The Nuclear Axis

The ‘nuclear axis’ is due for another shake-up. The chart below is based on the first man-made sustained nuclear reaction, which took place in Chicago in 1942. What is immediately noticeable is the Saturn-Uranus conjunction: the splitting (Uranus) of matter (Saturn). These 2 planets are opposite the Sun, and 8 to 10 degrees of Gemini-Sag has become known as the nuclear axis. It has proved very sensitive to transits. When Hiroshima took place 3 years later, for example, Mars was at 9 Gemini. I first wrote about this in one of my earliest blogs in 2006.


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The early 60s, when Pluto in Virgo squared this axis, was at the height of MAD, or Mutual Assured Destruction, which involved the advent of ballistic missile submarines that ensured a 'second strike capability'.

In the early to mid seventies, Neptune in Sagittarius crossed this axis, and this was the time of the SALT I & II talks, which for the first time limited the nuclear arsenals of the USA and the USSR.

In the late nineties, Pluto in Sagittarius crossed this axis, and this was the time when India and Pakistan came out as nuclear powers, beginning a new era of proliferation.

Next year, Neptune will enter Pisces, squaring by sign the nuclear axis. It will be 7 degrees off, but that is close enough for a hard aspect from Pluto or Neptune to be operative, as it was in the early seventies when Neptune entered Sagittarius.

So far, it seems, the hard Pluto transits have been about proliferation and stand-offs, whereas the one hard Neptune transit we have had has been about containment and reduction of the nuclear threat.

So we are about to enter another Neptune period, and it seems to me that it is again going to be about containment, after a period of proliferation that has drawn in North Korea as well as India and Pakistan, and in which attempts are being made to stop Iran joining the club.

The issue of nuclear arms does, paradoxically, seem to be one that can draw the major powers together. What I’d expect to see over the next 10 years, as Neptune does his work, is for Iran to be stopped from developing nuclear weapons, and for India and Pakistan to be drawn in more formally into agreements on limiting nuclear weapons. As for North Korea, the ‘zombie state’, and the ‘special case’ of Israel, it is hard to say.

If we take the Solar Returns for the Nuclear Chart, the year 2012 looks very interesting, with a Pluto-Venus conjunction on the ASC, trine to Jupiter on the IC. So in 2 years time I think we could see some real progress on containing nuclear weapons.


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The Fixed Stars around the birth of nuclear energy are a bit spooky. In particular, Algol was closely conjunct the ASC. Traditionally, this was the most evil star of all. I don't know what the more modern psychological interpretation is, but Brady gives it the meaning of female passion and intensity. I think I'll stick with the traditional meaning, because nuclear energy is about the most ill-omened event ever to have occurred.

The star Regulus is conjunct the Chiron-Node conjunction in Leo. Nuclear energy is something that once done cannot be undone, and it is very tied up with our destiny and where human curiosity and reason can lead us, and how it can be our undoing. Regulus is one of the Royal Stars and is in the constellation Leo. Brady's meaning is success if revenge is avoided, which sounds about right: success if nuclear energy is only used for peaceful purposes.

