Saturn-Pluto 2020: the era of the Multinational Corporation

Politically, the UK is in disarray. The Prime Minister is barely hanging on at the head of a minority government. And the opposition is headed up by a charismatic leader who wants to take us back to the seventies – to socialist policies that led to the ‘winter of discontent’. There are no new ideas on the table.

And a similar theme is apparent across the western world. The US is being led by a very strange man, full of sound and fury, who was elected on his promise to redress the unemployment caused by globalisation, but who is not able to get anything done. And there was a resurgence of left wing politics, in the form of Bernie Sanders, during last year’s election.

Angela Merkel’s position in Germany, since the election, parallels that of Theresa May in the UK. Her party slumped in the election, and there has been a far-right resurgence (as there has been in the US; in the UK, Brexit has also legitimised elements of the far right.) I predicted at the start of the year that Merkel would go, based on her transits. That hasn’t been the case, but in any case the transits aren’t giving her more than a few years at most.

Spain is in the midst of a constitutional crisis, as Catalonia moves towards declaring independence unilaterally. Greece continues in economic crisis, as it has been for years. And France in its desperation has elected an untested youngster as President (after a far-right resurgence in its election), much as Obama was elected on a huge wave of hope in 2008. At best these Redeemers, like Obama, don’t get much done. Already Macron’s popularity has reached record lows for a new President, as the position goes to his head (what would one expect?) and he adopts the trappings of royalty.

Across the West, many people are feeling desperate, as the old economic certainties evaporate. This has led to a rise in political leaders promising redemption. But we are not yet desperate enough to have the dictatorships that are the usual outcome.

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Astrologically, we are at the end of the square from Uranus to Pluto, and awaiting the conjunction of Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn in 2020. This square has torn apart the old stability, and the root of the problem, as far as I can see, is globalisation, along with wealth moving from West to East. In the West, as a consequence, we have built up huge debts, while generations have been consigned to unemployment.

Saturn-Pluto will be an affirmation of the new world order that is coming into being, while its sign of Capricorn has a particular emphasis on the powers of big corporations and government.

With the lack of new ideas, and with Saturn-Pluto being just over 2 years away, it is starting to look like what we have now will be the new norm. I asked myself the other day, what is the presiding political force in the world? And I think it is the multinational corporations, in the West, at any rate. And I think this will be the principal meaning of the new Saturn-Pluto cycle: an era in which big corporations rule the world. That is why the governments have no new ideas, and why they are so ineffective: it is because they are increasingly no longer in charge. Our democracies merely give an illusion of control.

The last Saturn-Pluto cycle, which began in 1982, started this process. It was the era when Margaret Thatcher ‘freed’ the markets, took away the rules that had been sensibly introduced from the 1930s onwards. And America soon followed suit. It led to these ongoing bubbles and crashes, because unrestrained greed is not a good principle on which to run an economy. And it led to the increasing power of the corporations and the financial institutions that often own them.

But it’s not ‘them’. Let us not make the mistake of thinking there is some dark force ruling the world that is not ourselves. That is the basic mistake, based on simple psychological projection, of conspiracy theorists. 

It gives institutions more power than they have, and ourselves less. It is usually rooted in a feeling of powerlessness and issues around (male) authority. After all, it is the shareholders who run the big corporations. And the biggest shareholders are often the pension funds. My pension, your pension (if we have them)! At any rate, it is the man or woman in the street. People have the power to switch pension providers. Or not use Google. For example.

But that is not the way humanity works on a collective level. We feel powerless, and we want simple certainties and to be told what to think. This makes us feel secure. And the big corporations, and the governments they (effectively) run, are only too happy to provide that.

What is the principal function of a government? Panem et circenses, bread and circuses. Appeasement. We don’t realise just how controlled we are. What the government and the big corporations need are wealth producers who don’t rock the boat. (Student debt is very effective at tying people in to this system.) People who work hard and conform to the collective ethic feel good about themselves, they belong, they are respectable: and they feel even better about themselves in comparison to the people who aren’t like that: the losers, the unemployed, the disabled, the third world, foreigners, you name it. This is the not very pretty shadow of ‘respectability’. We all have some of this.

But it’s always been like this, to a greater or lesser degree. There are periods, like the 60s (and its Uranus-Pluto conjunction) when something else comes in that stirs things up for a while, and then we go back to our sleep.

We have just had things stirred up again by the Uranus-Pluto square. And there seemed to be different possibilities for a while. The free speech and level playing field of the internet. The occupy protests. The Arab uprisings against western-controlled puppet governments.

But I think much of that is closing down again, for now. I’m not being dystopian. It’s just how these huge collectives that we now live in work. Orwell was right, if you think of governments and multinationals as the same thing.

It is because of globalisation that the corporations are able to have even more power: even empires like the US and the EU are increasingly unable to control them. Look at what a struggle it has been for the EU to try and control Google, for example. And if you push them too hard, they’ll just take their business, or favours, elsewhere.

So I think this is the Saturn-Pluto era we are entering: an era in which the world is run by the big corporations. It is already happening. And the big corporations do not care about people. If they did, they would be at a competitive disadvantage. The individuals within them may care, but the organisation itself cannot afford to. That is why you get psychopaths in charge, who can be very good at appearing to care.

So the gig economy, in which people have less or no job security, is here to stay. The rising inequality is here to stay. And the greater ability to keep an eye on people and influence them, through mass surveillance and data collection, is just beginning. This will be the new Saturn-Pluto norm.

