to the possibility that fantasy (Neptune) would have a stronger than usual influence over the economy (Pluto).)

At the same time, the new internet age motored along famously, with Neptune in Aquarius being empowered not just by his sextile to Pluto, but also by the mutual reception to Uranus in Pisces (Neptune rules Pisces, and Uranus Aquarius.) The internet does not have a material existence that you can easily point to, and it is only partly governed by economic factors, so the Neptune-Pluto combination has worked in its favour rather than against it. In writing about the internet I am not just pulling out a cultural factor that suits the astrology (which you can always do); rather I am writing about something which started to change and define the whole culture, and whose full significance is not yet clear.

And so to the present. Pluto began to change sign from Sagittarius to Capricorn in 2008, and Neptune will start to change to Pisces in April this year. The entry into Capricorn was economically dramatic, more than you’d expect from a planet that usually takes time to make his presence felt, his changes being deep. But as Pluto entered earthy, level-headed Capricorn (a good sign for Pluto), so too did the ruler of Capricorn, Saturn, begin to oppose Uranus, a periodic combination that is always dramatic and revolutionary.

And so we have had the Great Recession – a measure of just how out of balance things had become economically under Pluto in Sag/Neptune in Aquarius. At the same time, the chart for Pluto’s entry into Capricorn was quite favourable – Pluto in a stellium with benefics Jupiter and Venus, and trine to Capricorn’s ruler, retrograde Saturn. There is stuff to sort out (retrograde Saturn), and it will take the time it takes (Capricorn/Saturn). And it is a fundamental restructuring (Pluto). So it will take time. It may still get worse before it gets better. But this combination doesn’t suggest the extreme of Depression.

I think the fundamental issue is that the West has been living beyond its means and has to cut back, and while it does so, China will become ever more powerful, leading to a major shift in the balance of power worldwide. There are no signs that the basic economic model is going to change (which the astrology could suggest) because for a while yet the resources – oil, minerals – will continue to be there, allowing us to continue as before.

Pluto in Capricorn is soon to work in tandem with Neptune in Pisces, and this is where we will have to speculate. I find it odd that Capricorn and Pisces sextile each other (a flowing aspect), because in their natures they are so different, even opposing. They are earth and water respectively, which is compatible, but Capricorn is so worldly and Pisces so unworldly that it is hard to see how they can get on healthily. You can, for example, just see Pisces capacity for empathy being put to ruthless and manipulative use by a Capricorn businessman. At best, though, Pisces can mellow a rigid and conservative Capricornian worldliness, and Capricorn can insist that Pisces puts its dreams into action. A successful artist, or a philanthropic businessman, could have this combination.

Neptune in Pisces is in its own sign, and as we saw with Pluto in its own sign in the 1980s, where the vulgar power of money was in the ascendant, it can bring out the worst. It could be a time when the collective tells fantastical stories about itself. I think China will be a match for America sooner than we realise, and how will America explain that to itself?

All countries think they are special, America more so than most. It is not a country to go into a quiet depression, like the UK did when it lost its Empire. The US is naïve and brash and extreme and proud. It will not say to itself that China is beating it in a fair fight. No, it will be seen as some sort of unfair conspiracy against America’s rightful place in the world.

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With natal Neptune square to 7th House Mars, the US is used to creating myths (Neptune) about its foreign enemies (Mars in the 7th). These planets are at 21 Gemini and 22 Virgo respectively, which Neptune will begin to hard-aspect as it progresses through Pisces. Last time Neptune hard aspected these 2 planets, in 1980/81, the country elected a cowboy actor for a President who promoted the myth of the Soviet Union as the Evil Empire! The next hard Neptune aspect will not be exact for another 10 years, but these transits can begin surprisingly early.

And what will America say to itself about the war it is losing against militant Islam? Who or what will America blame? In both US economic and foreign policy terms, there will be plenty of scope for Neptune’s mythologising at its worst over the next 14 years.

So for the West generally, putting Pluto and Neptune together, we are likely to see new mythologies created (Neptune in Pisces) to describe/compensate for the new economic realities (Pluto in Capricorn.) And for the new political realities, for money is power. China is currently arming itself at a frightening rate. And the West’s implacable enemy, the militant Islam which arose so appropriately under Pluto in Sagittarius is, under Pluto in Capricorn, equally appropriately becoming the established power in many parts of the Middle and Near East, as well as southwards through Africa. And Oil (Neptune) is at the heart of this struggle, particularly the West’s dominance of those countries which supply it. Over the last 15 years, the US Progressed Saturn and Mars have both gone retrograde for the first time ever. America is on the retreat economically and militarily, and with it Europe.

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The chart for Neptune’s Ingress into Pisces is striking: 6 planets in Aries, including a New Moon and a Mars-Uranus conjunction. We will really notice this transit; it is the start of something very, very new. Well it would be, wouldn’t it, because it will be the time when the West, dominant in the world for hundreds of years, first under Europe and then under its offspring America, will cease to be so dominant. The Far East will begin to at least equal it. And with economic influence (Pluto) comes cultural influence (Neptune). Look at what the West did with Christianity and Coca Cola. No doubt the turning point will, in retrospect, be seen as the time of the Uranus-Pluto conjunction which is seriously starting this year, just as Neptune enters Pisces and asks us to re-formulate our mythologies, our stories about who we are.

