RECENT DEBRIS

 SUB SPECIE AETERNITATIS

When you're an astrologer, you get your stories from Mount Olympus. They are different to the stories that collective humanity tells itself. We need to be able to stand apart from these stories, all of them, especially the ones that come with the authority of our modern state religion: science. Political parties and their stories too, that division into good guys and bad guys that so many mistake for reality. Otherwise we won't be able to listen to these ancient guys who, for whatever reason, have chosen us as messengers.

We are in the world but not of the world. It's a big ask, and I'm sure the gods don't expect us to be perfect. And I'm sure sometimes they roll their eyes at the way we treat modern stories as reality. I say this especially around the sense of crisis that seems perennial to humanity. Our job is to stand outside of all that, it is largely illusion, and it is not how the gods live.

 

PRESIDENT RAMASWAMY?

 

 

Donald Trump doesn't have the empowering transits to win another election. He will have Uranus on his Mars and Angles next year, which makes his trajectory highly unpredictable and unstable. Vivek Ramaswamy, on the other hand, is at the start of a long series of empowering transits: Pluto squaring his Pluto-MC, then Neptune squaring his Venus and Asc, carrying him through 2 terms as President. He was reportedly the clear winner at the recent debate between Republican candidates.

 

 

 

 

THE SUN, THE ASCENDANT and THE ANGLES

The Ascendant is the point on the horizon where the Sun rises and brings new light. The Ascendant is therefore intimately connected with the Sun. It is the doorway through which we find alignment with our deepest self, with who we always were: the Sun, which is both universal, yet unique to us. As an Aquarian, I find my Sun through the service and inner joy of my Virgo Asc. 

 

 

Not only that, but the other 3 Angles - Home, Relationship and Vocation (IC, Desc, MC) - naturally unfold when the ASC is balanced, when it is listening to the Sun. In other words, we incarnate, our spirit makes the often difficult journey into matter, which is what we are here to keep doing.

 

 

BLOWING MY OWN TRUMPET

"I couldn’t put this book down! Astrology has always been a bit of a mystery to me but in the reading of the book I want to learn about astrology now! Thought provoking and intense, yet explains astrology in a way that makes you want more! Barry tells it how it is, pulls no punches yet is gentle in its teaching. You can’t help but know more at the end of the book yet long for even more!"

 

One of the many 5 star reviews of my astrology book on Amazon. And here's the deal: you buy it and leave a genuine rating on Amazon, and I will give you a free astrology reading!

 

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The astrological chart is your Fate, a Gift from the Moirai. It cannot be changed: it is writ. The chart tells you who you are, and the trajectory

of your life. It has a pulse, it lives and breathes.

 

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I don't always pay attention to transits to outer planets, as their sign is generational. But the House is personal. Saturn is backing into an opposition with my 12th House Pluto, and I am having significant dreams. One was particularly about power: a nurse was trying to anaesthetise me to perform an unnecessary operation on my big toe (a symbol of the masculine). But I couldn't be anaesthetised. The Wolf in me, who has loomed large lately, is here for good.

 

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Conventional reality is the matrix. It always has been. It is a shifting set of stories that the collective needs for psychological stability. Neptune can be the blue pill that subsumes us in the collective stories. Or he can be the red pill that wakes us from the dream. Which one you take is an ongoing choice. All strongly held collective beliefs are blue pill territory.

 

 

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Very few people know how to think. What passes for thought is usually just the finding of arguments to support what it is they prefer to believe. Political astrologers beware!

 

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Jupiter, Chiron, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto will all be retrograde until early October. We have an exceptional period of inner alchemy upon us. Pay attention to dreams and the sense of new patterns being laid down within.

 

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Astrology is founded on cycles. It is not going anywhere. It simply advises us on how to live well, in accordance with the planetary gods. This is the ancient, indigenous perspective. It relieves us of the modern pressure to be going somewhere: the Protestant Work Ethic, our imbalanced Saturn.

 

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For the astrology chart to speak through us, we need a felt relationship with the 4 elements: Sun, Rain, Soil and Wind, which are more fundamental than the zodiac signs. We need in this sense to be indigenous, as the first astrologers were. It's something you can do in your back garden.

