STRANGE NEW WORLDS (Part II)

Jupiter enhances whatever planet it touches, and for the last year it has been conjunct Uranus, the planet of scientific discovery, as they have passed in and out of Aries, a sign of boldness and new beginnings. It would be very appropriate if indications of life on other planets were discovered under this combination. This would not just be a scientific discovery, it would profoundly change the way we see ourselves in the universe, our philosophy, which is also ruled by Jupiter: a new (Aries) philosophy (Jupiter) as a result of scientific discovery (Uranus.)

Jupiter-Uranus conjunctions occur every 13 years or so, but when there is also a hard aspect to Pluto, as there is now, it is likely to produce more powerful results than usual. The last time this happened was in 1969, with Uranus-Jupiter and Pluto all conjunct: this was when the first man landed on the Moon! The time before that was in 1900, when Uranus was conjunct Jupiter and opposite Pluto, and that year saw both the discovery of quantum energy and the publication of Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams.

So we can expect something unusually big this year, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it is life on other planets. Or the so-called God particle, the Higgs Boson – though on its own, that wouldn’t be significant enough.

The Kepler Space Telescope was specifically designed to search for exo-planets – planets in other solar systems. It was launched in March 2009, and became operative in May that year. In Feb 2011 NASA announced that they had 1235 planetary candidates circling 997 stars. Of these, 68 are approximately earth sized. Exo-planets were first discovered back in the 1990s, but Kepler has brought about an explosion in their number. It would seem a matter of time before the light signatures of organic molecules associated with life are detected.

Kepler has a powerful chart – Sun-Uranus trine the Moon in its own sign in the 9th House of distant places. Astrologically, the Moon is the nearest planet to earth, and the first planet we have visited. So that’s very appropriate, and the harmony between Sun and Moon suggests success. The Sun is opposite a 10th House Saturn, which shows the ambition behind the project, and its technological nature (Saturn in Virgo). The Sun in Pisces shows the very broad cosmic awareness behind the project, and even the sense of connectedness it may bring. As well as the very sensitive nature of the science involved. Neptune in scientific Aquarius opposite the MC shows the imaginative quest behind the project, a Neptune empowered by a close conjunction to Mars. More broadly, the launch took place under a Saturn-Uranus opposition which, like Jupiter-Uranus, is a time of scientific advance.

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In 2007 I posted a piece called Strange New Worlds, describing some of the exo-planets that had been discovered up to that point. It’s very sci-fi, but it’s for real:

We’ve known for a long time of the existence of other Suns like our own, but other planets, other worlds were not definitively detected until early 1992, as the Uranus-Neptune conjunction began. They tend to be detected indirectly through their effect on their local Sun, and naturally enough the ones detected so far are mostly pretty big, because they are easier to spot. These new worlds are known as extra-solar planets, or exoplanets, and there are currently 253 of them.

Some of them are turning out to be weird and wonderful places. Here is a list from New Scientist magazine:

HD189733b (they have such sexy names) is 63 light years away in the constellation Vulpecula, with a mass of 1.15 Jupiters. It orbits its star every 2.2 days. One side is in perpetual daytime, the other side is in perpetual night-time. The day side has a temperature of 940 degrees, the dark side is 700 degrees. The dark side is so hot because winds of more than 10,000 kilometres per hour – Mach 8 – whip round the globe, spreading the heat. In July, it became the first exoplanet to have a compelling case made for water in its atmosphere.


TrES-4 is 1400 light years away in the constellation Hercules. It is the most bloated world on record, less massive then Jupiter but with a volume 5 times bigger. It has an average density less than a wine cork, and would float on water. It orbits its Sun every 3½ days and has a surface temperature of 1300 degrees. It is not known why it is so puffed up, but its days are numbered. Its Sun has run out of hydrogen and in less than a billion years TrES-4 (Doesn’t that name just grow on you?) it will be engulfed by its swelling star.

HD80606b is 190 light years away in the constellation Ursa Major. It is 4 times the mass of Jupiter. Its orbit, which takes 4 months, is wildly elongated, varying from between about 90 million miles and 3 million miles from its Sun. If you floated in its atmosphere, you would see the Sun go from the size of ours to one 900 times as big in just a few days. In the same way, the temperature would soar from about 100 degrees to 1700 degrees. This exoplanet has the most elongated orbit known for any planet, and the reason lies in the gravitational influence of a distant companion star. The orbits of most exoplanets so far have turned out to be much more elongated than those of our local planets, which are nearly circular. This has come as a big surprise.


HD149026b is 256 light years away in the constellation Hercules. It is slightly smaller than Saturn, but has an unusually dense core – packed with about 70 earth masses of heavy elements. Its atmosphere at 2000 C is unbelievably hot – hotter than the surface of some stars, and the hottest planet known. It is so hot because it is close to its star and the planet’s surface is probably very dull-coloured, so it absorbs plenty of light.

Gliese 581 is a dim red dwarf star in the constellation Libra, 20.5 light years away. Earlier this year it was reported that an earth like planet had been discovered circling this star, rocky and with temperatures of around 20C, so liquid water could possibly be present. It has a mass of 15 earths. Then 2 more planets were found orbiting Gliese 581. The smaller one, which is 5 earth masses and a surface temperature of 0 to 40 C, has been dubbed the Goldilocks planet – not too hot for life, not too cold, but just right. Then they reckoned that the greenhouse effect would make the planet far too hot for life. And then they further reckoned that the 3rd planet, of 8 earth masses, which is much further away from the star, might be just the right temperature for life because of the greenhouse effect. These planets will be visible to the European Space Agency’s 3 Darwin spacecraft, due for launch in 2015. They will probe these worlds for signs of life.


PSR B1257+12 is a neutron star, 1.35 times the mass of the Sun, 15km wide (yes, just 15km), 980 light years away in the constellation Virgo. It is the remains of a massive star that exploded in a supernova, leaving a superdense core. This neutron star rotates once every 6 milliseconds, emitting radio beams – in other words, it is a pulsar. It was round this pulsar that the first exoplanets were detected, 0.02, 4.3 and 3.9 times the mass of the earth, while the sizes of their orbits are similar in proportion to those of Mercury, Venus and the Earth. So, remarkably, these first exoplanets are like a carbon copy of our inner solar system, scaled down by a factor of 2. The discoverer reckons the 3.9 earth planet may have an iron core and a strong magnetic field. So that though the pulsar wouldn’t produce much daylight, the planet may well still have magnificent auroras, produced by the dense streams of energetic particles coming off the pulsar, and bright enough to read a book by. The particles would also gradually erode the planet’s surface, generating a low-level haze.

Moon Families

I haven’t written anything for a week, nor have I had any ideas to do so, which is quite interesting as Mercury has just changed direction, and Mercury (along with Uranus) is the patron saint of blogging. So that’s worth paying attention to if you write, because you are likely to enter a new mini-phase every time Mercury changes direction, which is six times a year, and don’t be surprised if it sometimes takes a while to get a flow going. Mercury Retrograde stops after 3 weeks, but the whole process of repeating the places he’s been over and starting afresh takes about 2 months. If you look at the recent period, he retrograded to 20 Sag on 29 Dec, where he’d previously been on 23rd Nov. When he started going backwards on 10th Dec, he was at 6 Capricorn, which he won’t reach again till 18th Jan. That’s 2 months. So that’s about half the year that changeable Mercury spends shapeshifting!

