Over the last year, and especially over the last month, I’ve fielded a flurry of questions about the astrological meaning of the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn that took place on Monday. I’ve been intrigued to note that quite a few of those questions have come from people who admit they don’t know much about astrology but have a sense, however vague, that this conjunction matters. As it happens, they’re quite correct. The conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn have a special role in astrology, and this one was of particular importance. As I’ll discuss shortly, it marks the end of one era in world history and the beginning of another.
Let’s start with some basics. Astrology is an empirical science based on more than 5000 years of recorded correlations between planetary motion and events on earth. We don’t know why it works. (Try getting funding for the necessary studies.) One of its branches—the technical name is mundane astrology—predicts political and cultural events. That’s the kind of astrology I practice. Most work with mundane astrology uses ingress charts—charts drawn up for capital cities for each solstice and equinox—but there are also larger cycles that mundane astrologers track.
One of those went through an important phase change Monday. No, it wasn’t the age of Aquarius; that began in 1879, according to the interpretation I use, and will last until 4039 AD. (In case you’re wondering why it hasn’t turned out to be an age of peace and love and brotherhood, the people who came up with that interpretation got it from smoking too much pot, not from the heavens.) The celestial odometer that rolled over on Monday is defined by the conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn—the process, as an older mythic language put it, by which Saturn gives “all the measures of the whole creation” to Jupiter.
Jupiter and Saturn conjoin every twenty years. Those conjunctions are located almost exactly 120° from each other, forming what astrologers call the Grand Trigon. (Yes, I know that sounds like something from a science fiction novel. Astrologers got there first.) Since ancient times each sign of the zodiac is linked to one of the four traditional elements of Earth, Water, Air, and Fire—scientists, who think they no longer believe in the four elements, call those “solids,” “liquids,” “gases,” and “energy” these days—and for a little less than two centuries at a stretch, every conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn happens in signs of the same element, with a little wobbling back and forth when you get close to the dividing line.
Beginning with the conjunction of 1842, all the conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn were in Earth signs until 1980-1, when a rare triple conjunction happened in Libra, an Air sign. In 2000 they conjoined in an Earth sign one last time. Monday’s conjunction in the Air sign Aquarius marked the beginning of a series of Air conjunctions, which will last until the Grand Trigon passes into the Water sign Scorpio on October 31, 2219. Astrologically, in other words, we have just passed from a 178-year-long era of Earth into a 199-year-long era of Air.
What does that mean? Since astrology is an empirical science, let’s glance back to 1226, the last time the Grand Trigon shifted from Earth to Air. That’s the chart above. In the 1226 Grand Mutation the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn was early in Aquarius, just as it was on Monday. As we’ll see, though, most of the other planetary positions were different. Most of all, notice Mars up there at the top of the chart. He’s in his rulership in Scorpio, and thus very strong; he’s in aspect with six of the other eight planets in the chart—and five of those six aspects are negative aspects, which predict serious trouble. It was an accurate prediction: among the entertaining events that took place during the astrological era that began in 1226 were the Black Death, the Mongol invasions, and the Hundred Years War.
Before any of my readers dive under the bed, let me reiterate one thing: these patterns in the 1226 chart do not appear on the 2020 chart. I’ve mentioned them here because I’ve seen people ask what is, after all, the logical first question about this year’s Grand Mutation—what happened the last time this occurred?—and I don’t want anyone to jump to the wrong conclusion. Mars in Scorpio in hostile aspect to a flurry of other planets in a Grand Mutation chart gives fair warning that mass death is on its way, but we don’t have that in the current chart.
The 2020 chart does have certain things in common with 1226. To begin with, of course, there’s the Grand Trigon passing from Earth to Air, and the conjunction early in Aquarius in both charts. The Earth era that ran from 1027 to 1226 was a period of savage ideological warfare (you’ve probably heard of the Crusades); that guttered out after 1226. In the same way, the period from 1842 to 2020 was a period of savage ideological warfare (you’ve probably heard of the Second World War and the Cold War); we can expect that to gutter out, too, as the new Air era gets under way. Wars will still happen—we’ll get to that—but the obsession with going to war against a world that refuses to convert to some ideology or other will wind down.
What replaced it the last time was a time of great cultural creativity. The period from 1226 to 1425 was the golden age of medieval philosophy, the age of the troubadors, and of a flowering of secular music and poetry and of mysticism. During those years a set of Welsh and Breton folktales about a mostly forgotten dark age king turned into the Arthurian legends. The Arabic, Persian, and Chinese spheres went through cultural flowerings of their own during the same period. In at least some parts of the world, we can expect something similar this time around, too.
The other significant parallel between 1226 and 2020 is a trine between the Sun and Uranus, which is especially important in both cases because Uranus is the dispositor of the conjunction—that is, he rules the sign in which Jupiter and Saturn are located when they conjoin. The Sun in mundane charts denotes government; Uranus is the planet of technology and change—it’s no accident that the discovery of Uranus in 1781 was followed by the most dramatic two centuries of technological innovation in human history. Sun trine Uranus predicts that government and technological change will be mutually supportive during the period ahead.
There’s a wrinkle, though. In 1226 Uranus was in Scorpio, the sign of his exaltation—in astrology, a planet in its exaltation is unusually strong and beneficent. He was also retrograde—that is, appearing to move backward from the perspective of the Earth; a retrograde planet in astrology predicts a return to older conditions. Sun trine an exalted, retrograde Uranus predicts the recovery of older, better technologies and cultural traits. (You’ve probably heard of the Renaissance.) The period from 1226 to 1425 was also an era of breathtaking technological innovation, in which printing, firearms, the magnetic compass, advances in sailing technology, and many other innovations strengthened central governments and set the stage for worldshaking changes in the eras to come.
In the 2020 chart, however, Uranus isn’t exalted. He’s in his fall in Taurus, and a planet in its fall is unusually weak and displays its most destructive influences. He is also retrograde, as he was in 1226, but because he’s in his fall we can expect not a new Renaissance, but a forced retreat to older technologies and cultural traits. Technological regress is as much a product of Uranian influence as technological progress; so, unfortunately, are disasters caused by technologies. In both cases, governments will be strengthened, because they alone have the resources to deal with disasters caused by badly managed technologies and the consequences of technological regress. Since Uranus is the dispositor of the conjunction, we’ll probably have to deal with a lot of both.
That’s about all we can learn from the 1226 chart about our future. (It has plenty more to say about conditions during the era it inaugurated, but that’s another matter.) To go on, let’s turn to the chart that launched the era that has just ended, the Grand Mutation chart for 1842, which is above. It’s a very unusual chart. Mars dominated the 1226 chart, but the Moon dominates this chart to an even greater extent. She is in her rulership in Cancer, thus very strong; what’s more, she stands alone on one side of the chart, with all the other planets clumped up together on the other side of the chart. This formation gives great strength to the planet standing by itself.
The Moon in mundane astrology represents the people. Before 1842, as in every previous age since the rise of cities, the vast majority of human beings were ruled by monarchs. In 2020 almost nobody is, and the forms of democratic governance have become so mandatory that even a straightforward hereditary monarchy like North Korea has to pretend to be a Democratic People’s Republic. This unprecedented state of affairs is shown in advance in the 1842 chart, partly by the extraordinary strength of the Moon, partly by her opposition with the Sun, the planet of kings, which is in his detriment (that is, very weak) in Aquarius.
Consider also the glorification of change for its own sake (usually labeled “progress”) that has been such a massive cultural fact over the last 178 years. Change in society is ruled by the Moon, the fastest-moving object in the heavens as seen from Earth, and an era dominated by the Moon will see just such an obsession. Interestingly, the dispositor of this chart is Saturn, lord of limits; notice the way that the struggle between Moon and Saturn, change and conservatism, has defined the politics of the last 178 years.
There’s much more to be said about this chart as it applies to the era that’s over, and much of it was said in advance by astrologer Richard Morrison, who published a set of predictions in 1842 titled Zadkiel’s Legacy; he scored quite a range of direct hits (and, let it be said, some serious flops; he thought he could predict earthquakes using astrology, and he was wrong.) Since our concern here is with the era that has just begun, let’s move to the 2020 chart below.
The first thing to notice from this chart is that no one planet has the kind of dominant position that Mars had in 1226 or the Moon had in 1842. This is normal in mundane charts, and gives us our first guideline for the era to come: it will be a period much closer to history as usual than the era of mass death that began in 1226 or the era of frantic change that began in 1842. With the Moon much less prominent, change for its own sake will likely be less unthinkingly valued, and democratic governments will be rather less widespread by the time the era ends.
In this chart, two planets—Mars and Neptune—are in their rulerships. One—Uranus—is in his fall, and he is the only retrograde planet. The two planets in rulerships show that war, ruled by Mars, and religion, ruled by Neptune, will be major influences over the next 199 years. Since Mars has only one aspect, a weak sesquisquare with Venus, the wars to come will not be the kind of all-consuming frenzy that “the calamitous fourteenth century” (to quote Barbara Tuchman) featured. Mass death from plague or nuclear war? That’s not what the heavens say.