As in the mid-1960s and early 1990s, Uranus entering the equation in 2011/12 is likely to bring a sudden surge forward in the underlying Neptune-Pluto story. In the Eurozone, for example, we could easily see the struggle with indebtedness spreading to a bigger economy such as Spain, which could be the last straw for the Euro: Europe as an economic bloc, as a potential united world power, could begin to unravel. Meanwhile America is printing money at an unprecedented rate just to keep going. The mighty dollar could suddenly cease to be the world’s reserve currency, and with it America’s economic pre-eminence and prestige would take a tumble. Whatever happens, the next 2 years will almost inevitably bring sudden setbacks for the West that will tangibly shift the balance of power worldwide. The events will have the nature of pressures that have been building for some years, old facades that have been maintained, suddenly giving way.

Pluto's Tomb and the Great Recession

I don’t think I’ve ever been so ill as I was last week. Flu or something. Must be Neptune turning direct to leave my 6th House of Health. I was in bed for the whole week, and I was hardly present to the outside world. But I was fully present inwardly, I was dragged inwards and downwards to a more image-based place than I am used to, and stuff was happening. Must have been Neptune.

Turns out our new neighbour is a homeopath, and things began to turn round straight after she prescribed me bryonia on the Wednesday. All the same, unreasonable doubt that the homeopathy was doing anything crept in after a day or so. I have the same thing with astrology: reasonable doubt and unreasonable doubt, and I’m not sure I can always tell the difference. Unreasonable doubt is a cultural demon that knocks the life out of anything ‘unscientific’. Probably more of a male thing.

The Pluto-Node conjunction in Capricorn, which peaks on 27th November, has been working itself out very literally over the last 3 months, as we have seen a series of miners trapped underground around the world. The first 2, in Chile then China, resulted in the miners being saved. The 3rd incident in New Zealand ended yesterday with all the miners being killed in a series of underground explosions – if the gases had not killed them before that.

Pluto is Lord of the Underworld, and Capricorn adds a sense of constriction and confinement. In the case of the Chilean miners, the entombment was long and they were eventually freed. Ceres was moving in to conjoin Pluto and the Node during their incarceration. Mythologically, Ceres’ daughter was abducted by Pluto but eventually freed (sort of) from the Underworld. She subsequently had to spend six months a year there. This shows how this sort of experience changes us, just as it will have changed the Chilean miners. They will never be entirely the same after their experience.

In the case of the New Zealanders, the experience was short and sharp. Ceres was moving away from Pluto and the Node, so her redemptive presence was no longer there. In addition, Mars was moving into a square with Jupiter and Uranus (which it was not during the Chilean crisis), making a sudden, violent ending more likely.

Jupiter and Uranus are back in applying conjunction yet again, and the applying square to Mars makes sudden, violent crises likely. So North Korea has been shelling a South Korean island, provoking an international crisis, as well as revealing the much greater extent of its nuclear reprocessing facilities than we knew about. A stampede on a bridge in Cambodia has killed 450 people. And Europe, and the world economy, has gone into the jitters as the debt crisis has reared its head again in some of the countries that are part of the Euro. This time Ireland needed bailing out. Portugal, Greece and Spain remain unstable due to their banking debts. On the other hand, we have seen the sudden release of Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma, showing that these sudden Mars events (she was released by the military/Mars) do not always have to be destructive.

This theme of miners and entombment has gripped the world, on and off, since August. Before that it was the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, that went on for months. Pluto’s realm again: a raw, destructive, uncontainable force from the depths that we seemed to be able to do very little about. All these events triggered off by man as he sought to exploit the earth’s natural resources.

There is nothing wrong with using the earth’s resources. But it needs to be give-and-take, there needs to be a sense of gratitude and of being part of a renewable cycle. Our westernised culture continues to accelerate away from such an attitude. We are offending the gods as never before. There has never been a culture so out of balance, so full of hubris at its own god-like powers.

So it is not surprising there is the odd kick back, particularly when Pluto conjoins the Node. What do we need to learn collectively, what karmic debt are we building up (Node) by not honouring the forces of nature (Pluto)? Pluto will always prevail. He is the dragon guarding the earth’s resources, and this summer he breathed out some fire – casually, in his sleep, irritated, a warning.

Maybe the mining incidents have also come to our notice because they describe how we feel collectively: trapped. We are in the midst of the Great Recession, and we cannot see our way out. It has been going on since Pluto entered Capricorn in early 2008 and the stock market began bucking and lunging. Sure, the US has just released better than expected growth figures, but then unemployment refuses to do down. The UK is also reporting growth figures, but then the Euro again threatens to go into meltdown.

So we are like the miners, in a pit of our own making. The ‘toxic’ debt of the banks is very like the toxic, explosive gases in the mines, threatening everything. There are still high levels of unstable gases in the mine shafts called Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Greece, which could shut down the whole mine if we don’t attend to them. We don’t want to seal them off because there are people trapped inside.

The reason this recession is so protracted is because, despite our best efforts, the outcome will not be a return to economics as we know it. We are on the brink of a square from Uranus to Pluto. They will come within one degree of an exact square next summer. Such outer planet hard aspects only occur occasionally, and they take us from one age to the next, as Uranus-Neptune did in the early 90s, and Uranus-Pluto did before that in the sixties.

So that is why the recession won’t budge. It is because we are on the brink of something new. With Uranus now starting to station before changing direction and making a 6 month run-in to an almost exact square to Pluto, now is the time when, at last, we may start to get some indication of the new world order that is coming into being. One thing we can be sure of is that it will be a world in which the West is less wealthy and powerful in relation the East, particularly China – maybe even less wealthy in absolute terms. And probably less confident in its ability to contain its new enemy, militant Islam, which is spreading worldwide. For the West, a keyword for Uranus-Pluto will probably be ‘humility’, just as for China it will probably be ‘hubris’.