OUR NEW GILDED AGE

There is a seagull in Aberdeen that once a day swoops into the local branch of W.H.Smith (as you do), pinches a packet of Doritos off the shelf, flies out with them and eats them. If the shop is busy, he waits until it’s quiet so that he can get a clear run at his target. What sign do you think this bird is? Gemini with Aries Rising? Hatched soon after dawn last summer, with Venus in Taurus opposite Jupiter?

At least animals don’t pretend they’re not materialistic. I was saying in yesterday's blog how in certain circles it’s seen as perfectly normal for women to chase after blokes because they are rich, and to marry them mainly for that reason. They are seen as having made a good catch. This is the general approving opinion, but you’re not allowed to say it. You’re supposed also to think that the couple got married purely because they are in love. People have these contradictory attitudes in their heads, and they’re not aware they are contradictory, because they lead unexamined lives. When I turned 40, my father said to me, “You know, there’s still time to go out and make £100 million!” I said, “And what then?” This threw him for a moment, because having £100 million is such a self-evident virtue, then he said, a bit blusteringly, “Well, the world of women will open up to you!” This is a man whose present wife once announced in his presence (quoting someone else) that the only thing a wife can’t delegate is the bedroom.

I’m not going to pretend I don’t like money, but it isn’t a source of meaning for me. With Scorpio-Taurus Nodes, however, it has been a long struggle to get a balanced view of the material realm, and not to feel defensive about not being materialistic. The challenge of Scorpio is to move away from the false sources of power – money, status etc – and to find real power within, that can’t be taken away. It seems to me that money is a big deal for most people, even if they’re not materialistic. I don’t mean a big deal from the point of view of getting hold of enough, but all the psychological issues around it. We are in the 8th House here.

And we are living in an age in which there are a lot of extremely rich people, what the New York Times called ‘America’s New Gilded Age’, a reference to the period before World War I, when “powerful enterprises, dominated by men who grew immensely rich, ushered in the industrialisation of the United States.” With Pluto (riches) coming to the end of its time in Sagittarius (expansion, excess), it is perhaps not surprising that we are in such an age again.

I haven’t got anything per se against people dedicating their lives to becoming rich. If that’s what turns them on, then who am I to try and stop them? Obviously the way they go about it has to be contained, because such people can be extremely ruthless. What also needs containing is the parading of these people as superior, as possessing more virtue than ordinary people, when often they’ve just got a big hole of inadequacy in them that they’re desperately trying to fill.

Many CEOs now get vast salaries, and as one chief executive said: “Obscene salaries send the wrong message through a company. The message is that all brilliance emanates from the top; that the worker on the floor of the store or the factory is insignificant.”

Such CEOs argue that though their incomes are very large, it only reflects a small share of the corporate value created on their watch. In reply, Paul Volcker, a former Federal Reserve Board Chairman, says “I don’t see a relationship between the extremes of income now and the performance of the economy…The market did not go up because businessmen got so much smarter.” He added that the 1950s and 1960s “were very good economic times and no one was making what they are now.”

It doesn’t necessarily seem wrong to me that someone who has trained for a highly skilled job and who works long hours should earn more, but what is happening now is out of all proportion, it really is Pluto in Sagittarius at its worst, bloated and arrogant and out of touch with reality. Pluto in Capricorn would classically correct this, Capricorn has a sense that there should be a proportional relationship between what you do and what you earn. So there may be a corrective coming. On the other hand, Capricorn is also big business, so it might get worse.

PRINCE WILLIAM AND HIS LOVE-LIFE

First of all, many thanks to Melody and Lynn for posting their blogs here while I was away. I've enjoyed reading them. I was camping for a few days at an organic farm on Bodmin Moor. The weather was crap, as it has been in England all summer. It's something to do with El Nino. But I did manage to read Tom Wolfe's novel "I am Charlotte Simmons", about a very bright country hick from the mountains of North Carolina, who goes to a posh university and who begins to flunk her grades, because she finds another way of being seen as 'special': dating one of the basketball stars. It starts off with her being terribly disapproving of sex and alcohol, and you think she might be starting on some sort of deeper journey of liberation, but no, it turns out that underneath it all this moralising country hick is just as shallow as all the people she once disapproved of.

Which brings me on to the subject of Prince William and Kate Middleton. These two split up 3 months ago and now they are back together again. As I argued in an earlier blog, I think Miss Middleton is on the make - like Charlotte and her basketball star - but I don't think she's aware of it for a moment, and nor is Prince William, bless him; and the media, for once, seem to think it would be going a step too far to say that Miss Middleton's motives are anything less than pure. I don't hold this against Miss Middleton, because there are thousands like her, and in certain backgrounds (like my own), this is seen as perfectly normal, even desirable behaviour.

One look at Prince William's transits, however, tells me there there is no way this relationship is going to last, not at his age.

Prince William: 21 June 1982 21:03 London UK

Prince William is currently going through the biggest period of change of his life so far. Pluto is currently conjoining his ASC at 27 Sag, and over the next few years will oppose his Sun and Moon in early Cancer. He is becoming a very different person, the Prince William of his adult years who we have yet to encounter. Not many relationships begun at a young age can withstand this sort of change: it is time to move on. More than this, William's Sun and Moon are in the 7th House of Relationships, so the Pluto transit will be particularly transforming this area of his life; and his Venus is at 25 Taurus, which Neptune will be squaring over the next couple of years - again transforming his love-life.

What is noticeable about William's chart is the degree to which relationships are going to define his life: Sun and Moon in the 7th, and a strongly aspected Venus, being closely conjunct Chiron and in a yod with Pluto and Neptune/ASC. Also, with Sun and Moon opposite Neptune, as well as Neptune Rising, it may be hard for him to find a full sense of himself outside of a strong relationship. This may be to some extent a weakness, but it may also be just how he is built. This may be why he is currently back with Kate: it is helping give him back his sense of who he is.