 

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CHIRON'S 'WOUND' 

 

Chiron is the bridge to the outer planets. The area of life he highlights will often not work in a normal way: it may as a result appear 'wounded'. There is calling, vocation to be lived in order for that area to function well. In this sense Chiron is 'the crack where the light gets in'. He is the crack in conventional reality through which pour the creativity, imagination and renewal of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto respectively.

 

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Mercury is the messenger of the gods. Until 15th Sept he will be off on one of his thrice yearly consultations with them. If you think through carefully (Virgo) anything you want to begin, you might be able to overhear what is being said, and get it right. Otherwise, Mercury is liable to turn up in his trickster form. Which for him is great fun.

 

 

THE DARK GODDESS SEDNA

 

 

Sedna, Inuit goddess of the ocean underworld. Discovered in Taurus in 2003. The outermost (dwarf) planet. Glaciers calve (Taurus) icebergs, 90% of which are below the surface in the ocean underworld. Does Sedna rule glaciers and icebergs?

In 2024 she moves into Gemini. In the Inuit myth, she had her fingers chopped off by her father. The fingers became seals. Fingers are Gemini. She is an ambivalent figure. In one version, her father threw her out to sea because she attacked her parents. She is both the power of woman and the shadow of that power. Like Gemini, the light and the dark twins. She is the Underworld, which is beyond light and dark, good and evil, it just is.

There is so much in this coming astrology. Astrology is the translation of mythology into human affairs. The astrologer has the gift of glimpsing the shapes behind the veil, the larger designs, while honouring the context of mystery, of unknowability. Sedna had her fingers cut off by her father. What a powerful story. It makes me think of the horrors of transgender surgery on teenagers. And the need for the masculine to listen to the feminine, in her dark as well as light aspects. It speaks to me of both sexes allowing the other to be dark as well as light, and not lashing out, as Sedna's father did.

Sedna in Taurus (since 1965) has been a time of huge economic growth (Taurus), in which billions of people have come out of poverty. But which has had consequences for the natural world, also Taurus. Gemini, as an air sign, gives the ability to reflect on that. At present, we are very polarised about it, with many people only seeing the bad. We can't collectively move forward with wisdom unless we can take both sides into account. Gemini has that potential.

 

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Transgender surgery on teenagers is a Pluto in Aquarius theme: using science to do something inhuman, in the name of helping people.

 

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Astrology is the translation of mythology into human affairs. The astrologer has the gift of glimpsing the shapes behind the veil, the larger designs, while honouring the context of mystery, of unknowability.

 

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Jordan Peterson's Mars, on the face of it, doesn't look promising at all: in its fall in Taurus, hidden away in the 12th, opposite Neptune and square to Saturn. Yet he is one of the most combative people you'll find. He never makes it personal, except when it comes to certain public individuals who he finds reprehensible. He fights the battle of ideas consistently and practically (fixed earth) on behalf of the collective (12th and opposite Neptune) with tremendous focus and control (square to Saturn). His ideas have power for many people (trine to Pluto). 

 

So you never know. It demonstrates to me that there is no such thing as good or bad placements. What the chart does show is how to use the placements. What it doesn't show is the moral character of the individual and the choices they will make. That is why you never know. The chart, if you like, shows the type of car we are driving, but not the driver, who remains a complete mystery. Which doesn't mean we won't have intuitions about them that go beyond what the chart says. In fact, that needs to happen if we are to be a good astrologer.

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.

Embodying the Sky Spirits

 I do Astrology. And I also do Shamanism. They are both in my bones, and they don't feel separate. Shamanism tells us that we belong to the natural world, and that world is alive, it is inspirited. That includes rocks and water. And the sky: that is where astrology comes in. If you are an astrologer, then your spirits - at least, some of them - are in the sky.

The ancients knew this. The sky spoke to them. Nowadays, we have to make a case for it. The sky spirits tell us stories about ourselves. When we do a reading for someone, we are passing on some of those stories, because we have the gift of listening to the sky. The sky stories about other people also speak to us. There can be sky stories about the world too: that is mundane astrology.