The Astrology of Nuclear Fusion

In June the Americans are going to conduct a nuclear fusion experiment, in which they will simultaneously fire 192 lasers at a pellet the size of a ball-bearing containing heavy hydrogen. The total power of the lasers will be about 500 trillion watts – more than the whole of the USA uses at its peak – but it will only last for a few nanoseconds. The idea is that this burst of energy will heat the hydrogen up to the millions of degrees required to initiate nuclear fusion and that, crucially, the amount of energy released will be significantly greater than that required to initiate the reaction – of the order of 10 to 100 times as much, it is hoped. If it does work, then it will be a landmark in the 50-year quest to produce controlled nuclear fusion, which is a kind of Holy Grail, promising unprecedented amounts of energy, an unlimited supply of raw material – water – and a virtual absence of waste products. So far all we have had is uncontrolled nuclear fusion, in the form of hydrogen bombs, which are that much more powerful than fission explosions. It will take several hours for the lasers to recharge. What will be needed for viable production is to have several pellets being lasered every second. So presumably very large arrays of highly efficient lasers will be needed. At the same time, an international consortium is building another sort of experimental reactor in France. It is called ITER, and the idea here is to ionise the heavy hydrogen so that it can be contained in a magnetic field, and then heat it up to 10 million degrees or so, at which point hydrogen fusion will begin (just like in the Sun). The plasma would obviously melt any physical container, hence the need for the magnetic field. The basic chart for nuclear energy under human control is for 2 Dec 1942 at 15.25 in Chicago, when Fermi achieved the first controlled fission reaction. Click to Enlarge This chart had a progressed New Moon in Jan 2007, showing the new era of nuclear power stations that is upon us, as well as the nuclear proliferation which has begun in recent years. The Progressed chart for Hiroshima – the chart for nuclear weapons – remarkably had a New Moon 2 months earlier in Nov 2006, again showing the nuclear proliferation that we are starting to see. It is generally some years between a Prog New Moon and the seed it has planted becoming visible. Given that the basic nuclear chart describes all uses of nuclear energy, the 2007 Prog New Moon could also be seen as describing the latest experiments in achieving nuclear fusion. The chart for man-made nuclear fusion has to be the chart for the first H-bomb, which was exploded in the Pacific on 1st November 1952. Click to Enlarge In the basic nuclear chart, the central symbolism is the Saturn-Uranus conjunction: the splitting (Uranus) of matter (Saturn). In the fusion chart, the central symbolism is the Saturn-Neptune conjunction: the fusion (Neptune) of matter (Saturn). Both charts have an angular Pluto, showing the sheer power involved. This year Jupiter-Neptune is hard aspecting the Angles of the fusion chart, showing the resurgence of this 50-year old dream. The Holy (Jupiter) Grail (Neptune) of technology (Aquarius). Over the next 6 years, Prog Saturn-Neptune will cross the Prog MC of this chart. So nuclear fusion (Saturn-Neptune) will be achieving a much higher public profile (MC). Straight after that, Uranus then Pluto will hard-aspect the Moon-Saturn-Neptune-Uranus t-square. This suggests all sorts of developments coming out of that higher public profile. The astrology suggests to me that finally controlled nuclear fusion is coming our way, for better or for worse. I expect to see the first power station around 2020, as Pluto finishes empowering the natal Neptune of the fusion chart. One of my first blogs, back in 2006, was on nuclear issues, which you can read here.

Eris, the Zodiac and Cetus the Sea Monster

In my piece of 13th Feb, I referred to Bernadette Brady’s recent article in which she traced the path of Pluto through the constellations in the sky. This is not the same thing as the zodiac, even though the zodiac was originally rooted in certain of the constellations, those which lay behind the path of the Sun through the sky, also called the ecliptic.

The zodiac now is rooted in Earth-Sun based events. So Aries begins at the spring equinox, the point in late March when day and night are of equal length; Cancer begins in late June at the summer solstice, when the Sun is at its highest point in the sky; Libra begins at the autumn equinox; and Capricorn begins at the winter solstice, when the Sun is at its lowest in the sky. So there is a reality to the zodiac, it is just not what you would think it is.

You can work this out for yourself. Look up Equinox on Wikipedia. You will see a table of all the equinoxes and solstices. Go to spring equinox 2008. It occurs at 5.48 GMT on 20 March. Look this up in your ephemeris or astrology programme, and you find the Sun at 0.00 Aries. And you can do the same for the other 3 points.

Admission: I wasn’t aware of some of this until the other night when I managed to find it out from someone at our astrobabble group who is technically more proficient than I.