Meanwhile Neptune has no aspects at all and is simply purring away on his own. In 1226, Neptune was afflicted by an opposition with Mars, and that unfolded over the 199 years that followed as violent persecution of dissident religious groups. (You’ve probably heard of the Inquisition.) This time we don’t have that. The Moon and Neptune are in a remarkably similar configuration in the two charts—the Moon separating from conjunction with Neptune, a little out of orb—so it seems likely that the same sort of cultural upsurge of creativity and mysticism can be expected. Since Neptune is much stronger in this chart, and not afflicted by hostile aspects, the flowering to come won’t be rendered bittersweet by persecution.
On the other hand technology, ruled by Uranus, is going to suffer. As already noted, governments will gain strength because they alone have the resources to deal with the impacts of technological regress and technologically driven disasters. With Mercury trine Uranus, the crises to come will also drive a range of clever innovations as people figure out how to cope with the consequences of decaying technological infrastructure and the like. With the Sun trine Uranus, expect governments to have a fair amount of success in patching technological systems and putting workarounds into place. Even so, it’s going to be a rough road.
Note that the Sun is square the Moon. Neither of the two luminaries is strong in this chart: the Sun is peregrine (that is, in a part of the zodiac that gives him no strength) and the Moon gets only mild strength in Pisces, the sign of her mixed triplicity. Both get help from other planets—the Sun from a conjunction with Mercury and the trine with Uranus already discussed, the Moon from a sextile with the Grand Mutation itself. Expect the next 199 years to be an era of turmoil, as centralized governments committed to crisis management in an era of technological regress have to contend with constant pushback and hostility from the population. Time is on the side of the Moon, but that only matters over the long run.
The Moon’s aspects with Jupiter and Saturn, though, have other lessons to teach. Moon sextile Jupiter is an indication of improved economic conditions. Moon sextile Saturn predicts good times for farm country and for rural populations. That may be a function of the technological problems predicted by Uranus; unemployment and underemployment driven by technology have been major economic realities for close to two centuries now, and it’s quite plausible that technological regress will lead to an improved job market as people have to be hired to do jobs in place of machines. Still, that’s a guess. Less speculative is the role of these benign conditions on politics. Prosperity will strengthen the hand of the people against the state, as it usually does.
Notice also Mercury’s position in this chart; in mundane charts, he governs communication and the media. He’s even weaker than the Sun, being peregrine in Capricorn and combust (that is, too close to the Sun). In 1842 he was better dignified, moving from a conjunction with the Sun to a conjunction with Neptune, the planet of mass phenomena. Notice how this predicts the way the press, and later mass media in general, became independent of central government but subservient to the lowest common denominator of the mass mind. That relative independence from the political sphere will not continue. Control over the media will revert to governments (Sun conjunct Mercury), and the media will become one of the main instruments used by them in their struggle with their own restive populations. Weak as Mercury is, this may do them less good than they expect.
Off by itself on one end of the line of planets, finally, is Venus, the planet of art and culture. She was in very dubious shape in 1842, weakly dignified in materialistic Capricorn and afflicted by an opposition with the dominant Moon, predicting the collapse of artistic standards and public taste in an age of schlock. In the 2020 chart she is peregrine and thus weak, but her only afflictions are two minor negative aspects with Mars and Uranus; in other words, wars and disasters will have their usual effects on the arts but the latter will be otherwise unhindered. The kneejerk hostility of artists toward the general public that afflicted the arts from 1842 to 2020 will be a thing of the past, though, and Venus in idealistic Sagittarius—where she was in 1663, the dawn of the Fire era that ended in 1842, which saw the creation of so much good art, music, and literature—bodes well for the creative arts.
One more chart is worth a glance here—the chart for the Grand Mutation in 2219, the end of the astrological era that began on Monday and the beginning of the following era of history:
Notice that the Moon is very active in this chart, though weaker and far less dominant than she was in 1842. She is again in a square with the Sun, as in 2020, and this time square the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction rather than sextile it. Mars is the dispositor of the chart, and he is exalted in Capricorn, expressing his dynamic energy in constructive labor rather than war. Neptune is exalted in Gemini, though retrograde; five of the other seven planets are peregrine, with very limited strength. Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn all challenge Uranus with hostile aspects—the Water era that begins in 2219 and ends 179 years later will be very hard on technology—while an opposition between Venus and Neptune, the arts and religion, will be resolved to some extent by popular support of both (Moon trine Venus and sextile Neptune).
Does this sound like history as usual? That’s exactly what it should sound like. The era that ended on Monday was obsessed with fantasies of universal change, but that’s another expression of that dominant Moon. Most of history consists of long periods of relatively sedate change in no particular direction, and the disasters that happen from time to time—as of course they do—are followed, not by utopia or oblivion, but by periods of recovery as people put their lives back together. We’ve just been through a very unusual period of world history, but it’s over, and once its last echoes finish dying away, we can expect something like a reversion to the mean.
What’s that you say? You want to know how all this will affect the particular corner of the world where you live? That requires a chart for the conjunction for your location. You can get that at any number of free online sites; enter the place, correct the time for your time zone, and you’re good to go. (Doublecheck your work by making sure the Moon is in the same place, 27° 52’ Pisces.) Raphael’s book Mundane Astrology or H.S. Green’s Mundane or National Astrology, both of which are readily available, will tell you what the planets mean in each house.
The point of this post, after all, is not to hand down infallible truths from on high. It’s to alert you to a useful art that might help you judge the shape of the future. Yes, I post detailed forecasts for paid subscribers on my Patreon and SubscribeStar accounts, and you’re welcome to tune in there if you like, but I’d be happier if more people cast and discussed their own mundane astrology forecasts—and happier still if more people shook off unhelpful daydreams about the future and started preparing for the kind of future we’re likely to get.
One other thing. If you’re upset by any of the predictions made above, please remember that astrology is not in the business of catering to anyone’s sense of entitlement or handing out warm fuzzy daydreams. I’m not happy about the indications that democratic governments will be much less common in the era ahead—I’m quite fond of civil liberties myself—but that’s what the heavens show. (I’m sure nobody was especially cheered by those Mars aspects in 1226, either.) One of the great lessons of astrology, a lesson many of us badly need to learn, is that the universe is not a vending machine. We don’t create our own reality; we have some influence over it, but far more often than not, the deciding vote is not cast by us. Keep that in mind, gauge the unyielding aspects of the future before it hits, and you have a much better chance of accomplishing something with the time you have on this small and lovely planet.
In other planetary news…
https://babylonbee.com/news/jupiter-and-saturn-fined-for-not-obeying-social-distancing
Also, I wish everyone a better 2021!
The universe is like a vending machine – if you try to tip it forward to get something for free, it’ll likely land on top of you. 🙂
What’s the theory on how much scope we actually have to affect things? It’s not like there’s a control group we can test it against. 🙂
The implications of Sun tri Uranus are what is most interesting to me, technology and government, it seems to me, maintaining an alliance for a couple centuries, though afflicted, kinda fighting back to back against many enemies.
I’ve picked up a cynical habit in thinking about government from a brief exposure to Max Weber many years ago, that it fundimentally comes down to to capacity to determine the modes of violence that can be expressed in a given sphere of life and region. I’ve come to think of that mental habit as overly reductive, but it bears mentioning that it still influences my thought. In that way it makes sense that technology and government would stay together based on the following reasoning. With out the advantages of the setting age, (higher) technology cannot be a net wealth booster for a society or government, it is more cost efficient for humans with modest kit to do work. That’s already the case in shockingly many domains, and many more soon enough. How ever, on the battle field certain technologies can give a real curb stomp advantage; intentionally stepping away from my Weber influence, this holds just as true for things like mass communication where a Government might try to maintain a tight grasp on any technology that allows for the mass disbursement of information. If no one can afford to make another such and such transmitter in the somany-watts range, then controlling it could be as important as running a mint might have been in the late middle ages.
Could you say a little bit more about how these transitions occur? Over the summer, I watched Saturn and Jupiter “dancing together” in the sky. I’m not particularly interested in astrology or astronomy, although I do believe in both, so I wasn’t aware that they were headed for a conjunction, much less something historic. I just noticed that they were in a relationship that I hadn’t seen before. I’m guessing that it was sort of like a striker swinging toward a bell and Monday night the bell rang and it will echo for 200 years. Things don’t change over night like flipping a switch, though. The world is not that different today, two days after the conjunction than it was last Saturday, which makes sense with a 200 year cycle. How soon will this actually make a difference? It feels like toasting a glass of champagne and cheering a New Year when really it’s the same “night” that it was a few minutes ago, it will be at least six hours before we will even see daylight and really that day isn’t that much different than yesterday. Just for example, on Dec. 31 our infamous 2020 will end but Trump will still be president for another month, the pandemic will still be raging for six months to a year, and the financial debacle will just be getting started. I don’t expect the conjunction to affect those things particularly (will it?) but when will we we start feeling like we really are living in a New Trigon?
