ASTROLOGY AND SCIENCE

It seems to me that astrology and science pull in opposite directions, they describe very different types of truth. So that any attempt to ‘prove’ the truth of astrology by statistical means is misguided.

Scientific truth is always generalised, it goes from the particular to the universal: it sees the universe as a machine in which certain sets of conditions always give rise to certain results. A particular event is of significance only inasmuch as it is an example of a general law.

But a human being cannot be reduced to a mere instance of a general law, a human being is particular and individual and ultimately unknowable. To the extent that science tries to reduce people to generalities, it is a de-humanising influence. This occurs particularly when science is in the hands of people who have the irrational, unprovable superstition that reality is ultimately scientific and ‘rational’, and that everything must be seen in scientific terms.

For science, the Eureka! moment is when you realise a general law like E=mc2. For an astrologer, the Eureka! moment is generally when you make an individual’s chart work for them, when you are able to put into words that person’s unique and particular way of living out the symbols in their chart.

Of course astrology also deals in general ‘laws’, like the nature of the 12 signs. It also moves from the particular to the universal, but in a very different way. Astrology doesn’t try to ‘reduce’ people to the signs. It is more the nature of artistic truth. A novelist will create characters, based to some extent on his/her observations of real people. If this is done well, the characters will seem real to us, and we will feel something is being said about people in general. But that general truth is arrived at through the depth with which the individual has been observed. The individual is central, yet also mysteriously connects us to a wider truth – but not one that can be proved statistically. This would be absurd, because the novelist deals as much in felt/intuited/experienced truth, that gives us a sense of human nature, as he/she does in truth that can be put into words: and even then, how do you couch those words in scientific terms?

It is the same with the signs of the zodiac. Some artistic genius saw the underlying patterning of human nature that the signs describe. But the essence of the signs is more about having a feeling for the type of character being described than about words. It’s like can you reduce your mother to the things you might say to describe her?

Astrology is also divinatory truth. It is about making connections between apparently unconnected events – i.e. the planets and ourselves – and realising what one has to say about the other. How can that possibly be scientific?

It is the same sort of truth as when an unusual event in nature occurs, and you feel there is a particular message in it for you. Like when you see, for example, a bird of prey doing something it doesn’t usually do, and you go away and think about it, and eventually the meaning dawns on you. In the same way, the universe at the moment you were born has a particular message for you about your soul, and the astrologer’s art is to help you read that message. Scientifically, this makes no sense at all.

Astrology is a higher form of knowledge than Science, because Astrology can understand and accept scientific truth, it can be incorporated within its body of knowledge. But Science has no way of understanding Astrology, the truth of which does not lie within its narrow method.

ALBERT ELLIS

I’ve just read two obituaries of a guy called Albert Ellis who I hadn't heard of, but who was, apparently, ‘the grandfather of cognitive-behavioural therapies’. He was voted by the American Psychological Association to be the second most influential psychotherapist of the 20th century after Carl Rogers, and ahead of Freud.

“Freud was full of horseshit,” he liked to say, while Freud’s central concept of neurosis was “just a high-class word for whining.”


He used to run Friday night workshops which became legendary. “Let me tell you why people are always making you so angry,” he informed a troubled young woman in 2005 (when aged 91), “Because they’re screwed up! They’re out of their fucking minds! We’re all out of our fucking minds!”

This mantra, which he repeated regularly, was behind his 'Rational emotive behaviour therapy (REBT)'. Its starting point was that we have negative emotional reactions not to events themselves, but to our beliefs about them. He rejected Freud’s focus on unpicking a patient’s childhood experiences. Instead, he advocated identifying and modifying these “irrational beliefs”, which usually take the form of a hidden demand that reality should be different than it is.

“There are three musts that hold us back,” he wrote. “I must do well. You must treat me well. And the world must be easy.” We upset ourselves with the grandiose requirement that we should perform perfectly, and that others should be nice to us. But in fact we are imperfect: we fail, in love and work, all the time. And other people, often enough, “act like jerks.”

This approach led him to emphasise short-term treatment, aimed at changing one’s way of thinking, here and now. “As I see it, psychoanalysis gives clients a cop-out,” he said, “ They don’t have to change their ways or their philosophies; they get to talk about themselves for 10 years, blaming their parents and waiting for magic-bullet insights.”


Early glimmers of REBT could be seen in a nerve-racking experiment Ellis conducted as a teenager, with himself as the subject. As a 19 year-old, he was painfully shy around women. So during a month of visits to the Bronx Botanical Garden, he sat on a bench and spoke to every woman he saw. His 130 attempts at conversation did not lead to true love, but that was beside the point. He had proved to himself that rejection, though unpleasant, was not unbearable: there was no need to “awfulise” it. “Nobody vomited and ran away,” he wrote. “Nobody called the cops.”