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The transits to your chart from the outer planets describe the bigger transformations that are going on/have gone on in your life. And the progressions describe the phases, often lasting years, that you are living through.

Specific events within these transits/progressions can often be timed by the New Moons that form a conjunction with a major point in your chart. If for example you have say natal Sun or Ascendant at 15 Aries, and there is a New Moon within a couple of degrees of that, then that is likely to be a significant time for you. In the same way that a New Moon is a beginning, so too can something new begin in your life. (At a New Moon, incidentally, the Sun and Moon in the sky are in the same place, in this case 15 Aries, sitting on your natal Sun or Ascendant.)

I was at the Exeter Astrology group the other night, and Ed Gillam gave a presentation on Dietrech Pessin’s work on ‘Moon Families’, which expands on this idea of New Moons timing significant events. I found the basic idea very interesting.

New Moons occur in 3 year cycles, so that both 3 years before and after our New Moon at 15 Aries (ish), there will also have been a New Moon around 15 Aries. You'll often find that one of these 3 year periods - or sometimes both - was pretty pivotal in your life, probably the one where the 2 New Moons have the tightest orbs to (in this case) your Sun or Asc. These New Moons gradually drift backwards by a few degrees every 3 years, so that quite quickly they are too far off to be significant.

It’s sounding complicated already, so I’ll give an example. My Asc is at 29 Leo. There was a New Moon at 29 Leo in August 1979. And then one at 26 Leo in August 1982. This was a period in which I moved from one life to another, from being at University, and not quite sure why I was there (like many students!) to getting involved with a Buddhist lifestyle and friends and values that constituted an entirely different life for me.

Interestingly, the immediately preceding cycle, from August 1976 to August 1979, was also close to my Ascendant, with the 1976 New Moon at 2 Virgo being just 2 degrees away. And this was also a period in which I moved from one life to another: in August 1976, I was just finishing 10 years at boarding school, which had effectively become my life. 3 years later I was a different person, having rejected all the main values surrounding my upbringing and searching for an entirely different direction.

With natal Pluto conjunct Asc, and natal Sun opposite Pluto, and nodal Scorpio, this sort of death and rebirth is inevitably part of my life from time to time, and the New Moon-Ascendant cycle has proved very good at timing this.

There is plenty more to unpack about these cycles. I have so far just mentioned the 3 year cycle as the New Moon repeats itself at significant points in your chart (though occurring a few degrees earlier at the end of the cycle than at the beginning.)

There is also a 19 year cycle which is exact to within a day or so. So my New Moon at 29.01 Leo on 22nd Aug 1979 was repeated 19 years later on 22nd August 1998 at 28.48 Leo. And guess what? August 1998 found me beginning another new life, the Buddhist one having come apart at the seams, and it took 3 years to establish, almost exactly. (The immediately preceding cycle, from 1995-8, also had this quality of fundamental shift, but less obviously so.)

So for me, the pattern has been of 2 of these 3 year cycles happening consecutively on my Asc, with the emphasis of the first cycle being an inner transformation of values and outlook, and the emphasis of the second cycle being on the complete transformation of my life in accordance with that inner revolution. And this has happened twice, 19 years apart.

The 3 year cycle itself is divided into 4 phases, and in a way I should have started with this, because it is basic to the whole idea. But then you can get confused before you’ve even started! These 4 phases occur at 9 month intervals (which is why Dietrech Pessin calls this pattern the ‘Lunar Gestation Cycle’). And they can time remarkably accurately the unfoldment of a theme, from seed idea or impulse through to completion.

This is how it works. If there is a New Moon at 15 Aries, then 9 months later there will be a quarter Moon, remarkably at the same degree: Moon at 15 Aries (ish) square to the Sun at 15 Capricorn (1/4 of the way round the zodiac from the initial Sun at 15 Aries). 9 months after that, there will be a Full Moon, again at the same degree: Moon at 15 Aries opposite the Sun at 15 Libra. And then 9 months after that, we have another quarter Moon, with the Moon at 15 Aries square the Sun at 15 Cancer. The cycle is completed 9 months later with a New Moon at 15 Aries (all give or take a degree or two.)

Time for an example. I’ll choose someone we all know, who is not quite as popular as he used to be, Barack Obama. His Ascendant is at 18 Aquarius, and I’m going to look at the period from Feb 2008 to Feb 2011. The degrees aren’t quite as tight as I’d like (the earlier 3 year cycle was a bit tighter), but we have good info in this one, and it began quite remarkably with an eclipse at 18 Aquarius in Feb 2008, heightening the significance of the cycle.

Obama’s decision to run for the Presidency was part of the previous cycle, and the eclipse was the culmination of that cycle, as well as the beginning of the new one. One month earlier he had won his first primary in Iowa in his campaign to be the Democratic candidate. So the first practical step, the first necessary achievement in becoming President was there, which is that you start actually winning primaries. This is the New Moon phase, the first step.

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Fast forward 9 months to the 1st quarter, the opening square, of the cycle, with Sun at 14 Scorpio square Moon at 14 Aquarius on 6th Nov 2008. 2 days earlier he had won the Presidency. The opening square of a cycle is always dynamic, as the initial idea/theme bursts into action.

9 months later in August 2009 we have the Full Moon phase, with the Sun opposite the Moon at 14 Leo/Aquarius. It is the Summer to the opening square’s Spring, when you are at a peak. Healthcare Reform had always been Obama’s top domestic priority, and 3 weeks before this Full Moon his 1000 page plan was first introduced to Congress. Then in early May 2010 there was the closing square of the 3 year cycle with the Sun at 16 Taurus and the Moon at 16 Aquarius. This is the autumn, a time of fruition, of harvesting what you have sown and fought for. A month earlier, at the end of March, Obama’s Healthcare Bill was signed into law.

We have not had the next New Moon yet, which will be on Feb 3 2011, but we have already had its signifying event, which was the installation of a new Congress on 4th Jan, one which will be against Obama rather than for him, and most likely making the legislative victories of his first 2 years unrepeatable. This New Moon signifies the end of that period. It does not open up a new cycle, for the Aquarian New Moon in 3 years time will be at 11 degrees, too far off his Asc to be a significant cycle. Well, a lot of astrologers would say that, and I’ve probably already offended them with my 4 degrees off for Obama’s 2008-11 cycle, but when it comes to orbs I’m a bit of a wide boy! Let’s see if the next 3 years works as a cycle or not.

As I said, there is also the 19 year cycle at the end of which the 3 year cycle is repeated at the same New Moon degree. And you would expect a common theme. So for Obama, there would have been a 3 year New Moon cycle from Feb 1989 to Feb 1992 that also conjoined his Asc. It is hard to get exact info on this period, but during it he was elected as first black President of the Harvard Law Review, just as 19 years later he was elected first black President of the USA.

Natally, Barack Obama has Uranus conjunct North Node in Leo, so being a mould-breaker, being highly individual, is essential to who he is. The North Node describes the deeper patterns, our destiny if you like, if we are up for change and progress. And in Obama’s case, the New Moon/Ascendant cycles both activated his North Node. Just as they activated my own North Node in Scorpio. Which you’d kind of expect, because the North Node is a combination of Lunar and Solar principles.