Greetings all,
(1) Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems that this astrological interpretation is in line with what many people have been saying about the impact of oil depletion since 2000: a reversion to a situation of less energy and stuff for the majority. Interesting…
(2) If the above is correct, should we then expect an acceleration of decline in the years ahead, generally? By decline I mean a gradual reduction in material wealth?
Thanks
Thanks for this John, and I hope you and Sara enjoyed a blessed Solstice on Monday!
One question this raises: I note that you place a fair amount of importance on the role of Uranus in the 1226 chart, and the events of the ensuing era seem to bear that out. Does this mean that you’ve moved away from your earlier view, that the planets only really begin to have a significant influence one Saturn-cycle before their discovery? 1226 is quite a bit more than 30 years from 1781!
Hello,
I’ve found a copy of ‘The Annotated Raphael’s Mundane Astrology’ which I plan to read in my holidays. In the meantime …
The charts shown are all located in London. ¿Does this give them a planetary quality? ¿How different would I expect them to be in my remote corner of the world (quite far from London at the moment)?
Cheers.
P.
Hmmm, sounds like Retrotopia will serve as a nice general primer to the times ahead. My 82 year old mother announced she could live there quite happily as she read it. She has also become more supportive of the changes we are trying to make to the home place in anticipation of the changes underway. There seems to be alot to like on the road before us. Carpe diem, quan minimum credula postero.
Thank you for another close look at the Grand Mutation. I’m a subscriber on Patreon, and I have to say your astrology posts there are always quite interesting.
I hope you don’t mind if I scoop out a few phrases from this post and re-arrange them:
“…cultural upsurge of creativity and mysticism…”
“…violent persecution of dissident religious groups…”
“Prosperity will strengthen the hand of the people against the state…”
“…the collapse of artistic standards and public taste in an age of schlock…”
Each of these is highlighted by Spengler as an aspect of, respectively, the spring, summer, autumn, and winter of a Great Culture. Each culture, each at its own appointed time, supposedly moves through them in sequence.
The influences of the Grand Mutation, on the other hand, affect the entire globe at once- both the fledgling societies like medieval Europe and the mature empires like the Chinese Song Dynasty. Fascinating! How can we reconcile these two predictive historical models?
I don’t know if the first half of my thoughts on this came through, ominously a technology glitch in my computer either sent it to oblivion or submitted it early.
Thinking about the relationship between Uranus and the Sun I am interested in Mars and Mercury. It seems that the way higher technology is dependent on infrastructure and irreducible complexity it will be forced to seek an allie in governement, the only likely institution that has even a passing shot to maintain sufficient refugia for apex complexity technologies to maintain. In sum the afflicted Uranus is going to be leaning on the Sun for life support; in the domain of technology anyway.
What though can Uranus offer inturn? military supremacy is the first place my mind goes, and no doubt some technologies will stay killer useful, but I am toning back my thoughts on that factors importance. I don’t see any interesting links between Mars and Uranus, which I find rather comforting, frankly I’d be inclined to fear totalitarian city states whose tech cannot support great wealth using super drones to manage the hinterlands. I suspect that armies would have the capital for supporting the Government Tech combo, any overly dominant high technology will be too much a glass cannon, to fragile, easily sabotaged. Communications however might be able to hold space for the alliance with Mercury’s placement.
Moving away from the real politik of propaganda and war as possible niches for technology in the government, I wonder more about Uranus’ quirky character more generally, its become something of a great curiosity in the ecosophia subculture it seems to me. Uranus in Taurus, ties it to the Earth in some ways, which can be restrictive to Uranus, but is ruled by Venus, so it doesn’t sound bleak all around.
Finally I am curious about the Moon sextile the conjunction. I don’t yet have a good feel for the measure of a sextiles influence, noticeable but back ground, eh? And, for that matter, in this kind of chart I have a very dim notion of what really the moon stands for. The people, change? In any case it seems that Government will be at odds with the people, and that the conjunction itself will tilt the balance toward decentralization.
I’m not sure what kind of change a Great Mutation means in a given house for a given place. It means, of course, change, but which kind? I ask because Jupiter and Saturn have astrological properties which are, to a degree, opposite of each other.
JMG Thanks so much for this. A very valuable post and has the distinct ring of truth.
Are civil liberties only associated with democracies? Couldn’t an autocratic despot just choose to treat their subjects in a similar way, as long as they don’t cross certain lines? Saddam Hussein was the stereotype and cliche of evil dictator. But in Thunder Run or Generation Kill (possibly both), US troops in Iraq were stunned how much open homosexuality there was. Either because Saddam was fine with it or just didn’t care.
Is the under-the-radar way in which Western governents are introducing or strengthening hate crime legislation really preparation for the crisis management to come? These curious initiatives seem to be rampant in Britain at the moment, and it is interesting that there seems to be comparatively little resistance to them, Note that this is going on under the supposedly “populist” adiministration of Boris Johnson, which in actuality is anything but:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/nov/04/uk-lawyers-uneasy-about-plan-to-prosecute-hate-speech-at-home
One of the interesting things about the Tories is that despite the measured traditionalism that they are supposed to stand for, they always give way to any and every force of sufficient power. In many ways they are truly the servants of the heavens,
Thank you for making a trusty guide to the cosmic forces affecting the next 199 years! Also, for the tip about making a chart for our own localities. That’s on my to-do list now. Within the broad strokes of unfolding future history you painted here there is quite a bit that can be contemplated and turned into actions. It’s very much appreciated.
Ray, this video illustrates how the most massive, high tech industries and small, low tech industries can not only coexist, but be symbiotic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjEFWCPHK8c (lowest tech part at 10:10).
JMG This chart seems to indicate a lot of the things we would expect from the long decent in front of us. Are there any features of the chart that really surprised you or do not fit with the long decent?
Thanks JMG,
this is a great preview of the future.
One thing that other people mentioned is the ability of the governments to maintain control. It’s hard to believe that 200 years from now, using just the energy of the sun, the governments (however local they will be!) can maintain the kind of control that you seem to suggest.
Here is what you said:
“In both cases, governments will be strengthened, because they alone have the resources to deal with disasters caused by badly managed technologies and the consequences of technological regress.”
How do you think this will work out in practice? Historically even governments that managed to maintain a tight social control using few resources (is Japan during Edo period a good example?) – even these governments don’t have the resources to help with disasters. In general it’s much easier to control minds than to actually help in reality.
If you look at today, at the same time that the governments increase control over people, they lose the ability to fix problems.
Thanks!
JMG,
So do you consider this year (2020) to be a significant turning point as predicted by the mundane astrological charts? I get it, that they do not portend immediate famines or large scale war, but is it the end of a significant era and the beginning of another, or just a small kink in the continuum of history.
Your Kittenship, too funny.
Yorkshire, the basic rule is that the more people are involved, the more certain you can be that the astrological influences will get their way. On the individual level, you have a lot of leeway if you choose to use it — you can use the astrological influences the way a sailor uses the wind, to get where you want to go. Once you get to the political level, while there’s still some wiggle room, there’s much less.
Ray, exactly. In particular, maintaining nations of a size we have in today’s world is extremely difficult without communications and transport technologies, and so governments ruling any area larger than a midsized US state will keep those technologies and the infrastructure to support them as long as they possibly can.
Btidwell, that’s a good question but not one easily answered from the evidence. My guess, though it’s only a guess, is that it depends on what exactly you’re looking at. Some things will change faster than others; shifts in the public mood may be evident long before the pace of technological decline picks up, for example. I’d expect to see significant changes within 3-5 years, though.
Karim, it does look very like what I’ve been predicting, doesn’t it? 😉 The thing I find surprising in all this are the strong indications of increased prosperity and economic stability, shown especially by the sextiles between the Moon on the one hand and Jupiter and Saturn on the other. Thus a gradual reduction in material wealth may not be involved. It’s just possible that we passed the point long ago at which technology actually added to material wealth, and passed into a period in which technology was a net drain on real (i.e., nonfinancial) wealth; if that’s the case, the first phases of decline might actually make conditions better for most people.
Barefootwisdom, I’ve had to reconsider that view. There’s still a definite phasing-in process when a planet is discovered, but the 1226 chart and some others do suggest that planets that have not yet been discovered can still have a potent effect. In the case of Uranus, its discovery in 1781 was the point at which technology became an independent variable in human affairs; it still existed before then, but as a manifestation of Mercury.
Pascaulineafina, I cast them for London purely because that’s 0° longitude. In other parts of the world, the placement of the planets in houses will give the chart a local spin; I didn’t mention the houses in my delineation precisely because I was focusing on influences that will be important worldwide.
Gawain, I’m delighted to hear this!