In a way, it is no different to reading a novel or watching a film. They too tell us stories, they may be about other people, but they are also about ourselves, which is why they grip us. The novelists and film directors are also passing on stories from the spirits, but they wouldn't put it like that, not nowadays. Maybe they don't have words for where the stories come from, or maybe they call it the Unconscious. Whatever they call it, it is a special place, a sacred place, even, that creative centre in you from where the stories come unbidden.

As an astrologer, you get a sense of the planets speaking through you. You can't pin it down, and you can't say exactly what came from your head and what came from the planets/spirits. It's not like that. But they are there as presences, one way or another. This is inspiration, which means to breathe in: we are breathing in spirit.

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I offer Zoom astrology readings, by donation. Contact: BWGoddard1 (at)aol.co.uk. My books, Surfing The Galactic Highways and The Medicine Wheel are available for pre-order on Amazon (or by post from me now.)

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Astrology easily becomes cerebral, because it is a complex subject. There are ten different planets, 12 Houses, 12 Signs, and a range of aspects between the planets. There are also any number of asteroids and techniques.

Complexity gives us more information, it gives us nuance. But it easily also takes us away from the felt symbolism. The stronger you are feeling the symbolism, the more the sky spirits can speak through you. In a way, you don't need more than the Sun and the Moon. We have such a strong relationship with them, that goes back hundreds of thousands of years. When we tell sky stories, we are also drawing on their collective power that has built up over time, which is a mysterious and wonderful thing. 

 

 If you call your chart to mind, and picture where the Sun and the Moon were on the sky at the moment you were born, that will tell you something that is both simple and powerful. You may not have words for it, but in a way that doesn't matter. It is the feeling of connection to that powerful god and powerful goddess that matters.

 Everything you need to know about yourself is in that felt sense. That sense of the planets is physical, visceral. This is something we can be shying away from in the retreat into complexity. It is easier to juggle concepts in our head: the felt sense makes demands of us, and maybe we can only take so much of that.

 For myself, this is where Shamanism comes in. Shamanism takes the spirits seriously. It would have no truck with anyone attempting to make astrology 'scientific', as though these magical stories can be reduced to simple, repeatable concepts that validate our art. That is a grotesque idea. It disrespects the spirits. It is hubris.

But even with Shamanism, we are limited by our cultural background, that in the Middle Ages divided Body and Spirit, and then perpetuated that division through the modern scientific split between Body and Mind. The split came about because people used to dance in churches. I kid you not, it seems so unlikely. But that is what they did in the Middle Ages, alongside the priest. (See 'Dancing in the Streets: a History of Collective Joy' by Barbara Ehrenreich.) When you dance, you become inspirited, you feel your own connection to the divine. And if you are trying to control people, as any religion worth the name will attempt to do, you can't have people making their own connection to the divine. So dancing was banned, and the body became the realm of the devil. Or, nowadays, the 'dead' matter that is the vehicle for our consciousness.

Not only did they ban dancing. Astrology too was proscribed as a practice that summoned demons. And of course, they were right. Astrology done properly does indeed summon the spirits, the gods, and they were seen as competition by the church.

Modern Shamanism exhibits the Body-Spirit split through the way contacting the spirits is taught: through lying still while a drum is beaten. It works, I am not dissing it. But Shamans in the far East dance when they go to the spirits: or rather, the spirits dance them.

Any kind of ceremony we can do honouring the sky spirits before we do a reading, or even look at our own chart, will invoke this felt sense of the planets, which is also a sacred feeling. We don't talk about it lightly, and certainly not to those who dismiss astrology.

You can let the planets-as-gods move through you through movement or 'dance' (which isn't quite the correct word). If Pluto moves through you, welcome him, but be also in awe: he doesn't come lightly and is liable to be ruthless, even brutal, in the way he changes your life. But always so that new life can push through.

