Mundane Matters: In the Thick of It

Current and Upcoming Cycles

First published in Astrology Quarterly Winter 2007/8

24 March 2008

I’ve spoken quite a lot about cycles in recent issues, which reflects their importance in astrology. They are at the heart of the astrologer’s view of time, which is cyclical not linear. Conditions repeat, not exactly, but rather like an echo from the last time we were here. [1]

So what do I mean by a cycle? Two bodies (usually planets) moving with relation to each other, such as the Sun and Moon move through the lunar cycle, forming aspects from conjunction through opposition and back to conjunction. This is their cycle. The length of this cycle determines the weight we give it when forming our judgements; the longer – Uranus Pluto = 127 years – the more powerful. [2] What is sown at the conjunction, flowers at the opposition and moves to the next phase as the two bodies conjoin to start the cycle again. As the cycle moves through its phases the associated affairs progress. With subsequent conjunctions the matter in hand develops. You can see this in action with the Saturn Neptune cycle (36 years in length) and the development of communism. Significant events in this story closely match the years of the conjunctions: 1848 – publication of the communist manifesto; 1917 – Russian Revolution; 1953 – death of Stalin; 1989 – fall of the Berlin Wall to name but a few.

Currently we have two cycles reaching key phases in 2008: Jupiter and Saturn, and Saturn and Uranus. Jupiter and Saturn are on the outgoing trine of their cycle following their conjunction in Taurus in May 2000. Saturn and Uranus are approaching their opposition from their conjunctions in 1988.* These cycle phases are particularly interesting as they will each have a total of five exact aspects before the planets move onto the next phase. The usual number is one or three, depending on how the retrograde motions fall.

Let us start with Jupiter and Saturn. Their trine phase is interesting as there are two exact aspects in fire and three in earth. This movement from fire to air echoes the movement of Pluto and Jupiter into Capricorn and Saturn into Virgo. This energy feels like a bump bringing us down to earth, now we have to pay attention to the real world. The first exact trine in earth – 12 January 2008 – coincided with large falls on stock markets around the world and continuing unrest in the housing market. Incidentally, Saturn in Virgo is pretty much symbolic of Northern Rock, don’t you think? †

Saturn in Virgo demands that you pay attention to details; now is definitely the time to read the small print. If you’re light on this then you can expect to be punished in some way, shape or form. All the earth signs demand that things are real and substantial, they don’t work well with abstract concepts. They certainly don’t like it when there’s too much slight of hand going on; ideas are fine but lets see your money, they say. Earth is practical and must maintain its relationship to the real world. That’s the difference between Virgo and Gemini; Virgo applies and refines, Gemini doesn’t care if the information he’s acquiring and communicating is useful (or even true!) as long as he keeps acquiring and communicating it. Air needs to make connections; earth needs to fix problems.

These differences between air and earth are integral to understanding the current Jupiter Saturn cycle. You may remember from a recent column [3] that Jupiter and Saturn make conjunctions in the same element for around 240 years. The conjunction in 2000 was the last of the series in earth, the previous conjunction in 1981 was the first of the series in air and the next conjunction will be in air in 2020 and it will stay in air for around 200 years. The conjunctions in earth began in 1802, had one last maverick conjunction in fire (1821) and then continued in earth from 1842. The symbolism is remarkable; the primary economic cycle’s (Jupiter Saturn) movement into earth coincides with the Industrial Revolution and mankind’s increasing mastery of and dominance over the physical world. Doesn’t the Victorian urge to invent and discover match the symbolic combination of Jupiter, Saturn and earth?

As technology progressed our command over, and demands on, the physical environment grew. Industrial development needs physical raw materials which have to be dug up or harvested and the processes they were subject to produce their own manifest consequences in the form of pollution and environmental damage. It is no accident that carbon (Saturn) levels began to increase (Jupiter) at this time.
Now you may be remembering that I started by saying that cycles repeat and you may also be thinking that we only appear to have had one Industrial Revolution, so what happened last time these aspects were in earth? This was around the time of the Norman invasion in England – first 1007, last 1206 – which was when a great many castles were built and significant sections of ancient forest were cut down. I leave you to do your own research and draw your own conclusions.

So we’ve talked about earth, so what about air? Air is about communication and ideas. Not necessarily practical, it doesn’t feel the need to check its ideas against reality. Ivory towers aren’t high in the air for nothing. The 80’s saw the term Post Industrial being used. It also saw the rise of computers which were available for use in the home and the increasing use of computers in the workplace. This period also saw the reduction in currency controls which opened up the world into one global economy. Currency flows allowed, amongst other things, the financial (air) economy to become separated from the real (earth) economy. The financial economy I’m talking about here relates to large rows of numbers on computer screens, to accounting “balancing items” which make everything add up and to “products” which are bought and sold which don’t actually exist outside our mutual confidence in them. You can’t see a pile of derivatives or futures, just a pile of paper.