There is a LOT going on for william in the area of relationships, and it is going to be fascinating watching it unfold over the coming years. It is not quite so common for men to be defined by their relationships, but it looks like William will be. As was his mother, Princess Diana, who had Venus one degree off William's at 24 Taurus. And, interestingly, as was his great-great uncle, Edward VIII (Duke of Windsor), who in 1936 abdicated the throne for an American divorcee, Wallis Simpson: he had Venus at 23 Taurus (unaspected, so it was hard to integrate into the rest of his life), and Sun at 2.20 Cancer, bang on Prince William's Sun-Moon midpoint.

Duke of Windsor: 23/6/1894 21.55 London UK

In terms of major aspects to planets, Prince William's Venus merely makes a wide, out-of-sign opposition to Uranus, so again it is not unlike the Duke of Windsor's unaspected Venus. And they both have star quality. The Duke of Windsor as a young man made royalty sexy, and so does William (Prince Charles may be guilty of many things, but not this particular sin!)

With Sun and Moon in conservative, family oriented Cancer, Prince William feels at home in the circumscribed life of the Royal Family (an institution which the playwright David Hare once described as "a very expensive way of being cruel to a small group of people.")

And what might this yod to Venus mean? With outer planets at the base of the yod, I think that one meaning is that Prince William's love life is fated to be circumscribed by the demands of the collective. The conjunction of Venus to Chiron suggests that he will experience this as wounding, and for him there will be resonances of his mother's marriage (Diana's Venus being conjunct William's), and the unbridgeable gap between his parents. What Diana did not understand was that her marriage took place in order to meet a collective need, as royal marriages have always done, and it is therefore naive to expect personal fulfillment, but by the same token perfectly acceptable to have lovers.

Prince William does not have the chart of a rebel, although with his weak Venus-Uranus opposition, he may wriggle a bit against the sort of marriage expected of him. With Aquarius Rising, and Mars in Aries square to his Sun, the Duke of Windsor had a lot more rebellion in him. But being so family oriented, and marriage oriented (7th House Sun and Moon), the traditional type of royal marriage may be very painful for William.

With Neptune Rising in Sag, Jupiter on the Midheaven, and his mother's Venus, we will all come to love William. He will be able to live comfortably within the tradition he has grown up in - not necessarily a sin! - and will be very focussed on his wife and family. But with Venus conjunct Chiron, there may be a secret heartache of not being free to marry who he wanted. At the same time, being so Cancerian, he will really try to make his family work.

Pluto in Sag and Harry Potter's Journey

In 1990 I became fascinated with druidry and neopagan ritual after reading Marion Zimmer's amazing book The Mists of Avalon, and searched high and low for information on magic and witchcraft. During those pre-internet days, it was difficult to find what I was looking for. I happened on a women's workshop taking place at the beach where I met a real witch and began studying with her. I had been playing with the tarot for years, and of course I was a professional astrologer by that time, but I fell in love with ritual and sympathetic magic.

The new age bookstore that I frequented in North Carolina where I live was very limited on the subject, but a book called Drawing Down the Moon had a resource guide that provided newsletters and other publications with source material for my new quest. Just a few years later (Uranus/Neptune conjunction in 1992-94), internet chatrooms on America Online and elsewhere began to provide an infinite amount of knowledge on all kinds of magic, witchraft, and paganism.

Pluto entered Sagittarius in 1995, transforming (Pluto) the realm of publishing and information (Sagittarius), a process which included taking underground realms of power and magic (Pluto) and spreading them to the masses via the media (Sagittarius). Today, any teenager can buy a pentagram, a cauldron and a scrying mirror. The popularity of the Harry Potter book and film series began under the passage of Pluto through Sagittarius which began in 1995 and concludes this year.

The first Harry Potter book was published on June 26, 1997 with Pluto traveling retrograde through the early degrees of Sagittarius (3 degrees, to be exact). The outer planets are also called transpersonal planets because they download a new awareness into the mass consciousness that is the harbinger that transforms the realm over which the new sign rules. Pluto, being the planet of death, endings, rebirth and the occult, is the natural ruler of Magick. Pluto experiences involve the use of fundamental energies of creation and destruction in order to provide transformative experiences, and harnessing these energies is the role of all magickal practices.

Aside from the obvious connotations of magic, Plutonian themes of death, darkness, rejection, despair, abandonment and power prevail in the Harry Potter books. JK Rowling says, "My books are largely about death. They open with the death of Harry's parents. There is Voldemort's obsession with conquering death and his quest for immortality at any price, the goal of anyone with magic. I so understand why Voldemort wants to conquer death. We're all frightened of it." True, but this is not a subject typically found in children's books.

The Harry Potter series has taken these Plutonian themes and truly brought them into the mainstream through a variety of media Sagittarius) including books, film, board games, computer games, audio boooks and even, in a fiesta of Sagittarian entertainment, a theme park. It's only fitting that the last Harry Potter book, in which the death of our hero may occur, enters the mainstream consciousness just as Pluto leaves Sagittarius for Capricorn. Children who have grown up reading Harry Potter are now entering their adult life (Capricorn) - the first generation to have grown up with an understanding of magic.

THE SATURN-MC RULER CYCLE

I was a bit slow off the mark with my last blog 'The President’s Mars is Missing', because I didn’t spot that George Bush’s Mars rules his Aries MC. What I had spotted was that the cycle of Saturn transits to his natal Mars corresponded to major shifts in his career – from the conjunction in 1978, and his first attempt to enter Congress, right through to the next (2008) conjunction, and the crumbling of his Presidency. But I hadn’t connected it with his MC, which is basic to chart analysis, nor did I particularly connect it with the nature of Saturn itself, which is to advance one’s career. And part of me goes “Well a real astrologer, who had diplomas etc, wouldn’t have missed that!” On the other hand, if I gave my blogging the time it really needs, I would hardly blog!