Dylan, both predictive models are necessary oversimplifications of a complex reality, and of course my discussion here was a brief summary, not a book-length study! Some of Spengler’s indications are too narrowly drawn — for example, cultural upsurges of creativity and mysticism happen at intervals throughout the history of a culture, though they take different forms at different phases in the historical cycle; such an upsurge in spring (say, the birth of Greek philosophy circa 550 BC) will differ sharply from the same phenomenon in winter (say, the rise of late classical Neoplatonism circa 300 AD).
Ray, as I noted above, what Uranus offers is not military supremacy (advanced technology is easy to monkeywrench in an era of decline) but the communications and transport links (Mercury trine Uranus) that enable governments to maintain some kind of authority over large territories. Uranus is in his fall in Taurus because the Taurean focus on practical realities and wealth hamstrings the Uranian imagination, and produces clumsy, ineffective abstractions in place of integrative concepts. As for the sextile, that’s an aspect of help and support; a trine shows a connection that happens by itself, the sextile shows one that is available but has to be achieved through a certain amount of effort.
Booklover, you determine what kind of change it indicates by the sign ruling the house, the condition of the planet, and any aspects the planet makes to other planets.
Marc, you’re welcome and thank you.
Yorkshire, it depends on the monarch — and that’s just it. When you live under a monarchy, the civil liberties you have depend entirely on the whim of the monarch.
Logan, I suspect that that’s what’s going on, yes.
Justin, you’re most welcome. Cast that chart and study it!
Will, I was surprised by the strong indications of general prosperity. That was not something I anticipated at all. I was also surprised by the mildness of Mars’ interaction with the rest of the chart; if you think back to my earlier predictions, I thought major wars would play a much larger role in the next 199 years than they apparently will.
NomadicBeer, governments had a great deal of control over substantial regions long before petroleum was anything more than this odd stuff that oozes from the ground in a few places. In the current situation, I expect governments to exert a monopoly over the remaining fossil fuels, and to still have reserves of fuel for aircraft and other technologies long after everyone outside the government is getting by on less concentrated energy sources. That will give them capacities for communication and transport that can be decisive in crises.
Clay, I thought I covered that in the post. It’s the end of a 178-year era and the beginning of a 199-year era — a midscale change of conditions, if you will.
JMG,
I have a related question about governments but I am asking it separately in case this is deemed off topic.
I had some questions about the increases in authoritarianism that I saw last summer.
If I understood you correctly you said that those changes are temporary and things will go back to “normal” (as in regular collapse) after the elections.
I know this chart is for much longer term but it seems to corroborate my feelings that the ratcheting up of authoritarianism and social control will only continue for as long as the governments have the resources to do it (which can be decades, but not centuries).
If you will talk about these issues in your year end post, thanks in advance!
To add to the mention of cultural flowerings after 1226 I thought I’d mention the flowering of Kabbalah in Spain later in that century, and in particular the names of Joseph Gikatilla, Abraham Abulafia, and Moses de Leon. I wonder whether the Portae Lucis of Jean Dubuis might not be a nod to Gikatilla’s Sha’are Orah (Gates of Light). Some others might know more about this.
Thank you,JMG, for this beautiful description of what may be before us. I watched the Grand Conjunction on Monday evening, and even on a prosaic computer screen, it was quite moving, and particularly so, I think, as I now know something about the mundane astrology associated with the event. I read three articles recently from the American Mind, a website associated with the conservative Claremount Institute. All three were talking about the same thing, and it echoed something you said in your commentary about the Grand Mutation on Subscribestar. On there you talked about The United States of America probably not surviving as a single nation during the next 200 years ruled by this chart, and perhaps not even the next 20 years. You mentioned the possibility of a constitutional convention or similar arrangement to reorganize the government and the nation. And then I read those three articles: they seemed to fit right into those thoughts of yours. They talked about reorganizing the current US into two parts that would be related in certain ways such as defense and a couple of other areas that I can’t recall just now, but otherwise separate in their governance. So not secession, but rather a unique arrangement dividing our current country into the “United American Counties” (more or less like what we currently think of as the Red States), and the “United American Cities” (our Democrat controlled larger metropolitan areas). One of the articles is written as a fictional look backwards from 2025, seeing how and why this happened (a bit like a mini Retrotopia). The other articles are about some things that are apparently floating around as tentative discussions currently. Here are links to the articles. (It’s an interesting conservative website, BTW):
https://americanmind.org/features/ (Scroll down to the articles “Should We Split” and “A House Dividing”
https://americanmind.erg/features/a-house-dividing/the-separation/ for the fictionalized version by “Rebecca”
Each of these articles are thoughtful and well-written.
Are there astrological charts that could never happen because of how the planets move, or given enough time is everything possible?
Is there a theoretical set of charts that could be considered the most extreme? As in each one being the hardest possible push in a single direction?
Hi John,
The difficulties with technology over the next few centuries seems to be consistent with the declining reserves of oil, anthracite coal, etc. Attempted substitutes (like nanoscaling carbon atoms) may not scale well and so would benefit only a limited few.
On the plus side, a lack of technological prosthetics may induce us to tap hitherto unrecognized inner powers; e.g., learning to control their body temperature vs having HVAC control the temperature around them; learning to master your own moods vs having a pill suppress the symptoms of poor mood control. People uncovering those powers may well experience a burst of artistic and other creativity in the bargain.
As an absolute newbie, whose eyes still glaze over at technical terms like “ruler” and “dispositor”, I have had the temerity to get astro.com to draw this chart for me using local lat/long. Initially, I am surprised to find that a mere 3°N and 8°W makes a significant difference to the house arrangements, such that the first house cusp in this location is in Cancer, making the moon the Ascendant’s ruler, and the ruler of the first house. I shall study this in more detail. However, the conjunction still falls in the 7th house, while the moon itself is in the 10th house, but almost exactly conjunct MC. It seems to me that this suggests a slight emphasis upon “regular people” in this part of the world… would I be wrong?
Hi JMG,
I found this in my internet wanderings. It’s a bit of a long read, though. What do you think?
https://www.unz.com/pescobar/behold-the-dawning-of-the-age-of-aquarius/
IMHO The concurrent relative decline in technology and increase in wealth, and rural wealth at that, points first towards the breakup of the tech monopolies along Ma Bell lines and then towards work at home careers being normalized and thus spreading wealth out from the urban hubs. The first would take an increased governmental authority, the second trend might very well increase an appreciation of the arts and especially practical artisan works in place of mass produced dreck of doubtful production value.
JMG: Fair point, as regards the narrowness of some of Spengler’s indications. That leads to the question of how useful these broad-scale, long-term kind of predictions are without being supplemented by local, specific details. Hence your appeal for people to cast their own charts…!
While we’re talking about the distant future, by the way, I wanted to say how much I’ve been enjoying 10 Billion. I loved the original essay on your blog, and the graphic novel is gorgeous.
Thanks, JMG, for clarification! It was not entirely clear through the description of Great Mutations in the mentioned books about mundane astrology.
Just checked the sky over Romania and both Jupiter and Saturn square Uranus and Venus, Moon squares Mercury and Sun. Is this that bad as it looks me? If I would need a chart for Romania which Patreon tier should I use?
Looks to me that Bucharest, Romania has a lot of squares, and I am thinking, maybe this is a really stupid question, but are all place equal in terms of potential? I mean is there a chance that one place on earth could have a predominance of angles aspect to other, for ex. more squares, or is this a level plainfield?
Hello Mr. Greer,
Is there anything on the chart about the education industry, both K-12 and higher?
Thank you, and happy holidays!
A couple of questions:
What signifies Jupiter and Saturn in this chart ” per se”, aside from their relationship with the moon?
Do the 1st house cusp has importance in this kind of chart? If it were so,being in cancer, the moon will be its ruler and that i guess will signal a certain fluctuation and instability during the period.
Thirdly, don’t you think that a moon in pisces, with Neptune close by in the same sign, and especially in those countries in which they will be in the 9th house, could signal a dissolution of populaces, a mixing up, so to speak. With lot of migration in and out of the country.
The sun in the 6th house squaring that could be read as lot of migration for work reasons, specificallyy due to the lack of success in labor matters in the natal country of many people.
Thank you for illuminating the possibilities suggested by the Grand Mutation, for us to ponder and digest. We do live in interesting times.
About disasters caused by technological failures, I think we’re in the middle of one. Tinkering with viruses in laboratories seems like an increasingly bad idea; as someone suggested recently, it appears to be a “sorcerer’s apprentice” story writ large. Governments (are they even distinguishable from corporations at this point?) seem not to have a handle on the problem.
The predictions about tech and government are interesting, combined with the “wiggle room” comment regarding individuals v. groups. Does this imply that an individual can, to some extent, wiggle out from under the thumb of government by reducing his dependence on technology? This is, of course, true in practical reality anyway, I’m just curious if one can read that in the chart or if that’s over-specific.
NomadicBeer, I’ll consider a post on that subject.
Someone, that’s part of what I was referring to in terms of the flowering of mysticism!