The run up to the 21st century also saw concerns about Y2K – which may or may not have existed – and an increasing focus on the internet as a way to conduct business. Business models at the time bore little relation to reality and investors seemed eager to throw money at any project regardless of its merits and ability to produce a return. To be fair, there were genuine advantages gained from the advances in technology and the increasing availability of it. Not everything was based on pie in the sky but a great deal was and the conjunction in May 2000 in Taurus together with all the classical planets ‡ brought us momentarily back down to earth.

The internet bubble burst about six weeks before the actual conjunction and the subsequent “tech stock” crash on stock exchanges around the world lasted for several years. It seemed that Taurus – that most earthy of earth signs – was demanding that reality was returned to the financial sector, a place close to her heart. This has happened to a certain degree but the artifice of the financial sector continues with hedge funds, derivatives and packaged debt. These products are traded for vast amounts of money but have little of material substance behind them. The way the financial sector deals with these ideas is at the root of current conditions. The credit crunch pigeons are coming home to roost.

One interpretation we can give this last conjunction in earth is to see it as the universe demanding that we root ourselves in reality before we can move into the realm of ideas. But this is not the whole of the story. For the last two hundred years we’ve consumed the resources of our planet without thought to the consequences of our actions. Whatever your beliefs or ideas on climate change, it is difficult to see what is happening and the matching astrological indicators without drawing certain conclusions.

The current focus on earth is, I believe, a development of this theme. Not only have we have a focus on Virgo/Pisces through eclipses (see the list below) and planetary movement but some of these transits trigger key points in preceding major cycles which were themselves important in this story.

Uranus is currently opposite its position when it conjoined Pluto in 1965/66 – 16 Virgo. Saturn was in Pisces at the time and opposed Uranus twice in 1965 and towards the end of 1966, a reverse of the current opposition. The events of the 60’s are well documented but we can trace the beginnings of the modern environmental movement from this time. Much of the development of computers took place while Pluto and Uranus were in Virgo, not solely during the period when the conjunction was in orb. We’ll come back to the development of that cycle later.

Let us return to the 80’s. There following planetary conjunctions took place in the early 80’s:

Jupiter conj Saturn 31 Dec 1980 9 Libra
" " " 4 Mar 1981 8 Libra
24 July 1981 4 Libra
Jupiter conj Pluto 2 Nov 1982 24 Libra
Saturn conj Pluto 8 Nov 1982 27 Libra

These are major cycles marking a shift in the underlying organisation of society.§ The changes which took place in the 60’s and 80’s have been cited as key milestones on the way to where we find ourselves today. Not only are they referred to by those who wish to wallow in nostalgia but they hold key seed moments as shown by these cycles and they are reaching critical phases over the next few years. When you read some accounts to can appear that the 80’s were the revenge of those who didn’t enjoy the 60’s. These two decades are linked, if only by the fact that those born in 60’s reached adulthood in 80’s. You may also have heard that 2012 has been cited as a pivotal year where we reach the end of the Mayan calendar but you don’t need to change systems to see that there is more than a little tension building. Consider the following:

2006

Lunar eclipse 14 March 24 Virgo
Solar eclipse 29 March 8 Aries
Lunar eclipse 7 September 15 Pisces
Solar eclipse 22 September 29 Virgo

2007

Solar eclipse 19 March 28 Pisces
Lunar eclipse 28 August 4 Pisces
Solar eclipse 11 September 18 Virgo
Jupiter conj Pluto 11 December 28 Sagittarius

2008

Jupiter trine Saturn 21 January 7 Capricorn
Lunar eclipse 16 August 24 Aquarius
Saturn opp Uranus 4 November 18 Virgo

2009

Saturn opp Uranus 5 February 20 Virgo
Jupiter conj Neptune 27 May 26 Aquarius
Jupiter conj Neptune 10 July 26 Aquarius
Saturn opp Uranus 15 September 24 Virgo
Saturn square Pluto 15 November 1 Libra
Jupiter conj Neptune 21 November 24 Aquarius

2010

Saturn square Pluto 31 January 4 Libra
Saturn opp Uranus 26 April 28 Virgo
Jupiter opp Saturn 23 May 27 Pisces
Jupiter conj Uranus 8 June 0 Aries
Lunar eclipse 26 June 4 Capricorn
Saturn opp Uranus 26 July 0 Libra
Jupiter opp Saturn 16 August 2 Aries
Saturn square Pluto 21 August 2 Libra
Jupiter conj Uranus 19 September 28 Pisces