Pluto and Neptune are the two outermost, and most recently discovered, of the astrological pantheon. One is below ground, ruling the Underworld; the other is the Ocean. They are also, obviously, in the sky. But part of the meaning of their arrival, perhaps, is to take astrology away from an ascensionist model, and into one of immanence, of incarnation, of embodiment, in which Saturn also plays a key part.

I will be co-leading a 5 day event in North Wales from 22-27 June 2022, entitled 'Embodying the Spirits', in which we shall, hopefully be edging out of the old cultural divide between Body and Spirit and into the spirit dream of our bodies. The spirits love to be embodied. It is suitable both for people who work shamanically and astrologers, since we all work with spirits. There are still a few places left

This retreat will combine embodiment journeying, dream sharing, ceremony and walks in Snowdonia.

The venue will be Cae Mabon, a magical and jaw-droppingly beautiful eco-retreat in North Wales: a fairy-tale village hanging on a steep hillside, with stunning views across to Snowdon.

Barry Goddard has been involved with shamanic practices for 25 years, and before that Buddhism for 16 years. He has recently published two books: The Medicine Wheel, and an astrological book, Surfing the Galactic Highways. He lives on Dartmoor.

Emma Edgington lives near London where she teaches shamanic journeying and healing and is the creative director at Knowing Healing Hub.

Prices vary from £299-£369 p/p with the option to camp or book shared accommodation. A 50% deposit is required to assure your booking. Prices include food and accommodation.

For all enquiries and bookings please email Barry at BWGoddard1@aol.co.uk

The Depth Psychology of Shamanism

I have a strong interest in both astrology and shamanism. And at the moment it's the latter that I'm writing more about. And I have a shamanic blog that's been on a bit of a backburner, but now I've started putting a lot more on it and building a (free) subscriber list. So if you are interested, go to www.shamanicfreestate.blogspot.com and you can sign up at the top right of the page. Meanwhile, here is one of the articles from that blog:



In 1997, I was organising some shamanic journeying at a small festival in the UK, and the space was packed for each session, like 70-80 people. The word shamanism had a buzz to it, and I think it still does, even though it can also be a cliché.

But the buzz was genuine, and I think it was about people wanting a taste of the Otherworld, something which has almost become a race memory, because it has been so squeezed out by religion and then science. But it is still there in us, this desire for an untrammelled experience of Spirit, that feels ancient, and that is not hedged around by dogmas of what is and is not possible.

It is Spirit that ultimately teaches us about Reality, not humans and their books. Shamanism – a recent, western phenomenon – is about that return to a direct experience of Spirit, that connects us to a universe that is so much more than the literal, material universe of modern science.

That taste of the Otherworld is, for some, enough as an accompaniment to their regular existence. For others, it is not enough. Or we may think it is enough, but the spirits have other ideas!

And this is where the idea of the 'shaman' comes in. A slightly problematic word, as it carries connotations of spiritual stature, which ain't a good thing to claim. And a shaman is technically also a healer and diviner, a spirit consultant.

But the spirits can drag us kicking through that initiatory journey without the end result being a healer. You may end up as a counsellor, or an artist, or a stand-up comic - or as Mozart: what was it that spoke through him if it wasn't the Otherworld? Or you may be nothing in particular that you can put a name to! You just have that look in your eye that says I've been somewhere else.

As Leonardo da Vinci said: “Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”

Or as the Ancient Mariner said:

 

"I pass, like night, from land to land;

I have strange power of speech;

That moment that his face I see,

I know the man that must hear me:

To him my tale I teach."

The Ancient Mariner

The archetypal event has become, for us, the shaman's illness, which will often bring him or her to the gates of death or madness, and once she has accepted the wishes of the spirits to be a vehicle for them, he recovers.

And I think this illness, this trial, this ordeal, needs to be interpreted broadly within our shamanism, even though the original definition was quite specific. And I think we need to be quite broad too about 'the spirits'. Yes, some of us will have guys upstairs that tell us stuff, or who work through us. For others, it may just be this other place in us, and when we speak or act from it, there is some kind of deeper wisdom or insight there, that may not even make sense to us at the time, but we learn to trust it. The so-called 'mid-life crisis' (which can go on and on - see The Middle Passage by James Hollis) has a resonance of this type of ordeal.