Looking at it now, the cycle of Saturn transits to GWB’s Mars is a textbook case.

Saturn is the natural ruler of the MC, so the cycle of his transits to the actual ruler of the MC are bound to be interesting, reflecting the development of our career-path. You can’t really do this with any of the other Angles, because their natural rulers – Mars/ASC, Moon/IC and Venus/DESC – are fast-moving planets, so their transits tend to be triggers rather than transformative.

I looked at this cycle with my own chart and it worked very well. I did it with my Virgo rising chart, where Mercury rules the Gemini MC. Trouble is, I also have another chart with Libra Rising and Capricorn MC, and the Saturn transits also worked well, but they would, because it is the Saturn cycle itself.

A couple of months ago I asked my blog readers to comment if they thought I had Virgo or Libra Rising, and I had loads of people saying I’m Virgo, and just one who said I’m Libra Rising. Which was fairly convincing. Then I asked my astrobabble group in Glastonbury, and to a person they were convinced I am Libra Rising. But they only know me as a person, rather than the real me who is to be found in print! So the jury is still out, though I’m favouring Virgo.

PLUTO IN LEO VS PLUTO IN CAPRICORN

I had been wondering in Thursday's posting (Celebrity Reality-Check) if the Paris Hilton affair etc might be part of Pluto’s entry into Capricorn, as well as part of the Saturn-Neptune opposition, but now I think perhaps not. It has more to do with Saturn in Leo, restraints (Saturn) on royalty/celebrity (Leo), opposite Neptune (excess, fantasies).

Capricorn and Leo are both about the Father archetype, and therefore both about leadership, but in different ways. I think that Leo is more about the leader who stands for something, who is archetypal royalty that connects us to the Source of life; whereas Capricorn is more about the leader who rules wisely within the limits of what is possible. Celebrities don’t usually govern us (though some make the transition), they are just there, rightly or wrongly, to fill our need for archetypal royalty. So it is a Leo issue rather than a Capricorn one.

When Pluto entered Leo in 1938/39, the western world was dominated by several major historical figures – Hitler, Roosevelt, Mussolini, Stalin, Churchill (a year later). This is what we remember about this era: the leaders themselves, which is very much a Leo thing. Churchill, for example, was in many ways not very Capricorn, not very good at actually running things, though he had people who were. He had plenty of ideas about military strategy, but the generals had to do their best to keep his hands off, because his ideas weren’t always very practical. But his ability to lead the nation, to stand for something and draw the nation behind that, was superb. His leadership strength was Leo. As was Hitler’s. His actual running of the Reich was apparently quite chaotic, but he could certainly stand for something, something Divine even, or what was felt to be Divine. Mussolini was a Leo anyway, so no more need to be said. Perhaps in wartime this emphasis in needed, and hence Pluto was in Leo during this period.

A good leader needs some of this Leo quality, which is why the next UK leader, Gordon Brown, the Invisible Man who is good with the books, won’t be a good leader, despite his Capricorn-leadership qualities. (He has Moon in Leo, but its conjunction to Pluto seems to make it hidden and manipulative, rather than empowering and shining). Margaret Thatcher, who has Saturn Rising and Moon in Leo, had both. I think at heart she was a bookkeeper, and a much needed one, but she also managed to stand for something, while on the birth of her first grandchild she famously announced “We are a grandmother.” It was Ronald Reagan’s criticism of his successor, George Bush Snr, that he didn’t stand for anything, even though he had the Capricorn sense not to go for regime change in Iraq. Unlike his son, who is all Leo and no Capricorn as a leader.

The last time Pluto was in Capricorn was from 1762-1778, and the most notable leadership event during that period was the American Revolution and the creation of a new and very well thought through system of government, and the world’s first full democracy (kind of). (Note the French Revolution took place later under Pluto in Aquarius). Yes, the American Revolution has its hallowed leaders (Leo). But the real achievement was this new type of government.

So with Pluto coming into Capricorn, although we will of course continue to have well-recognised leaders, I think there will be more of an emphasis on good government, of ruling within the limits that are there. This is the nature of Saturn/Capricorn: it involves an initiation into life through the world, through embracing its limitations and learning to function through them, so that our dreams become real and contribute to society.

And more than anything, the limitation now is the earth herself, our leaders functioning within the limits of what the earth has to offer. This is something we have forgotten how to do and forgotten is necessary. Limits, we feel, are to be transcended through new technology. So Pluto in Capricorn is coming at just the right time, as the environmental issue becomes politically mainstream. What we now need are leaders who know about Capricorn rulership, who know about functioning within limits, and not just because of the environmental issue, but also (in the west) because we no longer have the world to ourselves - China and India are also coming on board in a big way, and with huge populations.

BLAIR'S 'LIE'