Along with the MC, the Ascendant is one of the 2 main points in the chart through which we connect with the world. The planets themselves have more of an inner emphasis. So in many cases the Ascendant is going to be what is most visible in someone and most obviously connected with the events in their lives. The New Moon cycles undoubtedly affect e.g. the natal Sun and Moon just as much as they affect the Ascendant, but I suspect that on average the cycle to the Ascendant is more easily discernible. The Ascendant, of course, brings its own problems as it is so closely tied to ascertaining an accurate time of birth.

On the other hand, the New Moon cycles could well be used as a means of rectification. For myself, my own Ascendant is rectified from an original placement in Virgo, and the fact that the New Moon/Ascendant cycle worked so brilliantly has strengthened the case for my Asc at 29 Leo – within a couple of degrees, of course.
I want to re-emphasise at this point the 9 month intervals, the phases of the Moon, that occur within the 3 year cycle, because they can time events so well, and help us understand the particular process we are undergoing. In the case of Obama, the timing of the phases shows that his ascent to the Presidency had a strong element of wanting to transform America. And that the earlier cycle, from 89 to 92, when he was president of the Harvard Law Review, therefore probably also had a similar element: getting himself in a position where he could actually change something in a mould-breaking sort of way.

The idea for these Moon Familes (what I seem to be calling New Moon Cycles) came from an American telephone astrologer, Dietrech Pessin, who noticed that there were often 9-month intervals between people ringing her, and that they often started a cycle of consultations around a New Moon. The issue would then unfold over the next 2 and ½ years, through to the fruition of the closing square. But don’t quote me on that, because I haven’t read her book Lunar Shadows III ~ The Predictive Power of Moon Phases and Eclipses .

It is remarkable that the human gestation period is 9 months, that the Moon has these 9 month phases of unfoldment, and that bigger patterns in human life should unfold according to the same timing. It suggests that for humans, at any rate, pregnancy is even more intimately tied to the Moon than we might have thought. And it suggests that, astrology apart, we are hard-wired to live and unfold according to the ebb and flow of the gravitational influence of the Moon: it’s not just about lunatics and women’s mysteries!

Astrology included, the Moon becomes a profound cyclical principle that describes our lives on a monthly basis in its complete circuit of the zodiac, particularly through the lunar return; and on a 3 yearly basis, shifting forward every 9 months, when we apply it to the points in our chart which have been affected by New Moons over the previous 3 years (and there may be several.) Furthermore, each of these 3 year cycles (of which there would be up to 11: 7 personal planets and 4 Angles) will recur every 19 years, creating repeated patterns of development that build during the course of our lives.

NB 19 years looks rather like 18.6 years, which is the period that the North Node takes to circle the zodiac. They are different numbers, however. It wouldn't surprise me if there is a relationship, but I for one can't get my head around it!

Living with The Outer Planets; the post-war Neptune-Pluto Ages

Pluto takes about 100 years longer to go round the Sun than does Neptune, but its orbit is highly eccentric, meaning that it goes a lot faster through some signs than others. For about the last 65 years the 2 planets have been travelling at about the same speed through the sky, and this will continue through till the 2030s, when Neptune in Aries will at last start to pull clear of Pluto as he brakes through Aquarius. (Pluto is an ‘it’ when I’m talking about the lump of rock, but when he turns up behind me, as he often does when I write, then I say ‘he’!)

Coincidentally, Neptune and Pluto began travelling at the same speed when they were near enough 60 degrees, or exactly 2 signs, apart. Since then, therefore, they have always entered a new sign within a few years of each other – not long on their time scales.

Uranus, Neptune and Pluto are the outer planets. They are not visible to the naked eye and they therefore represent that which is unconscious, both personally and collectively. When one of them enters a new sign, humanity undergoes a shift, even a transformation, according to the nature of the outer planet and the sign it is in. It usually takes some years, however, for the planet to establish itself in the new sign, and possibly some years after that before we mere humans can look back and see what it was about.

The planets as gods (a modern, sometimes controversial, astrological identification) exist outside of time and space. The results of their actions, the past, present and future, are instantly clear to them. If we are intuitively gifted, then those patterns may be clear to us too, at least to some extent, maybe in flashes now and again. We, however, are creatures of clay, our journey is through time and space: those flashes can be helpful, but it is not our place to know the minds of the gods, to see too much of the deeper patterns of development that we are passing through individually and collectively, or else we would not be able to live them.

This is why full-time psychics and ‘spiritual’ teachers are often a bit wonky (technical term), because they try to live too much in this intuitive dimension, they over-identify with it, at the expense of other aspects of being human. (This can be why some of them go on about ‘embodiment’, because that is exactly what they have forgotten.)

Saturn is the planet that balances this out. He is the bridge between the inner and outer planets, he shows us how to be an ordinary physical human, yet also connected to the wider, deeper, more meaningful patterns that are also part of being human.

As astrologers, discovering the deeper patterns, the hidden meanings, behind existence is precisely what we are about. It needs, however, to be in a way that is physically lived – the astrology is a mere pointer. I said it is not our place to know the minds of the gods, but at the same time nothing is more important. It’s a matter of how you go about it. If it emerges organically from the way you live, from attempting to understand your experience, then that is balanced, that is Saturn. If you grasp after it, or if you identify yourself as that sort of person, whether as bishop or mullah, shaman or astrologer (!), then that can often suggest an attempt to bypass the actual living of it.

Incidentally, some shamans and astrologers love to say how unlike e.g. Christianity, their path is not a religion or a belief system. Stuff and nonsense! In my experience they are just as prone to religion as anyone else.

Anything can be a religion or not a religion. The essential point is whether your understanding comes out of your experience or from what someone else has said, whether on this plane or another one, and whether you can tell the difference. If you’re religious, what some authority has said comes before your own experience. If you’re the real deal, it’s your own considered experience that is the authority. Of course, everyone likes to think their understanding is autonomous, that they are their own authority. And there are degrees of it. But that sort of independence, which is an emotional as well as a cognitive quality, is rarer than one might think.

You can also be a one-person religion. Yes, it’s your own thoughts, but along the line you’ve got rigid, you’ve turned what was originally a fresh insight into a stale dogma that you refer back to. It’s hard not to do this to some extent if you’re a teacher repeating the same stuff over and over, or an astrologer doing several readings a day.

Knowing the meaning of an outer planet transit to our chart is not easy, nor should it be. Astrology helps us see that there is meaning in what is happening, it is not just random, and it can even point us roughly in the direction of what it means. But it is just a map, sometimes brilliant and inspiring and mind-boggling, but still just a map. It is not a substitute for the actual exploration.

And it is the same with the meanings for the collective of the outer planet transits. Our lives are not just a personal journey (I don’t like that over-used word, especially since Tony Blair called his memoirs ‘A Journey’.) We are intimately tied in to where the collective is going, whether we like it or not. Getting some sort of separation, some sort of distance from the collective is necessary if we are to understand anything, but not in such a way that we can pretend to ourselves we are not part of it.

This is why mundane astrology – the astrology of the world, of countries, of collectives – is of great importance. It tells us where the world is going, and it reminds us that we are part of it. We are not just our personal chart. We are also our personal chart, for example, in relation to the chart of the country we live in, and in relation to the charts of our parents and so on. The personal chart cannot be fully understood in isolation.

It is not easy to understand the meanings for the collective of an outer planet in a sign, particularly at the time. We may have flashes of insight, and certain events may have an obvious connection, but the wider understanding takes time and cultural awareness and probably a lot of plodding through historical data.