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As an astrologer, I encounter these trials in the form of Neptune and Pluto acting on people's charts. I had my own experience of Pluto for much of the 90s: after 10 years running Buddhist institutions, I was unable to do anything for several years. Anything I tried to do wouldn't work. And it was like the plug on my life-force had been pulled. I realised that it is not 'I' who lives, it is something from deeper within that calls the shots, and it was saying we're not going to let you carry on in that wilful way, we're going to fuck with you until you listen to us. And there was this deep, magical pull towards that other voice. 

Abdominal Surgery

At the same time, I felt like I’d had major abdominal surgery, and that I’d been brought about as low as I could be, to this faraway place. And after a few years I had a dream telling me to pursue shamanism - as well as something else, which was a trick dream that catapulted me out of my old life.

And since then there has always been this place within me that is a kind of dark wisdom, that I can forget about sometimes, but when I'm coming from there I am aligned with my life. It is the glittering eye of the ancient mariner. And in the last few years it's been happening all over again, but under Neptune's rule, and I'm still in the thick of it, so I can't say too much. But it's been like this overwhelming call that I haven't quite known what to do with.

Pluto with his hellhound

The classic story behind Pluto, who is Lord of the Underworld, is that one day he abducted Persephone, daughter of the nature goddess Ceres, who went into mourning and the earth went into permanent winter. Eventually it got sorted, but Persephone was by now Pluto's wife, and spent half her time in the underworld.

So this is a good way of understanding the shaman's illness. There is another side to life, beyond what is presented to us by society, and you can be taken there forcibly by the demands of the spirit, which has no regard for conventional niceties and sanities. And in a deeper kind of way, you grow up, move on to the next stage - as did Persephone, in becoming Pluto's wife.

A traditional society understands this ruthless dimension to Spirit. As Holger Kalweit writes in Shamans, Healers and Medicine Men: 

“The suffering and exhaustion that accompany a vision quest do not correspond to the mild and gentle style of modern psychotherapy. Westerners do not want to have to exert themselves to solve their problems.” (p102)

And Goethe understood what happens if you resist the call:

“And so long as you haven't experienced this: to die and so to grow, you are only a troubled guest on the dark earth.”

So this initiatory journey that the shaman undergoes isn't just about acquiring magical powers under duress. I don't think it is like that. The main emphasis is on the development of psychological depth, in the sense of moving beyond the narrow, conventional self that tells us how to live, and whose rules are shared by the other members of society. That kind of living is 'normal', it gives a kind of psychological security to many people, and it is necessary for the stability of society.

But that ain't what the shaman lives by. No, he/she has another loyalty, a deeper loyalty, that is not to the rules and 'shoulds' of the tribe, but to the spirits, to the daimon, to the Otherworld, to the Jungian Self. And that other place to which we have our loyalty is more real, for it recognises that the world isn't what it seems, it is not to be taken at face value, for it is only one pole of existence, the other being the spirit world, and these 2 poles are profoundly interconnected. The world is not an absolute, it is fluid.

So it is this loyalty to the Otherworld that is the real qualification to be a healer - or whatever. It is the shaman's wholehearted response to the imperatives of the Otherworld and its values that make him/her a shaman. Once you have that new basis to your life - that look in your eye - then the spirits will allow you to be a healer, or require you to be.

Of course, this is a kind of ideal scenario, because we are human, and we fuck up, and sometimes people have real healing abilities who seem in other respects to be such messes.

But the principle remains, and it is the 'depth psychology' of shamanism referred to in the title. It involves a radical turning about, so that the guiding principle of our lives becomes not what society expects, nor is it based on our personal desires, but on a commitment to something beyond us, that also is us, and that is more real than a purely conventional notion of existence ever can be.

It is a completely different basis for living, and that is why the shaman's illness can take him/her to death's door: the conventional, which is so deep-rooted, has to die. It can almost be like I cannot continue to live like I have been, so how can I live? And the answer is there within, and always has been.