Lydia, yes, I saw those. It’s an intriguing idea but not a viable one, as cities depend on a rural hinterland for their survival — from farms to watersheds to energy resources, most of what cities need isn’t made in cities, and as soon as the cities and the counties end up on the outs, the counties can just cut the lifelines and let the cities (and most of their inhabitants) die. Dividing up by state or region would be more viable.
Yorkshire, (1) Sure. You can never have Mercury or Venus opposite the Sun, for example, because their orbits don’t let them get that far away from the Sun. (2) It would be an interesting experiment to work those out. The chart for the upcoming US inauguration is pretty close, though!
Greg Simay, there’s also the fine art of putting on a sweater!
Scotlyn, not a slight emphasis at all. If the Moon shifts from the 9th to the 10th house it becomes much stronger, being angular, and has a potent impact on the political sphere, which is what the 10th house represents. Expect democratic causes to be unusually successful in your country for the next 199 years.
Bird, frankly? That’s the sort of free-associating psychobabble that has given astrology a bad name. To get accurate predictions from a chart you need to go step by step through the whole set of planetary positions and aspects, not just start riffing off one or two randomly chosen details!
Mark, that seems plausible.
Dylan, Spengler was offering a comparative morphology of the history of civilizations, and he described it as such. Any comparative morphology has to be accompanied by an anatomy of specific cases.
Booklover, you’re most welcome.
Eduardflo, if you’ve got squares that don’t occur in the chart above, you must have made a mistake in your math. The Grand Mutation happens everywhere at the same moment — you have to correct for local time because clocks in Bucharest are two hours ahead of clocks in London, so cast your chart for 8:19 pm, December 21, 2020 and see what you get. As for my SubscribeStar account, I don’t have the spare time to do charts on request — I’m going to have to winnow down the number of charts I’ve been doing, in fact, because the workload is so high.
Ray, to get that you have to cast a local chart and then check the condition of the planetary rulers of the 3rd and 9th houses — the 3rd house rules primary and secondary schooling, the 9th rules higher education.
Guillem, all of that depends on house placements and would have to be read from local charts. In the London chart, the one I’ve posted here, no, because the 9th house (where Neptune and the Moon are located) doesn’t rule migration. If it were in the 1st or 6th houses, that would be another matter.
Goldenhawk, since the outbreak began well before the Mutation, I suspect it’s not talking about that.
Methyl, it would certainly be worth the experiment!
Ramonelani (offlist), I got both your posts. I’ll decide whether to get in touch after I do a little research.
A handful of hours in advance of the cue, Nepal’s president and prime minister dissolved its parliament on the 20th. They still plan elections in the coming year, so democracy can’t be totally written off there, though it wobbles. This was undertaken in part in response to Chinese efforts to undermine Nepali government (through money and influence to divide and conquer parliamentarians) to advance the larger non-democratic state’s interests.
JMG,
You say that there are indicators of unexpected prosperity/stability, but can a Grand Mutation chart really show that (especially given the hard realities of civilisational decline and fall)? I’m not sure how much snapshots like that can really be said to summarise the next 200 years rather than just the immediate conditions at hand. For example, the Grand Mutation charts of 2040, 2060 and 2080 will all be very different. Plenty of other planetary cycles over the next 200 years will doubtless indicate things vastly different and even contradictory to this month’s Grand Mutation.
Best wishes,
Mr White.
If Mercury or Venus did end up opposite the Sun, what would it signify? Apart from solar system-scale catastrophe. 🙂
Two questions.
How are climate change and flooding of coastal cities visible in this chart? Are they indicated by Uranus retrograde?
You have predicted that the Earth’s population would sharply decline during the century ahead. Is that visible in the chart somehow?
JMG,
I thought it sounded like claptrap as well, but not being an astrologer, I would ask an expert. Thanks!
TBH I hadn’t given much thought to the significance of Neptune and Pisces in the chart, other than your words. Upon reflection, they don’t always signify dissolution but also – from the period of discovery – Nationalism and even Racism, neutral and dark sides, often leading to dissolutions. That’s going to have me pondering awhile.
I cast a chart for Austin Texas (because I live here, and because if the US breaks up it will surely return to being the capital of the Republic of Texas). I usually work with whole sign houses and Hellenistic astrology in my practice, but I gather that mundane is usually done with Placidus.
https://www.astro.com/tmpd/ch26fileMfiEEN-u1429805524/astro_2gw_austin_s_great_conjunction_hp.76825.48442.png?26814
(I hope that image worked)
The moon in Pisces is conjunct the ascendant in the first house. I take the mutable rising sign to mean that the state (or future nation) will undergo a lot of change, especially conjunct the moon. I think it also depicts a populist character to the next few centuries, possibly a rather idealistic one because of Pisces. Aries is intercepted, with Mars present and ruling it, which I take to mean that the character of the state/nation will be martial but not much will actually come of it. “All hat and no cattle” if you will. I do think the dignity of Mars is a benefit to the 1st house, despite the interception; on the other hand, it is the malefic contrary to sect (I don’t know if sect is used in mundane astrology but it is one of the most useful things to be recovered from Hellenistic, in my opinion) and it could represent a fair bit of internal conflict among the people.
The Sun/Uranus trine is in the 10th and 2nd houses. I think this depicts a strong government backed up by its ability to generate wealth. It makes me think of the Texas electrical grid – there’s a tremendous amount of wind-generated power here, and it isn’t interconnected with the rest of the country, so that will be a huge benefit to the government here. Venus is ruling the 2nd which is a good sign for prosperity. However, she is in an intercepted sign, so that limits her effectiveness.
Mercury is strongly placed, despite its combustion. It is in its own bounds (first 7 degrees of Capricorn), in the angular 10th house, and ruling the angular 7th and 4th house cusps. The government here will get a great deal more benefit out of its control of the media than it will in other places. Communications and trade are likely to be the cornerstone of Texas’s relationship with other state actors.
The Pisces ascendant means Jupiter rules the chart from the fortunate 11th house. Jupiter is the benefic of the day sect and the cooperating ruler of air signs, conjunct Saturn which is the triplicity ruler by day and also of the day sect. Saturn is also the traditional ruler of Aquarius. The eleventh house rules the legislature and also allies of the nation, so I think that this is additional evidence for the strength of the government through trade (Jupiter) and land, mining, etc (Saturn).
I don’t have time to go deeper at the moment, but I feel somewhat cheered by this forecast!
If anyone else wants to try their hand but doesn’t have the books on mundane astrology, i used the handy summary here: http://www.skyscript.co.uk/ingresses.html
JMG – Some astrologers are discussing the importance of the Pluto return for the US in 2022. Have you considered this and its possible effects on the nation?
Radix
Sector 1, Bucureşti, Romania
2020-12-21 20:19:00 [+02:00]
Latitude: 44°29’33” North
Longitude: 26°2’54” East
Apparent Geocentric
This is what I used maybe my software is bad
I have been pondering the concept of the increased prosperity these astrological charts foretell. Perhaps we will see a rapid decline in industrial civilization, but like the “Parable of the Third Hog” we will find a period where dismantling, recycling and reusing the armature of industrial civilization will be an improvement in the economic situation for the average person.
What stands out for my local chart (Santa Barbara) is the moon in Pisces in the 1st house (although aquarius is the ascendant), and Mars in Aries in the 2nd, while the great conjunction is in 12th house Aquarius, and Venus right at the MC in the 9th in Sagittarious.
My hackneyed guess is the ordinary people will fare quite well locally, with robust business and trade. The great connunction in the house of institutions, and Venus in the house of religion ruled by Jupiter could mean promising new institutions of a possibly religious nature. Does Venus conjunct the MC in Sagittarius also bode well for business and financial institutions?
I wonder if you might comment on the Sun/Mercury conjunction being in the 6th house, in my locality (as it is in your London chart above). The 6th house is, as I understand it, the house of public health, and it seems to me that, in the shorter term, the government/media combo may need to be working very hard to maintain ordinary people’s faith in our current “high tech” styles of medicines, especially of those types that are highly dependent on a “high tech” corporate sector.
The Moon (in 10th, conjunct MC) appears to be in square to this 6th house public health sector, and I wonder if you would read this more in terms of the ordinary people simply losing faith in the public health sector, or the public health sector failing, or falling short of the ordinary people’s expectations, or a combination of the two, or something else again?
Newbie question again, sorry!
That’s a good point, JMG about the cities need for the counties. I guess what interested me more than the specifics of that particular plan, is that there are people starting to think outside the box. Usually we think that either a country MUST stay together even if it means a destructive civil war, and one side wins and the other is defeated. Or one side secedes and causes an uproar or is blocked by legal means. What I saw in those articles was perhaps the start of trying to visualize a totally different kind of solution. The first idea would certainly be flawed, but might inspire further visions that could work.
What you said about astrology being an empirical science makes sense. But, almost everything Google turns up on empirical evidence for astrology says that there’s no empirical evidence for it.
