Greece, Islamic State, Uranus-Pluto and the Eclipse

On 17^th March we had the last of 7 squares between Uranus and Pluto. This configuration has provided the overall context for world events for about 6 or 7 years now: the Great Recession, the Arab ‘Spring’, the rise of Islamic State, the Euro crisis…

The final square doesn’t mean the end of Uranus-Pluto – it will be playing out for a while yet. But 3 days later there was an eclipse of the Sun at 29 Pisces, the last degree of the last sign of the zodiac. If that doesn’t suggest an ending, I don’t know what does.

The US invaded Iraq in 2003 with the Sun at 29 Pisces. You don’t begin things under mutable signs, you end them, which is why it all went wrong. But I think this eclipse could signal the end of any meaningful US involvement in Iraq. The US has been providing air support for the fightback against IS, but no ‘boots on the ground’. It has been half-hearted. Nothing will probably be said, but Tikrit hasn’t fallen to the Kurds like it was expected to, and this may be looked at as the time when America quietly left Iraq to its fate.

The Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, a year before the final crossing of the last Uranus-Pluto square, and what came next was the outcome of the changes wrought by that square.

Islamic State declared itself a Caliphate at Ramadan last year, 8 months before the final crossing of the current Uranus-Pluto square. I see very little difference between them and the Nazis – the unlimited territorial ambitions, the powerful sense of belonging, the extreme brutality, the genocide. They do not at this stage need to be ‘understood’, they need to be opposed and eliminated. And, as with the Nazis, the world is largely standing by while they expand. With the Nazis, memories of WWI were too strong. With Islamic State, the shambolic invasion of Iraq in 2003 has made military opposition politically impossible.

The chart I use for IS has Cardinal Sun, Moon and Asc, with Pluto opposite Sun and conjunct Asc. It is the start (Cardinal) of something powerful (Pluto), unless they are stopped. With Moon-Jupiter in Cancer, expanding (Jupiter) the homeland (Moon in Cancer) is very important to them. The trine from the Moon to 10^th House Saturn in Scorpio again suggests power and ambition and ease of accomplishment, facilitated by popular appeal (Moon conj Jupiter). And we see Pluto at his worst, the beast from the Underworld, called forth by American blundering and her own ambitions. The US Sun at 13 Cancer is on the midpoint of the IS Sun and Moon, showing the close connection.

Uranus and Pluto will be hard aspecting the IS Moon-Jupiter in the coming years. So the brutal struggle for an expanded Caliphate looks set to continue.

Another ending that seems likely under this eclipse is Greece’s membership of the Euro. If you use fairly wide orbs, then the eclipse took place in Greece’s 10^th House, conjunct the MC (position in the world), square to Venus (wealth) and opposite Moon-Pluto (the disempowered people). In addition, the Uranus-Pluto square took place 2 degrees off the Greek Ascendant.

The new leader, Alex Tsipras, made an impossible promise to the electorate: to end the austerity and to keep Greece in the Euro. You can’t do both, and even leaving the Euro would, for a while, lead to greater austerity. So I think Tsipras has been putting on a good show of trying to renegotiate Greece’s debts with the EU, so that when Greece does leave the Euro (as seems very likely), he can blame Europe for pushing them out.

Now here’s something: the chart for the Euro has Angles at 29 degrees of the Mutable signs. The worst time to begin something! And the eclipse was bang on those Angles.

It seems from the astrology that Greece will leave the Euro soon, and from the Euro chart, it suggests it will not be an isolated event, but the beginning of the unravelling of the currency itself. The EEC came into existence on 1 1 58 at 00am, again giving it Angles at 29 degrees of the Mutable signs. So the unravelling of the currency, to whatever degree that occurs, will also involve an unravelling of the EU itself.

And that means the Britain, in its referendum, may vote to stay within the EU, because there will be less political control from Brussels to fear. With Pluto and Uranus having recently finished with Britain’s Sun and Angles, and moving on to our Cancer Moon, we are in the middle of a search for a new identity: our place in the world is shrinking, Scotland looks likely to leave the Union within a few years, and our relationship with Europe has reached make or break point as Europe has drawn ever closer politically. A few years down the line I think we will be a smaller and humbler country, occupying a more proportionate place in the world, shorn of Scotland, but with a clearer, less bloated identity  and with stronger ties to Europe as the prospect of a mega-state recedes.