The UK Election: it's Neptune vs Pluto

It’s a big election we have in the UK on the 8^th June. It may not appear very exciting. It may appear just to be a choice between a right-wing bureaucrat (May) and an inspired but dated lefty (Corbyn).

The astrology, however, says otherwise. First of all, we are coming to the end of a period where Pluto has hard-aspected the Sun, Moon and Angles of the UK chart. The last time we had these transits was 1974-80, the period during which we joined the EU and old Labour failed – Britain became ‘the sick man of Europe’ – and the outcome was a swing to the right in the form of Thatcherism.

The present series of Pluto transits began in 2010/11, as the free-market capitalism of Thatcher failed, and the years of austerity began. Parliament has been either a coalition or small majorities – suggesting that the country itself does not know who it is anymore, as you’d expect as a major transit begins to kick in.

UK Chart 1801

We made a decisive step in terms of re-defining who we are last year when we voted to leave the EU. But even then it was a slender majority. And that re-definition is going to gather pace over the next year or two as Pluto opposes the UK Moon. It’s like we sleepwalked into the EU 40 years ago under the last Pluto transits, many of us not realising that we were committing ourselves to a political, as well as economic, union. Pluto can do that – he sneaks something in, and then you realise many years down the line that you’re not happy with it. But it wakes you up, gets you to think harder about who you are.

So by transit we are in the middle of this massive re-definition of ourselves, centering around Brexit. An issue which has, strangely enough, taken a back seat during the campaigning.

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So let’s look at the chart for the election. Specifically, the charts for the opening and closing of polls on the 8^th of June. Astrologers seem to use both charts nowadays, and I’m not sure there is consensus on the different meanings of the 2 charts. So for now I’ll just use both.

Polls open 8 June 2017

And what is striking about the chart for the opening of the polls is that Neptune and Pluto are both on Angles. This is huge. It says that this election is about much more than a contest between a robot and an unelectable socialist.

During the campaign, the issues talked about have been much more around eg the Health Service, care of the elderly, education, jobs, fairness and housing than about Brexit. Brexit is there in the background, looming, but people have been much more concerned with the issues in their everyday lives.

I think that Neptune and Pluto point to 2 different themes: Neptune, typically, is socialism, it wants a fairer society. This is what Corbyn stands for, and he is doing a lot better in the polls than many people thought. He has also proved a better campaigner than the faux-Presidential Theresa May.

And then there is Pluto in Capricorn, opposite the Cancer Asc. This is the theme of Brexit and security and immigration controls. This is the conservatives.

So both these themes are pulling strongly. And because they are outer planets, it is saying that this election is in the hands of the gods. There is some kind of destiny unfolding that is beyond people’s narrow personal desires, and people will be drawn to vote for that wider thing, without even knowing they are doing it.

Brexit is saying we want control of our laws and borders (Pluto). But the popularity of Corbyn is also saying that we want a fairer society (Neptune). And there is no reason they need to be contradictory. Contrary to how it is sometimes painted, the people who voted Brexit weren’t just ignorant right wingers. In fact, the decisive, surprise vote was by people who were unemployed, left on the sidelines without prospects by the forces of globalisation. People who one would typically expect to vote Labour.

So the election chart is saying that there are these 2 great themes at work in the country. The way I imagine it will work out is that the Tories will be the next government, but with a smaller majority than they had hoped for. And that will be because people also want a fairer society, and May will have to listen to that, just as Cameron felt he had to listen to the voice of the UKIP voters after the last election, and call a referendum.

Polls Close 8 June 2017

The chart for the close of polls has Saturn and Mars running along the Asc/Desc. So this says to me that the conservatives (Saturn) will win and that the recent ‘terrorist’ attacks (Mars) will play a part, as well as the need to be effective in the Brexit negotiations (Mars/Desc).

So I think May will get a sufficient majority to carry out the Brexit negotiations successfully, without being too beholden to the right wing of her party, who want a ‘hard’ Brexit. At the same time, the size of the vote for a left wing Labour party will mean that she has to listen to that also.