Neptune and Pluto have been entering new signs within a few years of each other for many decades now, and coincidentally Uranus has also been part of that process. This means that the ages we have been passing through have been quite clearly defined.

So between 1955 and 1956, Uranus began to move into Leo, Neptune into Scorpio and Pluto into Virgo. This process took a few more years to complete and establish itself, but all 3 outer planets moving into new signs suggests a clearly defined new era, which is indeed what happened in the 60s, as the West moved economically from the post-war effort to re-establish itself into years of boom, and socially and politically into a rejection of old values and all sorts of cultural awakenings.

Exactly how this played out in terms of planets and signs would be very complex to analyse. You could say, for example, that the previous Pluto in Leo period had awoken a sense of the importance of the individual, the power of individuality, and Uranus coming into Leo furthered that process – heightened selfishness as well as opposition to authority. Pluto in Virgo ushered in a period where we began to rely much more on high technology (Virgo), where we could no longer survive (Pluto) without it.

Neptune describes the myths we live by collectively, the stories we tell ourselves (hence its connection to fashion), and this was the era when the Cold War reached its height; the Cuban missile crisis and its threat of nuclear war occurred under Neptune in Scorpio. The collective story (Neptune) we were living under was one of death and annihilation (Scorpio). It was also a period when fashion (Neptune) was used as an instrument of power (Scorpio) – the clothes and long hair of the 1960s counter-culture were a deliberate provocation of the establishment, a challenge to what men and women were supposed to look like. It was flower (Neptune) power (Scorpio).

All three planets came together as Uranus entered Virgo later in the 60s: you had the intense protest and revolutionary intent of the Uranus-Pluto conjunction, which was in turn sextile to Neptune in Scorpio, making protest in a way fashionable, and connecting it to the counter-culture.

The 2 most defining planets in this way at looking at our modern eras are Neptune and Pluto, being further out than Uranus and, for now, operating in tandem. With Pluto the emphasis is on the economy and the balance of power (Pluto is a god of wealth); and with Neptune the emphasis is on our underlying mythologies, fantasies and ideals, as well as the general mood.

The general post-war economic boom era lasted until 1970-71, when both planets again changed sign: Pluto into Libra, and Neptune into Sagittarius. As they established themselves over the next few years, so began the first recession since the war and the loss of the idealism of the sixties. In a way it was a balancing (Libra): the Arabs were asserting themselves economically, demanding a fair price for their oil; newly industrialised countries were competing with the West’s metal industries; and the US had been running at a deficit, partly due to the Vietnam War.

Sagittarius is a sign of excess in either direction, so while there was a feeling of despondency around the hopes of the 60s, there was also glam rock and the age of the gurus – Rajneesh and his 93 Rolls Royces.

In 1983-84, the Neptune moved into Capricorn and Pluto into Scorpio. There was a new economic boom on the way, not unlike the recent one, in which materialism became sexy – Neptune in Capricorn, combined with the raw power of money, of the bankers - Pluto in Scorpio. After a short recession in the early 1990s, the stage was set by the prolonged action of this materialistic combination to create the longest economic boom since the 1960s.

Also in the early 90s we had what must have been the biggest event of this Neptune-Pluto Age, which was the collapse of Communism and a shift in the world balance of power towards the US and the West in general. The suddenness with which the collapse happened and the move into a different future speaks of Uranus, which was conjunct Neptune and sextile Pluto. Neptune in Capricorn is dissolution of governments, and the ease with which it happened is described by the sextile to Pluto, functioning powerfully in his own sign of Scorpio.

America emerged as the world’s lone superpower under Pluto in Scorpio. America’s Pluto, its raw power, is in late Capricorn in the 2nd House of wealth: Neptune conjoined, and Pluto sextiled the US Pluto during this period. Neptune and Pluto also made soft aspects to the US Neptune at 22 Virgo around this time, creating a new mythology for the nation, which ‘lone superpower’, in the context of the ‘New World Order’, certainly is.

Pluto had been moving at it fastest for some time now, faster than Neptune, putting it inside its orbit, which meant there were 3 years between Pluto moving into Sagittarius (1995) and Neptune moving into Aquarius (1998). The collective has a short memory, and the prolonged boom set up by Neptune and Pluto in the 80s/90s inevitably led to excess and the feeling (as in 1929) that somehow the rules had changed. The first excess was the dotcom bubble, brilliantly described by Neptune (fantasy) in Aquarius (internet) and Pluto in Sag (economic boom). Pluto doesn’t find it easy to function well in Sagittarius, as he lives not just on the earth but below it, while Sagittarius, ruled as it is by the king of the gods, is the sign least concerned with earthly reality.

Pluto was being pulled along by his sextile to Neptune in Aquarius, another very unearthy combination, creating over time an economic boom so ungrounded and corrupt that it has broken the financial system.

(During both the 1980s and the Noughties economic bubbles, Pluto was inside the orbit of Neptune, in a way making Neptune the more powerful influence, adding to the possibility that fantasy (Neptune) would have a stronger than usual influence over the economy (Pluto).)

At the same time, the new internet age motored along famously, with Neptune in Aquarius being empowered not just by his sextile to Pluto, but also by the mutual reception to Uranus in Pisces (Neptune rules Pisces, and Uranus Aquarius.) The internet does not have a material existence that you can easily point to, and it is only partly governed by economic factors, so the Neptune-Pluto combination has worked in its favour rather than against it. In writing about the internet I am not just pulling out a cultural factor that suits the astrology (which you can always do); rather I am writing about something which started to change and define the whole culture, and whose full significance is not yet clear.

And so to the present. Pluto began to change sign from Sagittarius to Capricorn in 2008, and Neptune will start to change to Pisces in April this year. The entry into Capricorn was economically dramatic, more than you’d expect from a planet that usually takes time to make his presence felt, his changes being deep. But as Pluto entered earthy, level-headed Capricorn (a good sign for Pluto), so too did the ruler of Capricorn, Saturn, begin to oppose Uranus, a periodic combination that is always dramatic and revolutionary.

And so we have had the Great Recession – a measure of just how out of balance things had become economically under Pluto in Sag/Neptune in Aquarius. At the same time, the chart for Pluto’s entry into Capricorn was quite favourable – Pluto in a stellium with benefics Jupiter and Venus, and trine to Capricorn’s ruler, retrograde Saturn. There is stuff to sort out (retrograde Saturn), and it will take the time it takes (Capricorn/Saturn). And it is a fundamental restructuring (Pluto). So it will take time. It may still get worse before it gets better. But this combination doesn’t suggest the extreme of Depression.

I think the fundamental issue is that the West has been living beyond its means and has to cut back, and while it does so, China will become ever more powerful, leading to a major shift in the balance of power worldwide. There are no signs that the basic economic model is going to change (which the astrology could suggest) because for a while yet the resources – oil, minerals – will continue to be there, allowing us to continue as before.

Pluto in Capricorn is soon to work in tandem with Neptune in Pisces, and this is where we will have to speculate. I find it odd that Capricorn and Pisces sextile each other (a flowing aspect), because in their natures they are so different, even opposing. They are earth and water respectively, which is compatible, but Capricorn is so worldly and Pisces so unworldly that it is hard to see how they can get on healthily. You can, for example, just see Pisces capacity for empathy being put to ruthless and manipulative use by a Capricorn businessman. At best, though, Pisces can mellow a rigid and conservative Capricornian worldliness, and Capricorn can insist that Pisces puts its dreams into action. A successful artist, or a philanthropic businessman, could have this combination.