I have always found Tony Blair’s exaggeration of the case for the Iraq War to be thought-provoking. This has been the main cause of the British public’s loss of trust in him. Blair made the case for war around the central assertion that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The Intelligence Services had been tentative about the possibility of Saddam having WMD, and in relaying this to Parliament, Blair converted this tentative conclusion into a certainty. This, to many people, constituted a lie over a very serious matter, hence the loss of trust. That happened 4 years ago, and since then I’ve regularly turned Blair’s ‘lie’ over in my mind. On the face of it, it is a lie, and a big one. On the other hand, politicians habitually say one thing and mean another, and their fellow MPs all know the language, they know what is really being said and what the speaker’s real intentions are, and the speaker knows they know this. In this context, what is ordinarily a lie is not so. So it’s not necessarily a simple matter. The way the system works is adversarial. We have an Opposition, and this is a good thing, and we have a ‘free press’, which again is a good thing, for between them they help keep the government accountable. But they habitually give the worst possible interpretation of anything the government might do, and twist the meaning of anything they might say. In this context, it is not a simple matter for a member of the government to speak the truth. In the case of Iraq, a clear motive for the government was that of staying ‘onside’ with America. All British governments have wanted to do this (and Blair recently actually stated the importance of being ‘in’ with the US: it opens lots of doors, he said). Harold Wilson wasn’t prepared to go as far as Blair, for he refused to join the US in Vietnam; and Margaret Thatcher was known for not giving Reagan an easy time of it, despite the closeness of their relationship. So we can criticise Blair for being too subservient, but not necessarily for the basic intention of staying onside with America. But he couldn’t say this. If he had given this as a reason for going to war, he would have found himself out of office. It would have been too humiliating for the country, even though everyone knew that was what was going on. So he had to give another reason for going to war, for which he has subsequently been hounded by the public but not, interestingly, by Parliament, for they know and accept the game. I have been watching Andrew Marr’s ‘A History of Modern Britain’, and last night’s episode included the Suez Crisis of 1956, when Marr said (very topically) that Britain went to war on the basis of a lie. Nasser of Egypt had nationalised the Suez Canal, and Britain wanted to claim back its control of the canal. To do this they cooked up a plot with the French and Israelis whereby the Israelis would find a pretext for attacking Egypt, and the French and British would join in to support them. In those days you didn’t have a vote in Parliament about going to war, and the war's failure, under American pressure, led to the resignation of Eden, the Prime Minister. The crisis made clear that Britain was no longer a major player in the world. Eden had a Sun-Neptune conjunction in Gemini, and at the time of the war, Mars in Pisces was squaring this conjunction: a war (Mars) based on deception (Neptune). In the run-up to Iraq, Tony Blair had transiting Neptune conjoining his Moon, so again we have the element of Neptunian deception; as for the ‘war’ bit, Blair has Mars Rising, so he’s in his element anyway. But for the record, Mars in Capricorn was a few weeks off joining his Capricorn MC. The point here is that in constructing a pretext for war, Tony Blair wasn’t doing anything new. It’s just that it was no longer politically acceptable to do so, which I think is a good thing. It is one of the outcomes of Pluto’s passage through Sagittarius, a sign that values honesty and truth: this, I think, is the cultural and political significance of Blair’s ‘Lie’. The trouble is, it wasn’t just ‘A Convenient Untruth’ (to paraphrase Gore). Blair seemed entirely convinced that Saddam had these weapons and was an imminent threat. I dislike, but kind of understand, why politicians lie in the ordinary sense. What makes me scratch my head is how Blair convinced himself that the pretext was the reality. And why he had this trusting and appreciative relationship with Bush. They are part of the same package, I think. I recently saw Lord Kinnock, a previous Labour leader, also failing to understand Blair’s relationship with Bush. So while I very reluctantly accept that politicians often have to say one thing and mean another, and that this was probably an inevitable part of going to war with Iraq (and that DOESN’T mean I agree with the real reasons for that war), I still don’t understand why Blair brought such a flimsy pretext before Parliament (he didn’t have to) and persuaded himself to believe in it. It was asking for trouble. It was wilfully self-destructive. I tend to think that what we’re looking at it not so much a moral issue, but some sort of psycho-pathology in Blair which he is blind to, and which I for one don’t yet understand. But it has the character of religious extremism: the passionate certainty under the influence of a higher authority (the will of God, as manifest through the person of both himself and the more powerful Bush). And for Blair, I suggest that loyalty to this authority transcended ordinary political loyalties. It also seemed to blind him, as religion often does, to ordinary considerations of truth. I think people are right not to trust Blair over this issue. But not because he ‘lied’ in the sense of being deliberately deceptive. He can’t be trusted because to some extent he is a mole, a foreign agent, whose loyalties lie, in the last resort, not with his country but with what he imagines to be ‘God’.

SATURN-NEPTUNE & PARENTAL FANTASIES

Last Wednesday, Lynn at astrodynamics did an interesting blog on the health of John F Kennedy. Not being familiar with his chart, what stayed in my mind was his Saturn-Neptune conjunction on the Midheaven. As Lynn put it, “Saturn [is] right on the MC where it reflects the pressure of his father (Saturn) pushing him into public life (MC). And in Cancer no less, demonstrating that his public life was part of the family dynamic and not just an individual ambition.”

I have heard it suggested elsewhere that left to himself, Kennedy’s natural leaning would have been to become something like an academic, and that it was mainly family expectation that pushed him into politics. The dreams (Neptune) of the father (Saturn) and family (Cancer). Or even the unreal (Neptune) expectations of the father (Saturn).

John F Kennedy 29 May 1917 15.00 Brookline MA

He had no fire planets in his chart, and an unaspected Sun and unaspected Pluto! You would expect to find Fire – a sense of vision, direction, leadership – in a President (like Bush’s Leo Rising or Clinton’s Leo Sun). Unaspected planets can manifest in various ways – they can, for example, be apparently absent, or they can take over (like Hitler’s unaspected Neptune-Pluto conjunction, which made him the undiscerning voice of the German Unconscious.) In the case of JFK, we could speculate that in manifesting his Saturn-Neptune, he never found his real individual destiny (unaspected Sun), and that Pluto, again unaspected, and the only planet in a fire house (the 9th), was able to manifest as a raw drive for power, independently of his personal needs and wishes. No wonder he had health problems! Maybe, even, no wonder he died young.

I have been struck lately, through personal experience, by the extent to which members of an ambitious family can subsume their own identities in the collective consciousness of the family, leading lives that are the same down to ridiculous details, and espousing identical, unexamined values. It is no different to the dynamics within a religious cult. It gives psychological security, but it is also based on fear, which the worldly success can mask, for to question such a family’s values inevitably leads to ostracism, to what would be experienced as psychological annihilation. And such families usually have one or two members who suffer this fate.

Back to Saturn-Neptune. It is interesting that Kennedy didn’t just carry the dreams of his father, he also carried the dreams of a nation, the Cancer nation to which he belonged. He was built for this, as we can see from his chart. And he wasn’t just the victim of family pressure: the Saturn-Neptune-MC is also HIS Saturn-Neptune-MC, he had a propensity to carry the unreal expectations of others (‘Camelot’) at the expense of his personal destiny (unaspected Sun).