If it is empirical, the people who came up with it must’ve had some basis for their claims. Is there anywhere I can actually find a good elucidation of this kind of thing, which elaborates on how it is in fact empirical? I mean there was that Mars effect study, but that’s very limited, if it’s even not a fluke. You’ve made offhand references to the empiricism of astrology that sound interesting. Where can I learn more about that?
“[T]he Grand Trigon…Yes, I know that sounds like something from a science fiction novel.” Close. Trigon is a villain in superhero comics and the TV shows derived from them. He is a powerful demon who is the father of the superhero Raven, a sorceress who is a friend and teammate of Robin in the Teen Titans. That means she’s only one step removed from Batman, favorite superhero of yours and mine.
Back to the chart. On the one hand, “governments will gain strength because they alone have the resources to deal with the impacts of technological regress and technologically driven disasters.” On the other, “Prosperity will strengthen the hand of the people against the state, as it usually does.” Watching the early stages of that dynamic will be something for me to keep an eye on during the rest of this life, while I expect seeing it play out in more mature form will be how I will spend the next life.
I’d like a quick analysis of the previous 2 Grand Mutations -would run the current one for Florida, but I think it wouldn’t be too much different.
As for Uranus in Taurus – I decided to check the exact dates of my Saturn returns, including the upcoming one around 2025. The first one too place in the late 1960s, a.k.a. THE Sixties. And realized that Taurus kept me out of the more dangerous parts of that era, while allowing Uranus to loosen the reins enough for me to enjoy the music and art, and get involved in activism – pamphlets, ringing doorbells, and the original Take Back The Night marches (back before the police decided that they were anti-crime and deserved police sponsorship.) Truly daring! Though not by today’s standards. So I feel rather kindly towards the Bull keeping Uranus in check!
Other than that, it came to me today that if some entity – divine, semi-divine, robotic, occult, secret society, Alien Space Bats, had decided for some reason that accelerating the Ling Descent was absolutely vital, giving us 2020 – and prolonging it another year – was a very good way to do so. I think much of the damage already done is going to be permanent.
It seems to me that one reason the governments will have greater influence is because the people will have greater respect for authority, as a rebellious attitude will no longer be fashionable. And perhaps because governments will be forced to function as intended as outside (corporate, techno) influence wanes.
Relative wealth might increase because the appeal of having the latest bright shiny whiz-bang gizmo seems to be finally wearing off, along with a greater emphasis toward conservation. I may have missed it, but do you see spiritual values becoming more important than material wealth among the people – that is, if people are happier then personal resources will be managed more responsibly and support for charitable and educational institutions (such as good libraries) will increase? In my mind, public and subscription libraries (for example) are a form of wealth that are collectively greater than the sum of individual ones.
On the connection between government and technology – which government? I dimly remember a mm post not long ago where you (correct me if I am wrong) basically equaled the struggle between globalization and nationalism with the contest between corporate power and national sovereignty. I think there’s much to that equation and therefore I am asking which government? (A fine statement by then Bavarian PM and influential German “conservative” politician Horst Seehofer in German TV in this regard: “It’s crazy indeed. Those who have power haven’t been elected. And those who are elected have nothing to say.”)
Greetings,
Nachtgurke
Anonymous, interesting. Well, we’ll see.
Mr White, the Grand Mutation chart shows the overall pattern, and the individual grand conjunction charts (as well as ingresses and eclipses) need to be read as variations on that established theme. If you’ll take the 1842 chart and see how well its indications played out over the era it began, you’ll get a sense for how this works.
Yorkshire, nobody knows. Since astrology is an empirical science, we can only base predictions on what has previously been observed.
Tidlösa, the textbooks of astrology we have to work with don’t include such things, so it’s a matter of guesswork until we have some data.
Bird, “claptrap” is a good term for it. You’re most welcome.
Mark, huh? Nationalism became a major force in European culture in the 17th century after the Peace of Westphalia, and racism was another 17th-century development. Of course Neptune doesn’t always mean dissolution; it corresponds to mass culture, to fantasy, to drug abuse, to the imagination, and to a galaxy of trends in culture and politics — for example, socialism is a Neptunian phenomenon, and so are social-welfare programs. Like all the planets, it covers a lot of ground.
Breanna, it did indeed. With the Sun at the midheaven like that, the prospects of Texan independence during the next 199 years seem fairly high to me. I use Placidus, by the way, and most mundane astrologers these days use that or Regiomontanus or Koch; you might try a fully Hellenistic chart and delineation, though, and see what that shows you.
Jeff, I consider Pluto a minor body and not of great importance in mundane work. The upcoming conjunction of Saturn and Neptune in the 1st degree of Aries in 2026, on the other hand, will be well worth watching.
Eduardflo, you might try plugging that data into one of the online horoscope calculators such as astro.com and seeing what you get.
Clay, it’s an interesting question! As I noted, that was one thing that surprised me in the reading.
Kyle, it might, yes.
Scotlyn, that’s the place where delineation becomes a matter of art rather than science. Sun in the 6th can mean a great many things — the ones you listed among them.
Lydia, that’s true, and promising.
Lass, you’ll want to do some research into the history of astrology in ancient Mesopotamia. That’s where the bulk of the original research and tabulation was done.
Vincelamb, ha! I should have known. As for the conflict between Sun and Moon, yes, exactly.
Patricia M, I’d have to spend a couple of hours reviewing the previous Mutations to do that, and I don’t have the spare time right now. As for space bats, a case could be made!
Patricia T, that’s plausible. As for spiritual values, I don’t think there’s ever been a time in human history when those were actually more important than material values, but with Neptune strong and free of affliction spiritual values will likely be more important than in the recent past.
Nachtgurke, depends on your local chart. Look for the ruler of the 10th house, and its condition tells you how your government will fare.
This post is so detailed I’m going to read it through a few more times. What came to mind when you mentioned casting a chart for a location, how much does the history & culture of the people of that location matter? I’m thinking of that vibe each part of the country has (for lack of a better noun).
When Pennsylvania closed indoor dining before Thanksgiving, some restaurants stayed open. The state finally fined 40 establishments, and 10 of those were in the county that had the greatest percentage of militia fight King George 250 years ago. The counties most in compliance (and these adjoin the most rebellious county) are the ones that were filled with Loyalists to the crown. Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but feels like something built into the environment.
Mr. Greer,
I did the local chart, as you suggested.
The cusp of the third house is on Gemini, 17, 20′. It contains the north node at Gemini, 19, 24′.
The cusp of the 9th house is on Sagittarius, 17, 20′. It contains the sun and Mercury, both in Capricorn. The south node is also close to the cusp of the 9th house, in Sagittarius.
I’ve only dabbled in mundane astrology, so I am not sure what to make of this. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say that K12 education will do OK where I live, but higher education might be more of a mixed bag. Am I being optimistic?
I also noticed that the cusp of the first house is in Aries, and Mars is in the first house, along with Uranus. Uranus is conjunct Lilith. Is this indicative of conflict and disaster?
Any thoughts?
Odd that you consider Pluto to be of little importance when it features so prominently, and convincingly, in Richard Tarnas’s seminal tome ‘Cosmos and Psyche’. I’ll adopt a contrarian view and suggest that its exact square to Mars, which in turn is exactly conjunct Eris (also categorised as a dwarf planet together with Pluto and Ceres, and characterised as the archetypal feminine spiritual warrior) may herald an intense, perhaps violent, but certainly transformative and potentially revolutionary era in which the patriarchy is brought to its knees, inaugurating a more balanced Mars/Masculine-Eris/Feminine phase of the Aquarian Age. One can but hope.
I find it interesting that, just this Fall, AT&T has declared it will no longer provide Internet service to a number of rural areas in the U.S. An early sign of technological retrenchment? Anyone know of other examples?
On the question of simplifying technology while prosperity increases, I can see how that might work. Take the IT industry. Enormous amounts of brain power go into the production of very little actual value. Most people who work in IT are not dummies and are quite well aware that their talents are wasted. They stay mostly because the pay rates are too good to pass up.
So, if a large segment of the IT industry disappeared, it would free up a lot of human capital to use to create real value. If society can find a way to channel those talents it would be a net gain.
Forgive me if this should be a silly question – I’m hanging on finding the correct time for the great mutation. I find three different dates for this: German Wikipedia says 6:37 UTC, English Wikipedia says 6:22 UTC and you have 6:19 UTC in your chart for London. On astro.com none those dates has the Moon on the coordinates you have provided. Which time is the (physically) correct one? I guess discrepancies showing up when I feed the correct time in some astrology program arise because they use different ephemerides and I have to try until I have the moon at the right position?
Regarding my first question – how would a “corporate government” show up in a chart? My first two but rather uneducated guesses would be either he ruler of the 2nd house in hostile (?) aspect to the sun or aspects between the 2nd and 10th house ruler?
Nachtgurke
A question: where would you locate the effects of climate change in the chart? Afflictions to the ruler of the 4th?