Neptune in Pisces is in its own sign, and as we saw with Pluto in its own sign in the 1980s, where the vulgar power of money was in the ascendant, it can bring out the worst. It could be a time when the collective tells fantastical stories about itself. I think China will be a match for America sooner than we realise, and how will America explain that to itself?

All countries think they are special, America more so than most. It is not a country to go into a quiet depression, like the UK did when it lost its Empire. The US is naïve and brash and extreme and proud. It will not say to itself that China is beating it in a fair fight. No, it will be seen as some sort of unfair conspiracy against America’s rightful place in the world.

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With natal Neptune square to 7th House Mars, the US is used to creating myths (Neptune) about its foreign enemies (Mars in the 7th). These planets are at 21 Gemini and 22 Virgo respectively, which Neptune will begin to hard-aspect as it progresses through Pisces. Last time Neptune hard aspected these 2 planets, in 1980/81, the country elected a cowboy actor for a President who promoted the myth of the Soviet Union as the Evil Empire! The next hard Neptune aspect will not be exact for another 10 years, but these transits can begin surprisingly early.

And what will America say to itself about the war it is losing against militant Islam? Who or what will America blame? In both US economic and foreign policy terms, there will be plenty of scope for Neptune’s mythologising at its worst over the next 14 years.

So for the West generally, putting Pluto and Neptune together, we are likely to see new mythologies created (Neptune in Pisces) to describe/compensate for the new economic realities (Pluto in Capricorn.) And for the new political realities, for money is power. China is currently arming itself at a frightening rate. And the West’s implacable enemy, the militant Islam which arose so appropriately under Pluto in Sagittarius is, under Pluto in Capricorn, equally appropriately becoming the established power in many parts of the Middle and Near East, as well as southwards through Africa. And Oil (Neptune) is at the heart of this struggle, particularly the West’s dominance of those countries which supply it. Over the last 15 years, the US Progressed Saturn and Mars have both gone retrograde for the first time ever. America is on the retreat economically and militarily, and with it Europe.

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The chart for Neptune’s Ingress into Pisces is striking: 6 planets in Aries, including a New Moon and a Mars-Uranus conjunction. We will really notice this transit; it is the start of something very, very new. Well it would be, wouldn’t it, because it will be the time when the West, dominant in the world for hundreds of years, first under Europe and then under its offspring America, will cease to be so dominant. The Far East will begin to at least equal it. And with economic influence (Pluto) comes cultural influence (Neptune). Look at what the West did with Christianity and Coca Cola. No doubt the turning point will, in retrospect, be seen as the time of the Uranus-Pluto conjunction which is seriously starting this year, just as Neptune enters Pisces and asks us to re-formulate our mythologies, our stories about who we are.

As in the mid-1960s and early 1990s, Uranus entering the equation in 2011/12 is likely to bring a sudden surge forward in the underlying Neptune-Pluto story. In the Eurozone, for example, we could easily see the struggle with indebtedness spreading to a bigger economy such as Spain, which could be the last straw for the Euro: Europe as an economic bloc, as a potential united world power, could begin to unravel. Meanwhile America is printing money at an unprecedented rate just to keep going. The mighty dollar could suddenly cease to be the world’s reserve currency, and with it America’s economic pre-eminence and prestige would take a tumble. Whatever happens, the next 2 years will almost inevitably bring sudden setbacks for the West that will tangibly shift the balance of power worldwide. The events will have the nature of pressures that have been building for some years, old facades that have been maintained, suddenly giving way.

Jung on Death

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-Ab3tlpvYA&feature=related

Assange, Obama and Bush: the Outer Planets and Collective Projections

There was a period in 2008, when Barack Obama was campaigning to be the Democratic Presidential candidate, when you weren’t likely to get a good reception if you said anything critical of the man. He was sweeping people away on a wave of hope for a better world. One astrologer told me at the time that my Saturn in Sagittarius gave me a fear of faith, which was stopping me from seeing Obama as he really he was. (I’d say it gave me sense!)

It was all very Neptunian, and it was Obama’s natal Sun square to Neptune that gave him the ability to sweep people away like this. Even the Nobel Peace Prize Committee got swept away by his promise. Now, 2 years later, he appears much more ordinary. Smart and trying to do a good job, but also at ease with the less savoury tasks that come with his position – wars, black ops, no doubt a certain amount of torture, putting pressure on big companies and other countries to do America’s bidding, and so on. America has changed a bit, but its big resistance to change has also become clearer.

Now, in late 2010, we have a similar situation with Julian Assange, the Great Rebel, who has become a cultural hero to many, especially as his leaks have provoked the inevitable response from the US and other western countries. He is now not just the Great Rebel, he is also the victim who needs protecting. (My last piece, suggesting a less savoury side to Mr Assange, has come under sustained, irrational attack in the comments section.)

I am not trying to say here whether or not I think Wikileaks is helpful. It is complicated, and how you view Wikileaks will probably determine whether or not you think he is a cultural hero. This time the relevant planet is Uranus, which natally squares Assange’s Sun and which is the planet of rebellion. (Chiron, which makes a t-square with the Sun and Uranus, gives him his victim/scapegoat status.)

The world is as it is because human nature is as it is. Why do we think that an Obama or an Assange can make it radically different? Why do we need the world to be radically different? I think that what happens in these situations is essentially a projection onto the world, and onto prominent individuals, of our own unrealised potential, or even our own dissatisfaction with ourselves.

To the extent that you feel the outer planets to be consciously operative in your own life, to that extent you won’t get carried away by these figures. It’s going to be a mixed thing for most of us. And what others are collectively feeling also affects us.

Living the outer planets is not an easy task. It takes many years, and is always work in progress. And it’s not really under our control either. The temptation to be drawn into collective projections of the outer planets, to have someone else seeming to live those planets for us, is quite natural. And maybe a bit embarrassing afterwards. But that is precisely how we can learn, how we can become more conscious.

Say you find very appealing Julian Assange as a harbinger of revolutionary change. He may or may not be – that is beside the point. The real point is that deep appeal, which is like a gift in that it contains the potential for awakening. In this case, it is a call to live Uranus more fully. It is a call to allow a constant sense of progressive change into your life, to welcome the unexpected, and to be deeply unconcerned by what the neighbours think. Uranus breaks us away from convention. In its unsophisticated form we enjoy the breaking away, the rebellion, for its own sake, and maybe project it out onto the world. In its more developed form it enables us to progress our own lives, to have a deep sense of our own very individual life, unhindered by what others (family members!) may or may not think.

And say you find/found Barack Obama deeply appealing. He embodied the hope for a better world and a leader who could be completely trusted. OK, people were sick of George Bush and all he stood for and of course they wanted someone different and hoped Obama would be. But the feeling around Obama went much further than that, it was religious, it was numinous; for many, for a while at least, he could do no wrong. And in this sense he was a call to live Neptune more fully: a sense of being part of the ocean of life and a sense that life is always unfolding and that you are part of that and you can trust that process and that just being part of all that makes life meaningful and hopeful. Again, we may start with someone out there – and with Neptune in the 9th Obama carries the ‘spiritual teacher’ and ‘redeemer’ archetypes – but wisdom and compassion and trust in life are ultimately to be found within.