Tony Blair also has a Saturn-Neptune conjunction (opposite Mercury and Venus in Aries) and he too has been the carrier of the dreams of the collective, and the original expectations of him were way beyond what a human could deliver. Saturn-Neptune can raise you to god-like status, and if you don’t die young (which many of them do), you are likely to eventually encounter a huge backlash as people feel let down. This happened to Blair over Iraq, and would almost certainly have happened to JFK had he lived: archetypal patterns have an inevitability about them. It is interesting that David Cameron was elected leader of the Conservative Party under a Saturn-Neptune opposition, because he is seen by many as the Tories’ answer to Blair, the young saviour of the Party (who will inevitably let them down in the end.)

The Dalai Lama was born under a Saturn-Neptune opposition, and his life from the word go has been devoted to living out the dream/fantasy which his religious tradition (Saturn in the 9th) and the Tibetan people have of him: the god-king. It is amazing he has done so well on it, as this level of expectation would twist most of us right out of shape. Maybe those who brought him up knew what they were doing. I think the Tibetan tradition does have a lot of good stuff in it, but it is also an organised religion, and prone to exactly the same weaknesses as other religions.

Venus Williams, the former world number one women’s tennis player, was born under a Mars/Saturn-Neptune square, and her and her younger sister are well-known for being the products of their father’s ambition. Mars gives the sporting drive and ability, but it is interesting that her reign at the top has been short-lived and erratic, and she is known for pursuing other interests: this suggests to me that Venus has been breaking away from the dream (Neptune) of her father (Saturn).

On 22 May this year, twins were born to a 60-year old woman in New Jersey. I read this in a blog by a lady named Out the Comet's Ass. Now I don’t want to rush in and judge, and only time will tell how wise it is to have kids at such an age. But the astrology doesn’t look entirely promising. The twins have no earth planets (though they do have earth ASC and MC), suggesting there may be a problem about their connection to the earth and to nature, but which their Angles (which are doorways, rather than part of us, unlike the planets) will require them to develop. This interpretation is backed up by a Moon-Saturn conjunction in 12th House Leo, opposite Neptune and Chiron. At worst, this indicates that they are the product of the damaged fantasy (Neptune/Chiron) of a self-centred (Leo) unconscious (12th) Mother (Moon/Saturn). This is a harsh thing to say, but there may well be an element of truth in it. And again we have Saturn-Neptune, the dreams, even fantasies, of the parent, which these twins will be carrying - they'll have to live up to being 'miracle babies', or something like that.

I think it’s natural for parents to have hopes and dreams for their kids, even unrealistic ones, dreams that perhaps compensate for what they haven’t managed to achieve. If you’ve built up a business, you’re probably going to want one of your kids to join it and build it further – and at the same time, you may be jealous of their youth and success, and you may try to undermine them. We’re a bundle of contradictions, with feet of clay (Saturn) and dreaming of the stars (Neptune).

When I was young I was at the receiving end of some pretty powerful and unconscious parental fantasies which, with the Saturn-Neptune opposition currently hitting my Sun-Chiron, I’m doing a further stage of untangling. It can take decades! But I’m not kidding myself that I can decide not to have my own set of fantasies for my 6 year old. I can try to minimise them by being fulfilled in my own life, but beyond that it’s probably just a matter of finding out in 35 years what those fantasies were when he presents me with the bill for his therapist. (Joke)

As always, it’s good to have a bit of myth around these things so we can see the universal pattern that we fit into. In their book ‘The Mythic Journey’, Liz Greene and Juliet Sharman-Burke begin with the myth of Thetis and Achilles, which they subtitle ‘Great Expectations’ – “How parents expect nothing less than everything from their children”.

“Thetis was the great goddess of the sea and ruled over all that moved in its depths. But it was time she married, and Zeus, king of the gods, had received a prophecy that, if Thetis married a god, she would bear a son who would be greater than Zeus himself. Worried about losing his position, Zeus espoused the sea-goddess to a mortal man called Peleus. This mixed marriage was not unsuccessful, and the two settled down relatively comfortably – although Peleus sometimes resented his wife’s supernatural powers, and Thetis sometimes felt she had married beneath her station.

In time, Thetis bore a son, whom she called Achilles. Because he was fathered by a mortal, he was a mortal child, allotted his time on earth by the Fates, as are all mortal beings. But Thetis was not content with this prospect. Being immortal herself, she did not wish to remain eternally young while watching her son grow old and die. So she secretly carried the newborn child to the River Styx, in whose waters lay the gift of immortality. She held the child by one heel and dipped him in the waters, believing thereby that she had made him immortal. But the heel by which she held him remained untouched by the waters of the Styx, and therefore Achilles was vulnerable through this one place.

When he reached adulthood and fought in the Trojan War, Achilles received his death wound through an arrow in the heel. Although Achilles achieved great glory and was remembered forever, Thetis could not cheat the Fates, nor turn that which was human into the stuff of the gods.”

PRINCE WILLIAM

Today's blog is also being posted at astrodynamics while Lynn has a short vacation. As she is American, and as the Queen has just visited the US (obliging George Bush to hold his first white tie dinner), I thought I’d say a few things about Prince William, the Queen's grandson and second in line to the throne. If he lives long enough, he will become King.

People in the UK are divided about the monarchy, but perhaps less than they think they are, because the attachment to it runs deep. I’m in favour of the monarchy, not because I ‘believe’ in it, but because I think it takes some of the weight of projection off the Prime Minister. It seems to be part of human nature that we collectively assign semi-divine qualities to certain people and then worship them – and celebrities catch a lot of this, which many of them are only too happy to do – so the more we can take this off our political leaders so that they can get on with the job of running the country, the better. Though the USA broke with Britain and its monarchy 231 years ago, some of its roots are still there, and we can see that in the ongoing level of interest in Princess Diana – and even in ‘Fergie’, the ex-wife of Prince Andrew, who managed to get her own TV show in the USA.