Stronger governments doesn’t necessarily mean current governments, though, does it? Seems to me I reccollect it being written here once or twice that the USA is currently considered the oldest government by astrologers. Might it be other, different, new governments that gain in strength, in keeping with the drift from democracy?
Perhaps material prosperity should be defined not by quantity, but by quality of materials. (Says she sitting at her sewing machine glaring at flimsy new fabric that is supposedly the same as treasured twenty-year-old fabric. Hah! The forty year old fabric is better still: I hesitate to use it as it’s irreplaceble.) Four shirts that last a decade are surely better than ten that tear on the third washing.
JMG:
Thank you for your reply. I realize the current pandemic began well before Monday, but I was speculating that this might be foreshadowing the kind of thing we’ll be confronting even more in the decades ahead.
Scotlyn (regarding Moon square 6th house Sun/Mercury):
Your interpretation makes sense to me. Maybe the people will successfully push for more government regulation of scientific tinkering with powerful forces (genetics) whose potential for destruction of the public health is very poorly understood, let alone manageable.
Or not, Faustian bargains being what they are.
(Pluto is within 7 degrees of this year’s Grand Conjunction, and I’m not inclined to overlook his influence, waning though it may be.)
Darkest Yorkshire, I served in Iraq, in a HUMINT capacity, so I spent a lot of time interacting with the local population. My read on the people’s feelings towards Saddam was that it largely broke down on sectarian lines. The Sunni and Chaldean Christians seemed to either like him or be somewhat ambivalent towards him. The Kurds and Shia not so much. (The open homosexuality is a complicated issue that is culturally based-the definition of what constitutes “gay” is different than in the West) So, I think autocrats can be benevolent to some groups but antagonistic towards others. I think this can be the case even in democracies. The US in 1850 was democratic, but if you were Black or Native American the fact you lived in a democratic society wasn’t really beneficial. While I like living in a democratic society I don’t think other forms of government necessarily have to suck.
JMG,
Thanks for your reply. I’ve just had a look at the Grand Mutation chart for 2020 and I know you say that Pluto isn’t significant in mundane astrology, but I can’t help but wonder if it might be more significant than you think. The square between Mars and Pluto in 2020’s Grand Mutation is very tight, and I can’t help but see this as significant. Most charts for Grand Conjunctions for the rest of the 21st Century also seem to have Pluto in a prominent position that strikes me as significant (the exception being 2060). Perhaps if Pluto wasn’t so significant in the past, that might be something to do with it being discovered so recently compared to the other planets (1930). It certainly seems to be significant in natal charts, so I wonder why it shouldn’t be significant in mundane astrology.
I also wonder, might Venus’ inconjunction with Uranus in the 2020 Grand Mutation chart be significant also? The changes we’ll need to make to cope with the deteriorating material realities of our civilisation (Uranus in Taurus) do seem set to compete in a constant tug of war with society’s expectations of everlasting economic growth (Venus in Sagittarius).
– Mr White
Thanks for this guidance! This is an important transit for me particularly as I’ve got my first Saturn Return coming in a couple of months accompanied (not coincidentally), by a set of major changes in my life.
Its nice to hear there will be fewer ideological wars in my lifetime and I’m not surprised by the general retreat of civil liberties (though my hunch is countries with longer established traditions of liberty won’t do quite so badly).
It’s only 9:30 and I’m already late! Responding to Nomadic Beer, without seeing JMG’s reply (I’ll get to that), Edo, Japan is a fascinating case to study. They ruled first and foremost by popularity. They were a true tyranny, but by putting an end to centuries of incessant warfare they started off with considerable social capital, and by adhering to Buddhist and Confucian principles in general, they never squandered it. Order reigned and within that a sustainably prosperous urban class arose within the limits of an island environment. The rural farmers remained poor, but were granted protections that allowed them to live relatively happy lives. They were given a status second to the samurai, and ahead of artisans and merchants. There were groups in Edo who petitioned the government for relief of various groups of victims (hunger continued the whole while), which the government ignored (probably due to lack of resources more than anything else).
This is the sort of thing that could be possible, but given how much effort has been put into dividing the citizens of western countries against each other (thank Goodness Japan didn’t fall for that), Roughly 50% of the population in each country will be dissatisfied whatever the government does.
I see lots of people asking the same questions that came to me when reading this week’s essay, so I will read through the comments and JMG’s replies.
Denis, astrology is only one ingredient in the mix of factors that make history — personal or collective. In personal astrology, heredity and environment also play a big role; in mundane astrology, history and environment are the equivalents.
Ray2, in mundane astrology the rulers of the cusps determine the fate of the houses. You’ve got Mercury as your significator for primary and secondary education, and Jupiter as your significator for higher education. Look at their condition and aspects and that will tell you how those will do, in general.
Paul, you’re certainly free to cast charts with Pluto if you find that useful. I don’t, but your mileage may vary. (I’ll have a book out on the rise and fall of Pluto in 2022, if that’s of any interest.)
Chronojourner, thanks for this — that’s a sign I’ve been expecting for quite a while now. Here we go!
Simon, that makes a great deal of sense.
Nachtgurke, good question. Astrological conjunction is measured using the ecliptic as the foundation for the coordinates, rather than right ascension and declination, which modern astronomers use; that might cause some of the confusion. As for a corporate government, you’d want to look for some connection between the rulers of the 10th and the 2nd, or the 10th and the 8th house of debt!
Breanna, that’s going to be speculative, since astrology wasn’t created by people who were aware of the possibility of anthropogenic climate change. I’d look to the 4th and its ruler for effects on agriculture and the 10th and its ruler for effects on weather.
BoysMom, the chart doesn’t specify which governments. Whatever government is in place will be affected by the influences shown in the chart.
Goldenhawk, it’s quite possible.
Mr White, Pluto may be significant in the natal charts you’ve examined. I started questioning its importance when I went through a major Pluto transit and none of the predicted effects showed up — as distinct from my other transits, which were very evident. As for the Venus-Uranus inconjunct, of course it’s significant — the discussion in this post is about a third of a complete delineation, for reasons of space.
BB, just remember that your Saturn return can be a springboard to your future — it was after my first Saturn return, and in response to events in it, that I finally succeeded in launching the writing career I’d wanted for many years. Have fun!
Clay and JMG,
I guess if the human population is soon to be on a slow slide of reduction, it means more of what’s left for those keeping items and equipment going (including spares). I am involved in a local volunteer led repair cafe in my town as part of the local ‘Transition’ group. Part of what we are doing is supporting a (slowly) growing movement to ‘encourage’ manufacturers to make their products more repairable and less throwaway. Maybe we will succeed a bit, mixed together with rediscovering more appropriate technology of the past. 🙂
The scariest thing of all in my opinion is that the future of human societies can be predicted so accurately by watching the movement of the stars and the planets. Humans are supposedly thinking creatures with free will, right? Apparently not, otherwise astrology wouldn’t have worked. That means the majority of people are going mostly unconsciously about their lives. By developing ourselves, mentally and spiritually, we can become more aware and therefore less affected by the planets and the stars and more independent, guided by our own will, like being a star onto ourselves.
P.S. I suspect its not the planets themselves that affect us, but rather the movement of the celestial bodies and the changes in the human societies are governed by the same invisible principle, that’s why you can know one by observing the other. Planets are just easier to observe.
P.S.S. Another interesting fact, the dissolution of the Soviet Union happened on December 21st, 1991, when representatives of 11 of the 12 soviet republics signed the Alma-Ata Protocol. Now that’s an interesting date, I wonder if the winter solstice day was chosen deliberately.
The link between government and technology is an interesting one but it does make sense. We are a technological species and the technology we choose on the road of decline will be far more important than what we choose on the way up. It doesn’t mean the next computerized gizmo or hyperloop with be the answer but more those that figure out appropriate and achievable technology early on.
I guess that the first folks to take advantage of things like wind sail ships and well maintained train systems will be the ones that will yield a lot of political power along the way.
“He who controls the spice controls the universe.”
Last night after I saw Jupiter and Saturn, a few hours later I saw the Moon in about the same place I last saw J&S and it looked like it was hanging like a pendulum from Mars.
Any significance?
Most intriguing, JMG. The aspect that caught my attention the strongest was the retreat of Democracy.
I have thought for some time that the idea of a government of the people, by the people, for the people, is a very Anglo fetish. Given the hegemonic rule of first England and later the USA, this has come to be the standard option for most of the world. However, it was a matter of time for the come back of other forms of governance more in tune with each particular land and each particular people. If I understand correctly, the trends in your article is Global. Therefore, it may be not too much of a stretch to think that Democracy will survive in the Hearth land where it is the most natural option?
The reason (or one reason) I shared the workings of Mexican elections a few weeks ago was because I do not really see Democracy being a thing in my own country. I don’t see it as part of our “cultural DNA”, but as an exotic import that was favored by our intellectual elites for no other reason than “that’s what they do over there, them Frenchmen”. [1] In any case, I think we came out with a process that is workable and puts an upper bound to fraud. However, it is your people who has the better chances of making a good use for it in the long term.