The experience led directly to the “shame-attacking exercises” he later prescribed to his patients. “Stop somebody on the street,” he advised, “and say ‘I just got out of the loony bin. What month is it?’ And learn not to feel ashamed when they look in horror at you, and think you’re off your rocker, which they think you are. But you’re really not. You’re being very much saner than they are.”

In his final years, the Directors of his Institute threw him out and stopped paying for his accommodation and medical care. He took them to court last year and won, and ended up back at the institute. True to the principles of REBT, he insisted that the contretemps hadn’t upset him: there was no point, after all, in demanding that the whole universe fall in line with his wishes. The other board members, he said, were “ fucked-up, fallible human beings, just like everyone else.”

He probably was one-sidedly rational. I found this quote by him: "Witness, for example, the fervent testimonials that innumerable people keep giving for cults, superstitions, and hoaxes like astrology, shamanism, psychic surgery, fortune telling, channeling, witchcraft, communications from ghosts, satanism, and demonism."

Mind you, I don't necessarily think people are being unreasonable if they think astrology is nonsense. There's no reason why it should work, which makes it all the more wondrous that it does. And you can't write off people's opinions just because they haven't tested astrology: so many ideas and theories come our way, astrology is just one of them, and we have to be able to form opinions about things. Like whether we really are ruled by aliens, or whether the moon is hollow (as I was knowingly informed once). I don't think a belief in astrology is any less strange.

Back to Albert Ellis. He was born 27 Sept 1913 (no time). His chart has a powerful signature: a Cardinal t-square involving the Sun, Jupiter and a Mars-Pluto conjunction. I know someone else with a Cardinal t-square involving these planets, and this person is not pleasant! Always starting fights and plotting, and never getting anywhere.

But if you can live it, it's very powerful and creative. Ellis had Sun in Libra (relationship to other people) in a t-square with Jupiter in Capricorn (structured philosophy) and Mars-Pluto in Cancer (tough love! - or transformative care for others that goes to the root of the matter.) That Sun square Pluto demanded of him that he become authentically powerful (hence the experiment in the park aged just 19 - apparently he eventually became very good at picking up women), and with Mars involved as well, he was tough enough to stand up to the hostility of the psychotherapeutic establishment to his ideas. This tough, combative power, so necessary to his life, also led to an enduring criticism: that his tone could make him sound as though he was urging people who, for example, were severely depressed, simply to pull their socks up.

He had another side: Venus in Virgo conjunct the Moon and sextile to Pluto. So under the abrasiveness was a real sensitivity, insight and care. Venus is about how we relate to others (Don't expect others to be perfect! he would say with Venus in Virgo), and his natal placement was at 1.15 Virgo. It is an important planet for a therapist, and appropriate that he should have died on 24th July under a Venus Return, with Venus stationing at 2.41 Virgo.

THE UK 1801 CHART

It’s often not possible to have a final answer as to the correct chart for a country, and there may be more than one valid chart that describes different aspects of the nation. For the USA, one of the classic cases is that of the 2nd July vs 4th July charts: the first being that of the legal declaration of independence, and therefore describing the first working of an independent US government; the second being the public declaration of independence, which therefore relates more to the country as a whole and its ideals. Both charts can be seen to work in their own way.

The UK has a number of charts as well. For example, for the monarchy, we can use the 1066 chart for the coronation of William I, or the 1801 chart for the proclamation of George III as the first king of the United Kingdom of Britain and Ireland.

For the country itself, the two most recent charts are for 1801 and 1922. In 1801 Britain became united with Ireland, and in 1922 the South of Ireland seceded. So was the 1922 event just a re-organisation of the UK, or was it a whole new incarnation, which therefore gives us the most recent chart for the UK? You can take your pick.

For now, I’m going to look at some aspects of the 1801 chart, based on the Act of Union between Britain and Ireland which came into effect at 00.00 hours on 1st Jan 1801.


What is immediately noticeable is just how Cardinal this chart is: Sun, Moon and Angles are all Cardinal. This gives a nation that likes to act, to take initiative and to be in control, a very good chart for the successful empire-building that was going on at the time and subsequently. And an unaspected Pluto in Pisces. Unaspected planets aren’t that easy to interpret, but Britain did build the largest empire in world history: an unrestrained Pluto (power and riches)? And Britain ruled the seas: Pluto in Pisces. Jupiter (expansion) in the 10th (world stage) also helps, as does Moon in Cancer in the 10th - at home on the world stage.