Prince William is 24 years old and currently in the army, with which the Royal family has strong links. Before that he was at university for 4 years, where in 2003 he began a relationship with Kate Middleton, that lasted until a few weeks ago. It seems to have been him that ended the relationship. She was always portrayed as this straightforward middle-class girl who just happened to have met up with William at university, and for the last year or two the media had been endlessly predicting an engagement.

About a month ago I read a magazine article about her background. It wasn’t a critical article, but I found it revealing. Her family are well-off and live in Berkshire, near London. They have a mail order business. It turns out that her younger sister has been going out with a ‘wealthy aristocrat’ and shares a flat with a son of the Duke of Northumberland and a son of the Duke of Roxburghe. The Middleton family are also applying to have a coat of arms. In this light, Kate’s involvement with Prince William doesn’t look so innocent. Nor does her decision to attend St Andrew’s University, all the way up in Scotland, where Prince William just happened to be going. Her previous relationship just happened to end at a point where William was single, and it was probably a case of “He chased her until she caught him.”

Not that any of this was probably very conscious in her, young as she was. Kate Middleton was born on 9 January 1982 (no birth time), and what is screaming out from the chart is Sun in Capricorn square to Saturn-Pluto and quite possibly making a t-square to Moon in Cancer. This woman thinks hierarchically through and through, a high social position is very important to her. And important to her family. She didn’t want to marry William, she wanted to marry a Prince, and she thought she’d landed one. Not that she would have seen it like that. She was also no doubt doing exactly what her family wanted and expected her to do, without anything needing to be said. Since university she seems to have fiddled around in London, having recently taken up a pseudo-job through family connections, but in reality waiting for her real goal to unfold: marriage to the Prince. Kate's chart also suggests the possibility of real achievement, rather than the mere pursuit of status, so you never know, this knock-back might change something for her.

So it may be that William has had a lucky escape, even though he might not yet see it like this, and the experience may help him avoid the mistake his father made in marrying Diana: Charles was under pressure to produce an heir, and Diana was aged 20 and clueless (like many of us at that age) about what she was doing.

Prince William was born on 21 June 1982 at 21.03 in London, England. His chart is striking, with a Sun-Moon conjunction in Cancer on the Gemini Desc opposite Neptune Rising in Sag. With this chart, William will have unusual abilities to involve himself with others in a compassionate and nurturing way. Relationships with others, whether with a big or small ‘R’, will be central to him, they will be how he comes to know himself. With Jupiter on the Midheaven trining his Sun (a charmed aspect for a King), he will probably be very popular and loved by the people – “the people’s prince”, in the way that Tony Blair called his mother "the people’s princess" after she was killed. Like his mother, he has Sun in Cancer and Sag Rising, and he will have the burden of being not just William but also Diana’s son, Diana resurrected.

This is pointing to his Neptune Rising, which may make it difficult for people to see him as he is. Amongst other things, they will see Diana. And while his Sun-Moon in the 7th will on the one hand be his path to self-knowledge, Neptune Rising is also saying that he can lose himself in his ability to involve and give himself to others.

The next few years will be defining for him, as Pluto first crosses his ASC (this year) then opposes his Sun (next year) and then opposes his Moon (2010). We don’t yet have much idea of who William is – and nor does he, probably – but we certainly will in a few years time. It is not the chart of a soldier (unlike his younger brother Harry - see my posting of 1st May - who has Sun in the 8th square Mars in Sag), so he probably won’t stay in the army for very long. What William HAS been good at so far is staying out of the public eye (relatively speaking) and leading as normal a life as he can before he is drawn into public life: he clearly has some idea how to use his Neptune Rising to his advantage, as a cloak of invisibility.

Prince William was also born on an eclipse. Eclipses occur in series, known as Saros Series, that run for up to around 1400 years. The first eclipse in the cycle sets the character for the whole cycle, so Prince William’s life will reflect this first eclipse, which occurred on June 24 792AD at 6.03 GMT. This chart has a Sun-Moon conjunction (naturally) at 6 Cancer, close to William’s Sun-Moon conjunction at 0 – 5 Cancer, emphasising William’s connection to this series.

In her interpretation of the chart for this series, Bernadette Brady says: “This is a difficult eclipse family, as its members bring unfortunate news concerning friendships or relationships [me: or family - Cancer]. You will be dealing with ideas of separation or the ending of a union. However, although the picture may look quite glum as the eclipse takes effect, the actual results are quite positive. You will quickly grasp what has to be done and fast action can bring quick results. The theme of this eclipse is action concerning personal relationships.”

The aspects Brady uses for her interpretation are: Sun-Moon-Jupiter conjunct Mars/Uranus midpoint; and Mercury conjunct Venus/Saturn midpoint.

The death of his mother Diana in 1997 indicates that Prince William is indeed connected to this eclipse series, and we may see it in action again if his brother Harry goes to Iraq, which any good astrologer would advise him against. (Listen, Harry!) Next year not only does William have transiting Pluto opposing his family-oriented Cancer Sun, but Pluto will also be squaring his 3rd House cusp – siblings – at 0 Aries.

This Saros Series is coming to an end. It began in 792, around the time of what was arguably the beginning of the British monarchy (King Ecgberht in 802 AD). It will end in 2036, when William is 54 years old, and the monarchy as we know it may end around then, particularly if we consider the interpretation given above for the series (“ending of a union.”) On the other hand, the eclipse chart also suggests the ability to “quickly grasp what has to be done and fast action can bring quick results.” So William may successfully adapt to the changes.

I have taken my eclipse material from Brady’s ‘The Eagle and the Lark’, published 1992 by Weiser.