So the zodiac as we use it is purely a projection onto the sky, but it has its own reality, and it works. But I also think it is through a glass darkly: we are astrologers because we have a visceral sense of the connection between earthly events and the sky, and modern astrology to some extent gives us this. But it is obscured, it is through a glass darkly, because the actual stars are not involved.

You get a much purer and more powerful sense of why you are an astrologer once you start bringing in the stars, and basing at least some of your astrology around sky events you can actually see.

But this wasn’t what I set out to write. I wanted to say something about Eris, because Catherine at Visual Astrology has come up with a list of the constellations that Eris has passed through since 1507.

Eris is larger and considerably further out than Pluto and was only discovered in 2003. She was classified as a dwarf planet about 18 months ago, along with Pluto and Ceres. Because her passage is so slow – moving just under a sign during the whole of the 20th century – it is hard to relate her to the life of an individual person. Astrology sees life as an interlocking series of planetary cycles or part cycles, but Eris’ movement during any one of our lives is so negligible that it is hard to see her as part of this.

This doesn’t make her any less powerful, but she needs to be seen in the context of the much longer cycles of human history. In theory, being the outermost planet of all by a long chalk, she should be the most powerful of all – yet only visible in her effects if you take a sufficiently long view. She properly belongs to mundane astrology.

Eris was a goddess who mischievously threw an apple into a wedding feast, sparking a row that eventually resulted in the Trojan War. So small causes leading to large effects. She is a catalyst. For example, the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand in 1914 occurred with Eris opposite the ASC and square the MC: this event was the trigger for World War I.

In 1930, Eris moved into the constellation Cetus, the sea monster, just a few years (not long for Eris) after moving into the sign of Aries. She will be in Cetus until about 2030, and in Aries until 2044.

Cetus is the whale, which in ancient times was viewed as a monster of the deep. Cetus is therefore a symbol for the collective unconscious. Put the Eris Ingress into Cetus alongside the Eris Ingress into Aries in the late 20s/early 30s, and you have a very potent and warlike combination.

The 1930s saw the rise of collective consciousness in its most destructive form, which this Eris/Cetus/Aries Ingress aptly describes.

Pluto was discovered in 1930, a planet that like Eris can be about small causes leading to large effects; and that like Cetus symbolises the power of the collective.

Nuclear energy was first experimentally achieved by Enrico Fermi in 1934, when his team bombarded uranium with neutrons. Nuclear energy, like Eris, has the quality of small causes (the nucleus, a tiny part of the atom) leading to huge effects. It’s first use was destructive (Eris in Aries) and its impact on the collective has been massive (Cetus), it really has been like a monster emerging from the deep, for better or for worse.

More broadly, this combination of Eris, Aries and Cetus suggests that we are in a long period where the collective can easily be stirred up, often to destructive effect. And we could see the 20th century as the triumph of the collective mind. Democracy became more widespread, for better or for worse. Communism in Russia and China saw society much more in terms of the collective than the individual. Globalisation has its strengths, but the world is also increasingly becoming one westernised mass culture.

In 1937, America changed the date of the inauguration of their Presidents to 20 Jan, at 12pm, a time that since 1949 has had Menkar, the brightest star in Cetus, on the Ascendant. (See my posting of Of Presidents and Sea-Monsters.) This suggests that the President has become less of an independent force, and more of an expression of the collective will. Under this aspect, the best sort of President will be very tuned in to the collective, and able to creatively direct it; while the worst will be not much more than a reflex of the mob-mind.

With Pluto entering Capricorn, a sign of society rather than the individual, we are not likely to see any let up in the near future of the forces attempting to subsume the individual into the collective. On an ordinary level, we can see this in terms of the various crises - environmental, economic, nuclear - that we are facing collectively, and the resultant insecurity that creates. Individuality is seen as a luxury by an insecure society.

But perhaps from 2024 onwards, as Pluto enters freedom-loving Aquarius, and Eris starts to near the end of her long sojourn in Cetus and Aries, there may be more room for the individual.