Uranus Rising: the individualistic, even eccentric Englishman, and the country that never quite fits in with the European Union. This is also partly due to the UK’s allegiance to the US, its outsized offspring. The UK has Moon at 19 Cancer and MC at 9 Cancer, so it feels at home on the world stage with the US, which has Sun at 13 Cancer, on the UK Moon-MC midpoint.


Libra Rising: the British sense of fair play. Britain is also known for treachery (‘perfidious Albion’, say the French), but the British don’t see this. Maybe it’s the unaspected Pluto again.

This Pluto was Direct by Progression from 1755 to 1957. This corresponds pretty well with the rise of what was called the second British Empire, after the loss of the American colonies, but including the acquisition of India and much of Africa, South East Asia and other territories, so that by 1921 it included a quarter of the world’s population. Prog Pluto began to slow down to go retrograde during World War II, and in the years after the war most of the Empire was dismantled. Prog Pluto has been Direct since 1957, as Britain has built a new, albeit diminished power-base in the world.


The Sun, Moon and Angles run from 7 to 19 degrees of the Cardinal Signs, and the last 2 transits of Pluto to these points have proved very significant politically. The first of these sweeps of Pluto through these points was from 1919 to 1931, and this was a period of rising power for the Labour movement, firstly through industrial action in search of better conditions, which resulted in the General Strike of 1926; this failed, but then the first proper Labour government was elected in 1929, and lasted until 1935 (they had been briefly in power, as a small minority government, in 1924).

The next sweep of Pluto through these points was from 1974 to 1980, and again we see the same power struggle going on. In 1974 the miners managed to oust the Conservatives from power through strike action, and the years that followed were ones in which there was a lot of industrial unrest and strike action, in which Britain was seen as ‘the sick man of Europe’. In 1979 Margaret Thatcher was elected to power, and there was a sea-change in British politics (just as there had been in 1930, at the end of the previous series of Pluto transits). Rightly or wrongly, Thatcher broke the power of the unions and got Britain back on the road to economic health.

You could see these 2 periods as struggles between left and right wings of politics, with first the left gaining power and setting in motion a much more compassionate society, that resulted after the war in the creation of the welfare state. But Labour did not have a good economic record, and eventually a corrective in the other direction was needed, which Thatcher provided.

There is another of these Pluto periods coming up, between 2011 and 2018, as Pluto moves from 7 to 19 Capricorn. It is not clear to me what this struggle might be about, as the old imbalances are no longer there. We no longer have the old polarity of the Tories trashing the public services, or Labour trashing the economy. This has been Blair’s great achievement, to manage both the economy and the public services fairly well at the same time. And there is no sign of this changing.

So this next Pluto series of transits may not be about a struggle between political polarities. But there is no shortage of wider issues to be faced: environmental degradation, energy resources, nuclear proliferation – all of these are becoming pressing, they are global issues, and furthermore Pluto (and Uranus) will also be impacting on the charts of the major powers. If there is a political struggle, it may be about which party can deal most effectively with these problems.

GORDON BROWN’S CHAOS

Gordon Brown, the UK PM, has Sun, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Node in 12th House Pisces, as well as Mercury in the 12th. A substantial part of this man is hidden from view (12th) and it is chaotic, indolent, imaginative, creative, profoundly connected to the collective desires etc etc. But we don’t get to see this side, and never did in all his 10 years as Chancellor – apart from, perhaps, the odd flash via his concern for Africa.


What we do see is this unusually controlled, responsible accountant, which he is particularly playing up (successfully) at the moment, but it is not an act, it’s his comfort zone, and has been for years. Gordon, where are you?

This may sound like pop psychology, but being leader of the country, and being so connected to the collective, I think his missing 12th House gets projected outwards, it gets played out around him in major national events. This has been happening since the moment he became PM. All these events that he can’t control are his own suppressed 12th House Pisces.

There has been a remarkable run of uncontrollable national events in the mere 6 weeks since he has been PM. Within 2 days of him starting the job, there was a series of attempted terrorist attacks. Then we have had endless and unprecedented flooding in the UK (particularly appropriate for 12th House Pisces). And in the last 24 hours there has been a confirmed outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease: when this last happened, it spun out of control very quickly and became a national crisis.

At least it's cheaper for him than paying a dominatrix.

It is a strange set of coincidences, and I think it is psychologically fascinating. Chill out, Gordon! Stop "trying your utmost" as you put it.

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’.