And of course, the coming AI revolution, in which the mass of humanity will be increasingly dispensible, will cement a world that is run and owned by the privileged few. In which people live brainwashed by the virtual reality of the internet.

But that will happen under Pluto in Aquarius, ‘the empowerment of the robots’. The last time Pluto was there, in the late 1700s, we saw the first wave of mechanisation, the Industrial Revolution. But we also saw rebellion against that, for Aquarius is a sign of rebellion.

Pluto enters Aquarius in 2023. I don’t think we will take this new world lying down. The neo-Luddites. That is where I have hope.

2017: The Year Europe Changed

Theresa May, the UK PM, has promised to initiate Brexit negotiations by the end of March. She’s not the usual sort of politician, in that she doesn’t say much, but when she does say something, she means it. We don’t have a birth time for her, but she has Saturn conjunct North Node, as well as square Moon and Venus, and sextile Mercury. 

She has a Saturnian personality: she is notoriously withheld, but wants to do a proper, detailed job. She has earned her position through being Home Secretary for 6 years, and popularity for her is secondary (Saturn square to Venus). So she has the right temperament for the job at hand, Brexit.

But subsequent to triggering article 50, we are likely to see a phoney Brexit for most of this year. For the UK, Brexit begins in earnest once Saturn goes direct in the autumn, leaving Sagittarius for good and entering Capricorn, where it will begin to hard aspect the UK Sun, Moon and Angles, all of which are in Cardinal signs.

This, of course, fits nicely with the waiting game we are likely to see until the French and German elections have been held, in the spring and autumn respectively. Until then, we will not really know who we are negotiating with, though there will continue to be posturing from both sides.

Europe is likely to see further shocks this year, as we experience the outcome of the Uranus-Pluto square, energised by the conjunction of Uranus to Eris. The dark underbelly of globalisation (those left without jobs and prospects as industry moves to cheaper countries, and as jobs become automated, and the problems caused by lack of sensible border controls) that Pluto has revealed, and that brought about Trump and Brexit, has yet to bring major political change to mainland Europe. 

This is because unlike the US and the UK, Europe has not had elections or referendums. Except Italy, which had a referendum on the constitution in December, that became a referendum on the EU and the Euro: the anti-vote won. That seems like a clear sign of the way things are going.

The Euro currency has an exact opposition between Mars and Eris (18.21 Libra/Aries), Mars ruling the 8^th House of shared wealth. So Mars is a key player. Saturn at 26 Aries, at the start of the 8^th, is also a major player. As Uranus completes his crossing of transiting Eris and moves on to natal Saturn this year, and as Pluto finishes with natal Mars/Eris, we are almost certain to see crises within the Eurozone, the 2 obvious contenders being Greece and Italy, both of whom have debt problems. It could easily result in one of them leaving the Eurozone.

The big events, however, are the French and German elections. Both countries (using their modern charts) are in the thick of Pluto or Neptune transits to major points: France has Pluto hard-aspecting her Asc, Node and Moon; Germany has Pluto hard-aspecting her Moon, Mars, Saturn, as well as Neptune conjoining the Asc.

So how can there not be major political change in these 2 countries, that reflects the anti-globalisation mood, and the EU’s part in bringing it about? The major symbol of these events, this new political mood, will be the fall of Angela Merkel in the autumn.

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She will be seen as a great leader, and as such her trajectory is in the stars: she was elected in 2005 as Pluto crossed the German Midheaven at 23 Sag, and continued as Pluto opposed the German Sun at 9 Cancer, and this year as Pluto finishes his business by squaring the German Moon. And so too will Merkel be finished as leader.

Mother Merkel (whose birthtime is approximate) has Sun at 24 Cancer, conjunct Uranus at 23 Cancer, showing the divided homeland she was born into, and which she experienced first-hand as a child when her family moved from West to East Germany. It is interesting with her Uranus that her job should be as a unifier, not just of Germany but of the EU. Her Sun-Uranus squares her Neptune-MC at 23-22 Libra. So this square, which is basic to her chart, has been under hard aspect from Uranus for a year or two (reflected in her waning popularity, much of it brought about by the immigrant surge which she, the caring Cancerian, oversaw.) Pluto will be approaching, rather than exactly aspecting her Sun-Moon, but that will be enough. She may, however, remain in politics for a few years after she loses the election, until the exact aspects have occurred.

The EU came into existence as the EEC in 1958. All the Angles were at 29 degrees of the mutable signs, which is the worst place to have them if you want something to last. The Euro currency has the same problem. Neptune won’t be exactly aspecting these points for another 7 years, but that is soon enough. In the case of the Euro, Neptune will exactly square the Moon (the member states) in 5 years.

So my prognosis is a dissolution of the EU in its current form, beginning with the start of the dissolution of the Euro over the next 2 or 3 years. And Brexit of 2016, followed by the French and German elections of 2017, will be seen as the key events which began this process. The rise of nationalist sentiment across the EU may mean that what the UK wants and what Europe wants are much more closely allied – ie more border controls, and devolution of power from Brussels -  and that will radically change the negotiating picture.

This easier climate for negotiation is reflected in Saturn’s passage across the major points of the UK chart, which will be complete in autumn 2020, and all over bar the shouting a year before that, after 2 years of serious negotiations.