The Undead and Plutonian Change

3000 people took to the streets of Brighton dressed as zombies this weekend. Some of the anti-capitalist protesters in Wall Street have also dressed as zombies. Vampires, another undead phenomenon, have also been very popular in recent years. It’s not all just for kids, either. Anyone out there a True Blood fan?

The world is undergoing a major Pluto transit as it squares up to Uranus in the early cardinal signs, hard aspecting significant points in the charts of all the major powers. We are collectively undergoing a death, with much resistance and hanging on to the old, and maybe the young people dressed as zombies are acting that out for us. The young often sense the future better than we do, and maybe that’s because they are the future.

As you get older you get more ‘realistic’ and you try to stay engaged with it all and there is wisdom in that. But there is also wisdom in the instinctive youthful rejection of the adult world. It’s often inarticulate, but that’s no reason to dismiss it. There’s something for us in it, and it’s also a psychological necessity for them. The Occupy protests, which are occurring under the Uranus-Pluto square, are strongly resonant of the student protests of the 60s, which occurred under a Uranus-Pluto conjunction.

They are not just resonant, they are in a way the same thing one step on, being part of the same Uranus-Pluto cycle. The conjunction sows the seed, while the call to action is much more urgent under the opening square. The conjunction is a sign of things to come; the youth of the 60s saw the deep flaws in the system, but the economy was still boomimg. Now, under the dynamic opening square, the system is reaching decadence, and the protests have a more immediate relevance.
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Uranus and Pluto are often described as ‘evolutionary’ in their function. I think that is putting a human wish on them. They certainly bring about change, each in their own way, but it can be anything but ‘evolutionary’. The last Uranus-Pluto square of the early 30s resulted in the Great Depression and World War II. And then we carried on as before. Different empires, a few tweaks like the UN, but same basic values.

And it is the same with the present Uranus-Pluto square. Things are certainly under pressure to change in a Uranian-Plutonian manner. Deep structures are under threat, the balance of power is shifting eastwards, there is protest and revolution. But to say it is evolutionary suggests that what comes afterwards will be better, and who can judge that? It depends on your point of view. Or you can try saying that Pluto’s ‘real’ intent is evolutionary, it’s just that we ignore it so he becomes destructive or something. But Pluto is not human, and evolution is a human idea, a recent one at that.

We are seeing the cruel side of Uranus-Pluto at present. Col Gaddafi was shot on capture in Libya. Most Libyans are delighted. It’s understandable. The Libyan authority wanted him captured alive and put on trial. Then they would have shot him, a year or two down the line. Parade the monster in a cage for a while, like they do with Death Row in America, then kill him. I think the Chinese system is more humane: a prompt trial, and a prompt execution. And let the collective deal with its own shadow.

We are also seeing the Greek people treated cruelly. They are subject to inhuman austerity measures at the behest of the EU. They are rightly protesting, and the cost-cutting may just drive the economy further downwards. But who is being cruel? Is it Angela Merkel, Germany’s leader? She doesn’t strike me as the type. Is it the Greek Prime Minister? He just seems to be doing his best to save the country. By being a member of the Eurozone, Greece can’t simply default, declare itself bankrupt, which in a way was what Iceland did in letting its banks go to the wall, costing foreign investors huge sums.

It is a cruel situation, created by folly: the Greek government’s overspending in an era of cheap borrowing, and the EU’s creation of a currency without proper controls. You could say the humane thing for the EU to do would be to simply bail out Greece properly and write off enough debt for it to have a good chance, rather than just enough to survive until the next crisis. But looming in the background are exactly the same problems with Spain and Italy, but much bigger, much less affordable. So the EU is paralysed. And so is Greece: in order to default it would have to leave the Eurozone, and it would be on its own, a small indebted country in a world of empires, its trading relationships severely compromised. And behind it all is the dream of a United Europe under threat.

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The EU is in a classic Plutonian crisis. You cannot move, nothing will work, because the paradigm itself has to go. The founding vision for the EU was the Treaty of Rome in 1957. This chart has Sun at 4 Aries, Asc at 6 Libra and MC at 7 Cancer. Pluto has already hard-aspected all these points at least twice.

The way that Pluto change often occurs, especially when there is a lot of resistance (as in this case), is that the entity is destroyed from within by the crossings of Pluto, until all that is left is a shell that one day finds it no longer has the will to go on living. This is what has been happening to the vision of the EU in its present form. The astrology tells me that no-one really believes in it anymore, and that we are simply going through the motions. There is no underlying strength or will to continue. An important crisis meeting of all the leaders has been going on in Brussels this weekend, at the same time as 3000 people dressed as zombies marched through Brighton.