What about Pluto? I think this type of cultural figure is more obviously dark to start with. And we can look to our old friend George W Bush, who like Obama and Assange has the ability to stand for something. Bush has Pluto Rising. He came into his own once he had a clear enemy to focus on, which was firstly Al Qaeda and Bin Laden, and then Saddam Hussein. And he had much of America behind him, often in a very ignorant way – like the people who thought that Saddam was responsible for 9/11, which Bush was happy to let stand.

So Bush keyed into the unconscious shadow projection which collective humanity is prone to, and the lies and deceit that goes with it. Hitler was also, via the demonization of the Jews, a Plutonian figure (as well as, in other ways, a Neptunian figure.)

The real lesson here is to become conscious of our own darkness. What gives the game away is the sparse knowledge we often have of the people like Bin Laden to whom we attribute ‘bad’ qualities. Classically, the evil we associate with them is precisely what we are ashamed to admit about ourselves.

I was on a Liz Greene seminar once, and she said that our shadow is that which we are ashamed to admit to. She said some people claim to be at ease with their shadows, and may list off certain ‘bad’ things about themselves. But then that is not their shadow. The shadow is that which we are ashamed to admit to, and it may not be anything that is harmful to anyone else. You might just be a secret cross-dresser or something!

What is needed with Pluto is honesty and a lack of being judgemental of ourselves. There is nothing ‘wrong’ with being the way we are. We are what we are. It doesn’t of course mean we always have to act on it. And it doesn’t mean we can’t transform. But in a way the transformation isn’t up to us, with our limited human perspective and narrow sense of ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Our job is just to show up, and let Pluto take care of the transformation.

Sooner or later the public figures who carry the outer planet projections will let us down, and if we haven't spotted the projection before, that time of betrayal is also when we can learn. Or we can stay feeling betrayed, and carry on hating Neptunian Tony Blair or whichever figure it is.

The Shadow Side of Julian Assange; Wikileaks and UFOs

There was an interview with Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder, in the Guardian Newspaper on 3rd December. It took the form of written questions from readers. It was telling and a bit shocking that Mr Assange refused to answer the only critical question.

It was from a retired diplomat who prefaced his question with a list of some of the achievements of his diplomatic work, in e.g. preventing ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, and pointed out that the diplomatic service needed to be confidential in order to operate. The questioner concluded: “Why should we not hold you personally responsible when next an international crisis goes unresolved because diplomats cannot function?”

The question could hardly have been more germane, and Assange replied: “If you trim the vast editorial letter to the singular question actually asked, I would be happy to give it my attention.”

And that was that. It was a big-time evasion. There were other questions which were nearly as long, and not half so cogent, which Mr. Assange had been happy to answer. And why does he call the question 'singular'? If he means 'noticeable', then why not answer it? If he means 'strange', then that is a bizarre put-down, because the question is one that everyone is asking.

The big question about Wikileaks is whether it is doing more harm than good. It has clearly done some good in the past. But it would seem that Julian Assange does not want to look at this issue, and the rudeness of his answer suggests a high degree of self-importance.

This incident reveals a shadow side of Wikileaks, and it reveals Julian Assange as a dangerous individual. There is a degree of blind anti-authoritarianism, and a sense of himself as on a special mission, that is fuelling him. But he is a cultural hero at present, the darling of the left, who are often blindly anti-establishment themselves.

Below is part of what I wrote about his astrology last week (Sun in Cancer square Uranus, Moon in Scorpio, Mars in Aquarius square Jupiter):

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Assange has Sun trine Moon (his Moon is between 0 and 12 Scorpio), so he is at ease with who he is on a basic level, he is not conflicted. But therein also lies the danger, for the primal wateriness of his Sun and Moon lack self-reflective ability; bring in the Mars square Scorpionic Jupiter, and you have someone who could be doing more harm than good, while thinking he is one of the good guys (Uranus/Aquarius). Here is the thing: Uranus comes from principles and ideals, rather than consequences of actions. And you don’t know what the consequences of all these leaks are going to be. The stage is too big, the amount of loaded information is vast. Your actions might create a more open society. Or they might lead to war. Or both. You don’t really know.

Assange also said in the interview that if anything happens to him, the cables will continue to be released, for they have been sent to 100,000 people in encrypted form. We are talking about a cultural movement, a mass protest here, more than we are talking about a single individual. And we are talking about the incoming square from Uranus to Pluto, which brings rebellion and protest, like the conjunction in the 1960s, that can do some good. But the rebellion also had its shadow side then as now, which is the tendency to be blind and highly polarised in its opposition to the establishment. You get this wherever you have opposition on a mass level. Wars are like this.

Moving on, Julian Assange makes an interesting point about free speech in the interview, saying that the reason our speech is free is because our speech does not have the power to change anything. The real power, he says, lies with the international web of financial institutions:

The west has fiscalised its basic power relationships through a web of contracts, loans, shareholdings, bank holdings and so on. In such an environment it is easy for speech to be "free" because a change in political will rarely leads to any change in these basic instruments. Western speech, as something that rarely has any effect on power, is, like badgers and birds, free. In states like China, there is pervasive censorship, because speech still has power and power is scared of it. We should always look at censorship as an economic signal that reveals the potential power of speech in that jurisdiction. The attacks against us by the US point to a great hope, speech powerful enough to break the fiscal blockade.

I presume the last sentence refers to Assange’s promise to release a load of confidential info about a major US bank. Like ‘cablegate’, it will probably give us a lot of insight into how these institutions operate, but whether these leaks will do more harm than good is again the question. Assange is basically attacking the system, he seems to want to bring it down without having anything to replace it. Money has always been where the power is, and the 20th century attempts to create a mass alternative through communism were even worse than the capitalist system. Hasn’t Assange learnt from history? I am not saying the system cannot be improved, of course it can, but these blind systemic attacks are not the answer.

On perhaps a lighter note, the topic of UFOs was raised in the interview. There have, of course, been claims for years of big military cover-ups of UFO sightings and involvement with UFO technology. If this is the case, then somewhere there will be documents, and somewhere there will be someone who wants to leak some of them. And now there is somewhere to go with them: Wikileaks.

So applying a sort of reverse logic to the Wikileaks phenomenon, if something doesn’t eventually appear on Wikileaks then it probably didn’t happen! There is currently a Jupiter-Uranus conjunction, which signifies UFOs, and a Neptune-Chiron conjunction in Aquarius, which signifies the use of the internet (Aquarius) for leaks (Neptune) that have a healing effect (Chiron) – or a permanently damaging effect (Chiron). So the moment has come.

Julian Assange was specifically asked, “Have there ever been documents forwarded to you which deal with the topic of UFOs or extraterrestrials?”

He replied that no such documents had been forwarded that also met 2 of Wikileaks’ publishing rules: that the documents should be both original and not self-authored.

That said, he added that “in yet-to-be-published parts of the cablegate archive there are indeed references to UFOs.”

That sounds to me like the references are incidental, and that there is no major Wikileaks expose of military cover-ups of UFOs to look forward to. And, applying my ‘reverse Wikileaks logic’, that there has therefore probably not been any such cover-up.

Wikileaks and Uranus-Pluto; America's New Public Enemy No 1

The Wikileaks story is developing so fast that anything I write will probably be out of date by the time you read this! Wikileaks has been going since 2006, and is particularly known for releasing documents that expose corruption in regimes around the world. In 2009 it won an award for its exposure of corruption in Kenya.