2011

Jupiter conj Uranus 4 January 27 Pisces
Solar eclipse 4 January 13 Capricorn
Jupiter square Pluto 25 February 7 Aries
Jupiter opp Saturn 28 March 14 Aries
Jupiter 135 Neptune 31 March 14 Aries
Uranus square Pluto 24 June 8 Aries
Solar Eclipse 1 July 9 Cancer

2012

Uranus square Pluto 24 June 8 Aries
Uranus square Pluto 19 September 7 Aries

2013

Uranus square Pluto 20 May 11 Aries
Jupiter opp Pluto 7 August 9 Cancer
Jupiter square Uranus 21 August 12 Cancer
Uranus square Pluto 1 November 9 Aries

2014

Jupiter opp Pluto 31 January 12 Cancer
Jupiter square Uranus 26 February 10 Cancer
Jupiter square Uranus 20 April 13 Cancer
Jupiter opp Pluto 20 April 13 Cancer
Uranus square Pluto 21 April 13 Aries
Uranus square Pluto 15 December 12 Aries

2015

Uranus square Pluto 17 March 15 Aries
Lunar eclipse 4 April 14 Libra

You can see from this list – which is not comprehensive, I’ve only included aspects which hit these particular degrees – that there are concentrations of activity around late mutable and early cardinal degrees. Both hard aspects within the planetary cycles and eclipses accents these areas. 2010 shows a T-square at 0° cardinal: Saturn in Virgo/Libra; Uranus and Jupiter in Aries; Pluto in Capricorn. This focus on the primary cardinal axes has been causing concern in astrological circles, especially when you remember that the US 4th July charts have several planets here. If you look at the Cancer ingress for 2010, where the Sun takes up the empty Cardinal point to complete the grand cross, you can see this and the underlying tension building in the rest of the chart.

Planets at 10-13 degrees of cardinal appear repeatedly in mundane charts: the Suns of the UK, USA, France to name a few points found here. These degrees appear to be highly significant for modern civilisation, don’t forget that the Saturn Neptune conjunction in November 1989, just before the Berlin Wall came down, was at 10 Capricorn. Examining the history of oil – coming in my Spring 2008 column – you get 12 and 13 degrees of cardinal repeating both in the charts and the history of oil in the 20th century. These are significant points.

This above list takes us through to the Uranus Pluto squares, the first major cycle phase from the conjunction in the sixties. Moving towards the end of these squares you can see a particularly tense period in April 2014.** In addition to the planetary cycles listed you can see from the chart that Mars and the Moon also complete the configuration, bringing in long, medium and short term cycles. Whether this will act as a crescendo to the pervious run up remains to be seen but it is indisputable that the next six years will bring many challenges to the way we conduct our affairs in the developed world.

The modern, western world depends on finite physical resources. What ever your political bias. the fact that our current position is unsustainable must now be obvious to all. Whether we need to adjust our behaviour to maintain the wealth of the elite or to more equally share what we have with all of the inhabitants of the planet the time to make these changes must surely be upon us. We have the first major cycle phase – square - of the third most powerful cycle – Uranus Pluto, 127 years – almost upon us. The fourth most powerful cycle – Uranus Saturn, 45 years – is in its opposition phase, where it was when Uranus was conjunct Pluto – and these exact aspects are picking up the degrees of previous eclipses and similar degrees to the aspects of the 60’s.
At this point an optimistic thought might be in order. As I have noted that we have a current focus on earth, if you look at the list of aspects you can see the degrees move from late mutable – mostly Virgo/Pisces – to early cardinal – Aries/Libra. Saturn – our reality check – will be in Libra, where he is well placed to keep us on the straight and narrow. We just need to remember that we wont be able to bend the rules anymore.

* There were three conjunctions in late degrees of Sagittarius.

†Saturn is rocks and earth is north in horary astrology.

‡ On 3 May 2000 all the planets from Moon through Saturn were in Taurus.

§ I have often wondered why Thatcherism took such a hold in the UK. These cycles point to huge changes in society and we could point to the fact that Margaret Thatcher’s Mars is at 9 Libra, her Mercury is at 23 Libra and the UK’s ascendant is at 7 Libra as to why they took hold with such force in the UK. She also has a Jupiter Pluto opposition in her natal chart.

**My thanks to Bernard Eccles for pointing this out.

References

[1] For further information I refer you to the following works: Mundane Astrology, Campion, Baigent and Harvey; Anima Mundi, Charles Harvey; An Introduction to Political Astrology, CEO Carter.

[2] Mundane Astrology gives a full list of cycles and their lengths. I cover cycle lengths and dates in Astrology Quarterly, Spring 2007, vol 77 no 2.

[3] Spring 2007, Volume 77, no 2.

Select Bibliography

Tables of Planetary Phenomena, Michelsen, Neil F, 2nd Edition, 1995, ACS Publications

Mundane Astrology, Baigent, Campion and Harvey, 2nd Edition, 1992, Aquarian Press