PRINCE HARRY THE SOLDIER

Prince Harry is the Spare to the British throne. His brother William is the Heir, he is the Spare, and Prince Charles is the breeding male who has done his duty by the herd. I don’t wish to disparage Prince Charles, as I admire him in some ways, despite his manner, but the fact is that as a young man he was led by the ring in his nose and mated to the much younger Diana Spencer, a woman with whom he had nothing in common.

25 years on and Charles is married to Camilla, and as a couple they seem very suited. At last, after all the divorces and infidelities, we have a royal marriage that works. And how does the great British public respond? They are cross. What they want are fairy tale weddings and tears over the death of a silly princess, not a real relationship that actually works. Actually I don’t want to be too hard on Diana either, she was an essentially ordinary girl who found herself in a very difficult position. And how many girls aged 20 would turn down the chance to be future Queen of England?

Prince Harry, known in the army as Cornet Harry Wales, is due to be deployed to Iraq this year, along with his regiment. He has said that if he is not sent to Iraq, he will leave the army. There has been a lot of speculation recently that he won’t be sent to Iraq, because his regiment will become a target and because of the huge political fall-out if he is killed or captured. Yesterday the head of the army confirmed that he will be going to Iraq (though it always remains under review), while Harry has let it be known that he won’t leave the army if he is not sent.

Harry was born 15th Sept 1984 at 16.20 in London, UK.

He is a Virgo with Capricorn Rising and Moon in Taurus. Very earthy and practical, and so you can understand him saying, “Well I’m a soldier and if I can’t do what a soldier does, which is to fight, then I’ll do something else.” Which I can understand. Either you do something or you don’t do something, you don’t faff.

But it’s more than that. His Sun is in the 8th square to Mars in Sagittarius in the 11th. This man really is a soldier, he would be devastated if he felt he had to leave the army or that he couldn’t fight. With Sun in the 8th, it is natural, even necessary for him, to encounter death. His Mars is in the 11th, so he leads his regiment. And Mars in Sag are the most feared and deadly warriors of all. In the constellation Sagittarius we see the figure of a centaur, a man on horseback: when these warriors on horseback first appeared, they were awesome, they could not be stopped, it was like having the first nuclear bomb.

I admire Mars-Warrior energy. It’s total, it’s fearless, it's superhuman, it doesn’t care if it dies, it’s doing something that’s more important than either death or its own narrow self-interest. And it can do spectacular things. Like the Israelis, with their mighty Mars in Leo, beating back a host of nations as soon as they had been born. Even though the Israelis can behave like Nazis, I admire them for that.

So Prince Harry has this. With Mars conjunct Uranus, he can be impetuous and wilful, not helpful in a soldier, but he has his own way of soldiering, and can explode into action. With his Moon in Taurus (like his Dad) conjunct IC, he loves his country and has his feet on the ground. His Node is also in Taurus in the 4th, making a yod through its inconjunctions to Pluto in the 9th and Neptune in the 12th. So there is some kind of fate around Harry going to Iraq, expressing his love of his homeland (Node) through serving the collective dream/fantasy (Neptune in the 12th) by encountering death in a foreign land (Pluto in the 9th).

For astrological reasons (as well as common sense) we can’t rule out his death. His progressed Chart currently has 5 planets in the 8th: Sun, Mercury, Venus, Saturn and Pluto, so he is strongly drawn to situations of death. His Prog Moon is at 26 Pisces, which will square transiting Pluto and conjoin the Iraq War Sun over the next few months. His Prog Uranus will exactly oppose his Prog IC (beginnings and endings) over the next 18 months. (Its conjunction to the MC reflects the ongoing uncertainty around his deployment to Iraq).

By transit, Neptune will continue this year to be within range of squaring his IC at 17 Taurus, while next year Uranus will be very close to an exact opposition to his 8th House Sun at 22.57 Virgo: sudden death is the way of it in war. Jupiter is also associated with death, and will spend next year conjoining his ASC at 11.27 Capricorn.

I’m starting to feel like I shouldn’t be writing this, publicly predicting death for a young man. But it’s not quite like that. I am saying there is a choice. Harry, I know you can’t help yourself, but if you go to Iraq, there is a good chance you will be killed. Those who are deciding on his deployment, please take note. Just look at the transits to his Dad’s chart next year: regarding his natal 5th House (children), he has Sun on the cusp at 22 Scorpio, conjunct 5th House Chiron, and being squared by tr Neptune; Mars at 20 Sag, being squared by tr Uranus; and Jupiter at 30 Sag, being conjoined by tr Pluto. Even his dead mother has Neptune conjoining her Aquarian Moon next year. Don’t do it, Harry!

Prince Charles: 14 Nov 1948, 21.14 London, UK

I wrote earlier about my admiration for the warrior energy. I also have a reservation. The Warrior is not the King, he serves the King, he does unquestioningly whatever the King asks of him. A soldier obeys orders, this is seen as a moral good, and it is not his place to question. If you are deployed to Iraq, you go there, you do your job, and you do not question the justice or purpose of the war.

This quality of obeying orders unquestioningly (or if you have doubts, you act as if you don’t) is not a moral quality, it is pure expedience. Without it, the army couldn’t get the job done. And it is manipulative to make people feel like they are bad for questioning.

The young warrior often doesn’t want to question. What he wants is the certainty that he is clearly on the side of right against wrong, otherwise he could not use his Mars. So if there is an authority prepared to re-assure him that he is on the side of right, he is quite happy to believe them. People are very vulnerable to this kind of authority. Look at the Millgram experiments, in which volunteers willingly gave other volunteers painful electric shocks (so they thought) because they were told to by an ‘authority’.

So this is what Mars has to work out as he gets older: his relationship with authority, with the King. This is why Mars is exalted in Capricorn: Saturn, the King, is there working alongside Mars instead of being sought outside.