Wikileaks only reached super-prominence this year, however, when it turned its sights on America. Since April it has been releasing documents relating to the Afghan and Iraq Wars. In November, it began the release of 250,000 US State Department diplomatic cables, and this is when the response reached boiling point. Julian Assange, who heads Wikileaks, is now the world’s most wanted man.

Hilary Clinton called the release of the diplomatic cables “an attack on the world community.” Actually, the cables didn’t really tell us anything we couldn’t have worked out already – like the fact that a number of Middle East countries would like the US to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities, or that the US is suspicious of Russia. Or that Hamid Karzai personally benefits from the opium trade in Afghanistan. Or that the US spies on UN officials.

America comprises just over 4% of the world’s population. Probably half that population has heard of Wikileaks (I’m not joking) and let’s say half of that remaining 2% are bothered by it. Add to that my above point that the cables don’t tell us much we couldn’t have worked out anyway and we are able to correct Hilary Clinton: instead of being “an attack on the world community” the cables are “an embarrassment to 1% of the world’s population.”

Astrologer Jim Sher makes the point that “…what is coming out is that for the most part, the U.S. policies we are being told about are basically what is really happening. It is what a rational person would expect. Diplomats are being shown to be sharp, well-informed, lucid and astute.” I thought that was a great point. The leaks empower us, they reassure us that yes, we can work out what is going on, there is not some vast conspiracy of deception going on.

Not that I thought that anyway, but it can be very hard to get a rational political discussion these days in ‘alternative’ circles, because people are so influenced by conspiracy thinking, that in some very vague way they know what is ‘really’ going on. Here’s where I will lose a lot of my readers (!), but I find most of this thinking complacent, self-serving and irrational. It seems to stem from a sense of personal disempowerment that gets projected onto governments. Of course, some government conspiracies are for real, they are backed up by good evidence, and they are fascinating. Like the German government setting up a hijack in the 70s to dispose of some Palestinian prisoners they didn’t know what to do with. Or the coups set up in South America by the US.

The Wikileaks phenomenon is presided over by Pluto (secrets) in Capricorn (governments). A lot of us probably expected the opposite – that governments would become more secretive and controlling of information. But the reverse has happened, probably helped by the incoming square from Uranus (the unexpected) to Pluto. Pluto is now properly in Capricorn, moving up to 7 degrees next year. His first couple of years in Capricorn coincided with a Saturn-Uranus opposition, bringing a high degree of uncertainty and changeability with it. But that Opposition is now over, and Pluto is far enough into Capricorn for us to begin to discern some of the trends of this long transit. And it seems reasonable, in our internet age, to foresee a period in which governments will not be able to control information in the ways they always have. Previously if someone wanted to reveal classified information, what could they do with it? They could tell the Russians, and that would be that. Nowadays they can just stick it on the internet for all to see. And there will always be people working for government who are prepared to do this.

So Wikileaks seems to presage an age in which governments will have more openness forced upon them. And the Uranus square to Pluto is only just starting: what Wikileaks is doing now is just the beginning of something that will probably become much more normal and established over the next few years.

Of course, governments will respond by tightening up security and, for example, by keeping conversations more private and verbal. And I don’t think it is at all a straightforward issue. I welcome all these cables that have been released for the insights they have given us into how governments work. And as even a Pentagon spokesmen have said, the standard government response that the release of this info puts lives at risk cannot so far be backed up in the field. It’s overblown.

But governments have a difficult job to do, and they have to be able to speak freely, both amongst themselves and with other governments. Personal communication often makes all the difference when institutions are rubbing up against each other. If confidentiality is compromised, then we may see a world in which conflict becomes harder to head off. And because information flow becomes tightened, government departments will become more distanced from each other.

So I think it is inevitable that the Wikileaks phenomenon will to some extent lead to the very opposite of the openness it is trying to create. And that will be the ironic way in which the type of Pluto in Capricorn that we all fear will come about. Uranus-Pluto, as we saw with the conjunction in the 1960s, has the theme of rebellion (Uranus) against power (Pluto). Just as Uranus has started a run-in towards its 1st close square to Pluto next summer, so has the Wikileaks phenomenon exploded. It is the opening salvo of a longer term theme, in which we will see ever more internet exposure of government activities, and ever more attempts by governments to clamp down on them, along with increasing secretiveness by governments. It will be highly polarised, just like the 1960s. By the time Uranus-Pluto is well and truly over, however, which won't be for another 7 years or so, we can expect some sort of outcome, some sort of accommodation - and quite a different world when it comes to the way governments control information and the access we are able to have to that information.

Though I think it is in many ways a good thing that the US diplomatic cables have been released, I don’t think we need a repeat unless there really is something that needs exposing. There is also an ethical issue here. If your government is doing something corrupt, and you are an employee with access to the relevant info, then there is a case for breaking your confidentiality agreement and blowing the whistle. But if it is just the usual interchange between diplomats that is needed to keep the world functioning, then I think it is unethical, and it is unethical for Wikileaks to have published them. It is interesting that Jupiter, ethics, is conjunct Uranus and squaring Pluto at the moment. The square to Pluto suggests an ethical compromise in dealing with the powers that be.

Julian Assange, who heads Wikileaks, has done some good in exposing corruption. But I think he has also shown an indiscriminate opposition to authority which made my first thought about him that he has father/authority issues. When I looked him up on Wikipedia, I read that he is from Australia, that his parents split up when he was 8, and the new stepfather belonged to a controversial and secretive cult, the Santiniketan Park Association, which seems to have had a highly abusive attitude towards children. When he was 11 his mother took Julian and his younger half-brother into hiding for 5 years due to a custody battle over the younger brother with the stepfather. Assange has his stepfather’s surname.

So a distance from his natural father clearly developed when he was young, and being taken into hiding for 5 years from a stepfather belonging to an abusive cult is pretty extreme. At the same time, his stepfather has this to say about the young Julian: "A bright boy with a keen sense of right and wrong. He always stood up for the underdog with his school friends, he was always very angry about people ganging up on other people."

So you can almost see the man in the boy here, and Wikileaks itself: the genuine and courageous desire to stand up for what is right, mixed in with a sense that any authority/father has dark secrets that need exposing.

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We have a reliable birth date for Assange – 3 July 1971 in Townsville, Australia, but not a reliable birth time. There is one circulating from someone who claims to have seen his birth records, but according to Lynn Hayes who has written about it: “…as you'll read in the comments from Australian astrologers, the method of data collection appears to be somewhat suspect since birth records there evidently do not include birth times and can be obtained only by a relative.”

So we have the midday chart, and as you can see right away, Assange has Sun square to Uranus: rebellion (Uranus) against authority/father (Sun), and also the father you are separated/split-off from (Uranus). But we can’t simply reduce this aspect to childhood difficulties, because it carries an ‘adult’ meaning in its own right that at its best involves a dynamic and progressive disruption of the status quo, both within oneself and outside oneself. It is hard to settle into a rut with this aspect. And when it seeks external manifestation, it is established authorities which are likely to be the target.

In Assange’s particular case, Uranus is in justice-seeking Libra, while the Sun is in Cancer, meaning that his target countries are likely to experience his activities as an attack on their homeland security (Cancer). With his Sun being close to the US Sun, you can see why his attacks have been so effective there. He instinctively knows how to get to them.

For Assange functions primarily on instinct, on gut-feeling. His Sun is in Cancer and his Moon is in Scorpio. They can both be hidden signs, so it may not be evident to others just how much Assange is driven by personal emotion in his quest to expose corrupt authorities. At its best, his Scorpio Moon seeks to restore power to ordinary people, and his Cancer Sun feels protective and nurturing to those he is fighting for; at its worst, his Scorpio Moon seeks revenge for what happened to him in childhood, and his Cancer Sun makes decisions based on mood and personal neediness.

Whatever mix he is coming from, the Crab and the Scorpion also provide him with the ruthlessness, the cold-bloodedness necessary to start and continue this campaign, this war.

His Mars is in Aquarius (again ruled by Uranus) giving a desire to progress humanity through action and even aggression. Aquarius being Air means he can stand back and choose his target in a considered manner, but the square to Jupiter in Scorpio means he can be more destructive than he realises.

Assange has Sun trine Moon (his Moon is between 0 and 12 Scorpio), so he is at ease with who he is on a basic level, he is not conflicted. But therein also lies the danger, for the primal wateriness of his Sun and Moon lack reflective ability; bring in the Mars square Scorpionic Jupiter, and you have someone who could be doing more harm than good, while thinking he is one of the good guys (Uranus/Aquarius). Here is the thing: Uranus comes from principles and ideals, rather than consequences of actions. And you don’t know what the consequences of all these leaks are going to be. The stage is too big, the amount of loaded information is vast. Your actions might create a more open society. Or they might lead to war. Or both. You don’t really know.

Assange’s Mars is conjunct his North Node in Aquarius. What comes easy is his South Node in Leo: the lone individual doing something unique and original – and aggressive (Mars opposite)! What comes harder is integrating that into the wider community (Aquarius). For now he has put himself at odds with much of the world. With Chiron making a t-square with his Sun-Uranus, he has made himself the outsider/victim/scapegoat in a big way. But you never know, a few years down the line, as Uranus-Pluto progresses, all this may look very different. Assange may come to be seen as a catalyst (Uranus) for a big change in the world.

Fascinatingly, Saturn is now in the same sign – Libra – as when he first went into hiding with his mother when he was 11. Saturn is a planet of confinement and therefore prison, which is where he now is, after a period of hiding. In both cases Saturn has made a square to his Sun. (Being in Cancer, you can see the involvement of his mother in the earlier instance.) It suggests the connection I made earlier between the stepfather who was a member of a secretive, abusive cult, and the desire now to reveal the secrets of governments. Saturn is also authority, which again is both the stepfather and the USA, which shares Assange’s Sun position. That said, I am not suggesting that Assange’s actions are simply a reaction from childhood. There is clearly a connection, but it may be that he has made something of his early experiences, that the response is a creative one. With Saturn, at best, we learn from experience.

Julian Assange is 39 years old, and beginning that mid-life juncture where you have lived out your earlier, unreflective impulses that propelled you through the first half of your adult life, and where it is time to look back and see why you have done what you have done, what was genuinely you, and what was the influence of others and early conditioning, and what you want now. This process takes some years as all 3 outer planets plus Saturn hard-aspect themselves. But Assange has this more intensely, for his Sun is at 10 Cancer, which will be hard-aspected by both Pluto and Uranus over the next 2-3 years.

Given what he has done, he could be a dead man. Or spending 20 years in an American jail: America will do its best to create the necessary legalities, and apply the necessary pressure, to get their man. According to an article on the BBC site, though, this will be problematic for the US. If they try to do him for espionage, for example, then that is a political crime, and there is no extradition treaty between the US and the UK, or the US and Sweden, for political crimes.

Much of the world establishment, particularly America, is rounding on Assange, and pretext after pretext is being created to hem him in and nail him. Wikileaks is being shut down; Paypal, Mastercard and various other companies are refusing to channel donations to his site; his bank account in Switzerland has been frozen on a technicality and an extradition warrant is out for him on rape charges in Sweden, which seem to be a set-up. The man has not been convicted of anything, or charged with anything related to Wikileaks, yet he is being treated as an arch-criminal. And it is America more than anyone who is after him, and able and prepared to exert whatever pressure it likes on any company or western country to get its way. It is fascinating to watch a man being singled out and hounded in this way by America. We’ve never seen anything quite like it. Some politicians in the US have said they would like to see him executed for what he has done.

America needs an enemy for its own psychological balance, to avoid the pathology underneath its perception of itself as the world’s no 1 country. And it expects other western countries to join the dance when it has such an enemy. The US has Mars in Gemini, so its aggressive tendencies are unusually divided into good and bad, black and white. Not since Osama bin Laden has someone been identified as public enemy number 1 like this, and there is a section of the country that must be starting to feel at ease with itself in a way that it hasn’t for a while. Bin Laden could never be tracked down, so he was never entirely satisfactory as public enemy No 1.

Ahmadinejad of Iran is a good candidate, but again the US hasn’t been able to run with that one, because military action was never possible due to the Iraq War (wrong target!) Now they have a visible enemy who can be caught, but unfortunately they have the wrong President as scapegoat cheerleader. There is no doubt Obama will do his best to get Assange behind bars in the US - he is an American President after all - but he is not the sort to create a personalised cult of vilification. This is part of the reason the US elects Presidents like George W Bush and Ronald Reagan from time to time: it is so the collective can feel good about itself again by finding an enemy to vilify. I have no doubt that Sarah Palin would oblige in this respect.

Back to Assange. As for the rape charges, Assange has natal Venus square to Pluto, currently being hard-aspected by Uranus. So there is a dark element to his sexuality, issues of power to be dealt with: either letting women have power over him, or the reverse, or both. Assuming the rape charges were a set-up, a honey-trap, Venus-Pluto could attract this. During August, when the alleged events took place, Mars and Venus were conjunct in Libra, and passed over Assange’s Uranus and squared his Sun. The sign of Libra suggests to me it was a honey-trap. Mars and Venus also passed over Saturn (protection) in early Libra, and apparently much of the case rests on whether or not a condom was used. Early in August Mars and Venus were also part of the Uranus-Jupiter-Saturn-Pluto Cardinal t-square, so events took place then which were hugely catalytic for Assange (and for the world via Wikileaks). The likely outcome seems to be at least bail and surrender of passport in Sweden while the Americans do their best to press charges.

HOWEVER, it is also increasingly clear that there is huge public support for Assange. In London, he has not been given bail, but people who did not know him offered to stand surety. Australia’s ex-PM Kevin Rudd has said that Assange was not responsible for the leaked American cables, it was whoever pinched them in the first place. Rudd is right, and to this extent Assange is being scapegoated for someone else’s crimes.

More than that, there is a wave of hackers called Operation Payback who are interfering with the sites of companies who have withdrawn services from Wikileaks, like Amazon and Visa. They are engaging you and I by offering a botnet tool for your computer that joins it to an army of machines which launch denial of service attacks on those sites. You can in theory find them at http://anonops.net, but unsurprisingly it appears to have been taken down. They are currently operating via Twitter.

It is quite thrilling, and true Uranus-Pluto, which is about a collective rebellion, not one man. Through his Uranus in Libra, Assange has become a voice for collective protest as it is activated by Uranus-Pluto. The internet is ruled by Uranus, but so is rebellion, so in a way the internet is coming of age as it becomes a tool for mass protest.

On another Uranus-Pluto note, in the UK we are seeing protest by students against big rises in student fees in a way we have not had since the Uranus-Pluto conjunction of the 1960s.The rebellions are on their way!