So this is my main reservation around soldiering: it’s not the killing and slaughter, though that’s bad enough. It’s the deeper question of “Who is in charge of my life?”

THE ASTROLOGY OF SCOTTISH INDEPENDENCE

The Scottish National Party (SNP) is a centre-left political party which campaigns for Scottish independence. It currently regularly polls the second highest number of votes [after Labour] for a political party in Scotland. The SNP has 6 of 59 Scottish seats in the UK Parliament, and 25 of 129 seats in the Scottish Parliament, where they are the official opposition. (Wiki)

This Thursday 3rd May, elections are being held for the Scottish Parliament, which was established in 1999 under the present Labour government, devolving certain powers to Scotland. All the signs are that the SNP will emerge from the election as the largest single party in the Parliament, displacing Labour, though without a majority. Polls among Scottish people have regularly begun to show a majority wanting full independence.

This is not good news for Labour, as it currently has 39 MPs in Scottish seats (compared to the Tories’ single seat), and independence will make it that much harder for them to win general elections in England. There does seem to be an unstoppable momentum developing, however, and I think it is a good thing. Small countries (like Ireland) seem to do well economically within the EU, so I don’t think they will have to worry on that score. But more importantly, the Scottish are a separate race to the English, by whom they have been effectively ruled for centuries, and I always think it’s a good thing if a people can govern themselves. I think it’ll be good for England too.

I also think that the smaller the country is, the easier it is for the individual to feel that they count, that they can make a difference. In a democracy, what does an individual vote count for? Absolutely nothing. It makes no difference at all. The individual is powerless at a national level, and often at a local level, and the outcome you are therefore most likely to get in an election is herd-think, rule by the unconscious mob-mind – and remember Hitler was initially elected democratically. Of course, democracy does have the ability to chuck out a leader who is a bad lot, and that is a strength. But as Churchill said, Democracy is the worst sort of political system - apart from all the rest!

I digress. Time for some astrology, and a chart for Scotland. This is not easy, as we can't be entirely confident of the year of its founding (842 AD), let alone the actual date. Scotland was formed from the conquest of the Pictish kingdom by the Irish kingdom of Dalradia (in what is now Argyle) by Kenneth MacAlpin. In his ‘Book of World Horoscopes’ (from which the above information comes), Nicholas Campion says: “We do not know precisely which year the union took place. However, if we set a chart for the Aries ingress of 842, that would fit with the astrological practice of the time, as practised in the Arab world, in which the Aries ingress prior to an important political event would have signified that event. Given that military campaigns usually took place in the summer, there is an excellent chance that the Aries ingress of 842 immediately preceded the Dalridian conquest of Pictavia.”

So we have a chart for March 16 842, 16.21, Edinburgh.

Click to Enlarge

In my blog of 18th March, I pointed out that the next day’s partial solar eclipse at 28 Pisces was conjunct the UK Moon at 29 Pisces (1066 chart) and square the UK Uranus at 29 Sag. I continued: “Uranus is, amongst other things, about splitting, and only today Alex Salmond, the leader of the Scottish Nationalist party, has been announcing his plans for how a Scottish government would work and his plans for a referendum.”

So there you have it, with the added point, that I hadn’t clocked at the time, that the Scottish Pluto is at 27 Pisces! So that eclipse really did have a lot to do with Scotland’s desire to break away from England (Uranus) and assert its own power (Pluto). On top of this, Pluto is squaring the Scottish natal Pluto by transit this year. So the astrology seems to suggest that this week's elections are likely to play a crucial role in Scotland’s moves towards independence. And the Scottish chart, artificial as it is, is already looking like it might work.

The Scottish chart has Moon at 7 Aries conjunct Uranus at 13 Aries (an interesting correspondence with the UK 1066 chart Moon square Uranus). Freedom and independence are important to the Scottish people. This Moon-Uranus in Aries is square to Mars at 14 Cancer, showing that we are dealing with a warrior race. If we add on Saturn-Neptune in Capricorn, we have a Cardinal t-square, which becomes a Cardinal Grand Cross if you add on Node in Libra. With this sort of astrology, I am amazed there haven’t been more rebellions, and given that conditions are now right, it can only be a matter of time before Scotland is independent. Maybe it is their Saturn in Capricorn that has kept them realistic about independence and actually quite at home in the Union, through the Protestant work ethic that they share with England (1801 chart - UK Sun at 10 Capricorn conjunct IC).

What about timing? By transit, Pluto and then Uranus will be hitting this Moon-Uranus-Mars-Saturn-Neptune-Node from 2011 onwards, at the time of the next Scottish elections, and a year or two after the next UK general election. So the move towards independence will probably be greatly empowered by these transits and the run-up to them: it seems reasonable to suppose that these 2 elections will result in greatly increased numbers of SNP MPs in both the British and Scottish Parliaments, with probably a clear majority for the SNP in the Scottish Parliament from the 2011 election onwards. This will only be the start of the Pluto transit, and we can expect to see full independence as the Pluto transit to the Grand Cross finishes about 5 years later, around 2015/2016.

Interestingly, Alex Salmond, the leader of the SNP, was born on 31 Dec 1954, giving him Sun at about 9 Capricorn conjunct Node at 5 Capricorn, which interacts strongly with the Scottish Grand Cross, and indicates a re-empowerment for him, through Pluto, from about 2011 onwards as well.

Back to the Scottish Chart. The Progressed Chart has Node conjunct MC in 2010, and the converse Progressed has Pluto conjunct MC in 2010. So the Government (MC) will have some sort of encounter with its destiny (Node) and be re-empowered (Pluto) around 2010.

So the astrology for Scotland around both the 2007 and 2011 elections suggest to me that the SNP is going to gain considerable ground in both, probably becoming the largest party this time, becoming the majority party in 2011, and this setting the stage for moves towards full independence in the succeeding few years. Looking at it the other way round, events now and where they seem to be going lend plausibility to the 842 Aries ingress chart for Scotland.