As for my own country, Mexico loves its strongmen. As of methods to decide who gets to rule without any bloodshed, maybe if we just gave the presidency to whichever coach wins the soccer cup in the election year… best case we would get competent leaders that knew how to bring the best out of the resources at hand. At the very least, it would be less annoying than the political campaigns we get nowadays.
[1] if US and Mexico is like an old grumpy couple, France is like our high school sweetheart: we dated briefly but never married, and therefore she is objectively prettier/nicer/better than the one we have to put up with every day.
I was developing software in the mid-late nineties (through ~2012). Back in the day (late 90’s), when I was talking to one of our senior engineers and a contractor, I brought up a point about doing system changes without the user’s knowledge. Our amazing senior, enterprise software architect, cut me off with a wink and a nod and said… “just do the right thing…” And software continued it’s amazing progression until about 2010. After that, crapification riding the turtles’ backs all the way down took over the industry.
So much that could have been, won’t be, due to the greed and pettiness of our… “betters.” A purposeful transition back to the appropriate technologies that served us well before is so important. I recently purchased at the local Goodwill a wind-up, travel alarm clock from the sixties, like ones my family had before.
I took the device apart to play roles in the Tree of Life within my art. The innermost workings went into Hod, where the design, structure and history of effective time measurement were integrated. I was, as I’ve always been, amazed by the human ingenuity and skill that went into building this suitcase alarm clock, and I wonder if our boys and girls could build this again.
I’m sure we’ll figure our way out. There is nothing in the circling skies that determines our current fate more than the efforts of the criminals that have asserted control, over who knows how any generations, in the cover-up of the crimes already committed upon humanity and the gifts of life.
JMG – Thank you for your thoughts on Pluto return. You must be due for your 2nd Saturn return soon. I am as well. Any thoughts you would care to share on how best to approach this personal astrological event?
“It’s just possible that we passed the point long ago at which technology actually added to material wealth, and passed into a period in which technology was a net drain on real (i.e., nonfinancial) wealth”
One can even suggest that in the US the point at which Progress became a net negative was in the early 1970s, a long time ago indeed.
Links:
1 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/United_States_per_capita_energy_use_1650-2010.png
2 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/U.S._Hourly_Wages_-_Real_or_Adjusted_for_Inflation_1964-2014.png
JMG,
Thanks for the post. Admittedly astrology is a major weakness I have, so a lot of this one was lost on me.
Your response to BB about Saturn returns sparked a question. Does one have to do anything consciously to use a Saturn return as a springboard to the future?
Mr. Greer,
I’ve been thinking about your previous responses to my last question.
In the part of the country that I live in (lower Midwest), the fate of K12 education (3rd house cusp on Gemini, so ruled by Mercury) is very similar to that of the mass media and communication…
As for higher education (9th house cusp on Sagittarius, so ruled by Jupiter), it will face opposition from farm country but it will do well nevertheless despite struggling to keep up with the times.
I will buy one or both of the books you recommended and continue this on my own, but do you think I am on the right track?
Thanks for indulging me so far.
In reading the parts about government, I’m wondering if you’re thinking that the current situation of tension between authoritarian governments and their supporters who believe in a centralized managed society vs populists who’d prefer more freedom will remain a central theme during the next 199 years, with the centralized authorities slowly losing ground? The realities of the current year have shown how divided people are about what is an appropriate response to a crisis, whether they’d rather people be allowed to make more of their own choices or have their choices limited by a centralized authority in the name of safety. I could see that being a fault line for some time to come that may fade a bit during good times but then come to prominence every time a new crisis hits.
Mr. Greer .. with respect,
For those of us, who are not especially versed in the various aspects of astrology in general, but curiously sparked nonetheless .. especially as per your interpretations of such, a simple symbol key – as in like a plant taxonomic key, only much simpler. Seeing House Signs and Planets keyed, as they relate to the charts would be an emmense help in grokking this post. For myself- I look at the charts and see a foreign language knowing none of the ‘letters’ on which to build the needed words.
Again, with respect from someone who knows nothing of *horoscopeology. Not trying to rant …
* if that even IS a term … lol!
Jay Pine, you’re riding the wave of the future. Happy surfing!
Ecosophian, free will isn’t something we’re born with, it’s something we can achieve. Most people never get around to it, because it’s hard work.
Michael, partly that, but keep in mind that Frank Herbert’s “spice” was a stand-in for petroleum. As long as there are significant amounts of fossil fuels available, and governments can exploit those as a fuel source, that’s going to be a major source of power.
William, astrologically? Nope.
CR, that seems quite plausible. Coming up with a relatively painless method for selecting strongmen is one of the basic tasks of any system of politics; there aren’t that many options, and most of them end up devolving into hereditary succession. As for what happens up here, a lot depends on how long the English cultural heredity endures once the recession of the Faustian pseudomorphosis picks up speed.
Coboarts, those criminals were predicted in the circling skies, and so is their nemesis.
Jeff, it depends entirely on the position, state, and aspects of Saturn in your natal chart.
Ecosophian, if that turns out to be a working proxy measure, things could get very prosperous indeed…
Youngelephant, it depends entirely on the position, state, and aspects of Saturn in your natal chart.
Ray2, you’ve made a good start. Proceed from there.
Kashtan, that’s one very plausible interpretation of the chart.
Polecat, I’ll consider it. No, “horoscopology” isn’t a word; “astrology” is the usual term.
JMG, Mr White,
Just an armchair impression, but I’m also inclined to agree that Pluto’s effects are not strong or consistent enough to be a major factor in mundane astrology.
I have Pluto in my first house with a close conjunction with the ascendent. That much fits me very well.
On the other hand, supposedly Pluto has been in transit with a square to my natal Uranus (also first house) since March 2019 and mostly ending in Feb 2021. Haven’t noticed much that I can point to that covers that whole period. To compare, several months ago, I had a string of good luck where everything just uncannily fell into my lap. After the fact, I got my chart and reading, and yep, it was Jupiter sextile natal Jupiter.
Pluto truly is turning out to be the planet of hype and blowing things out of proportion. (Looking forward to the book)
John N.
Maybe it’s because I have such a Plutonian personality, but I suspect that the fact that Jupiter and Saturn spent the better part of a year before the Grand Mutational conjunction hovering around Pluto will at least influence the immediate aftermath of the conjunction. IOW, I expect a fair amount of Plutonian mass-drama over the next three years.
Is there any significance to how a planet is aspected to the cusp of a house?
JMG, can I ask a question that I didn’t think of Monday, because the issue that prompted it didn’t arise till yesterday. You have noted how Christianity seems to be on its way out. My question is: if it’s losing power, how come St. Anthony can still find my glasses? This isn’t a rhetorical question, I’m genuinely puzzled. To the best of my ability, I practice the old sacramental Christianity, could that make a difference? But there are fundamentalist Protestants who maintain that Jesus himself finds them parking places, and I have no reason to doubt they’re telling the truth. Can you shed some light on this?
Thank you for the reply JMG. Just thinking that newbie uninitiates perusing your site might be put off by those perceived mysterious conglomerations of ‘astrological hierogliphics’. And yes, the a-word was stuck in recall purgatory, so l kinda conjured up an impromptu contraction of sorts, for lack of the Real McCoy. ‘;]
This is pure speculation on my part, but the bit about increased prosperity and economic stability surprised me to hear too. Then I starting thinking the fantastic amounts of energy afforded to us through the exploitation of fossil fuels these past few centuries have been utilized to create many systems of growth and that require growth to function well, such as our monetary systems. Energy has been so abundant we’ve also had enough left over to fuel prosperity as well to the extent that many associate growth with prosperity when in reality they don’t go together. You can either spend your resources growing or remaining the same size (or shrinking) but with more resources per person, ie. being more prosperous.
We seem to have hit or will be hitting the peak extraction rates for many resources, esp. fossil fuels. If this is the case and our systems that rely on perpetual growth cease to function well then perhaps our obsession with growth and “progress” will dwindle away by necessity.
However, the value of fossil fuels is so great that we will likely keep extracting what we can, even if it is a continually declining amount. For an example of what I mean by value as opposed to price, consider how far a car can travel on a gallon of gas. Then consider if you would push that car the same distance for $2 to $3 dollars! The value of that gas is WAY beyond the price and thus we will keep trying to get it if possible. We just can’t rely on having ever greater amounts of it. Being faced with declining amounts might cause it to be treated as the astoundingly valuable resource it is instead of being taken for granted.
I think this fits along with what you’ve been saying that collapse is likely not some overnight apocalypse but rather a long drawn out decline.
So the thought that struck me regarding increased prosperity over the next couple centuries is that if we jettison the mass cultural pursuit of growth that uses up so much of our resources then perhaps even with ever declining rates of extraction of our fossil fuels the results might actually be far more prosperity per person? Heck, even if all fossil fuel extraction stopped tomorrow the sheer abundance of material wealth available to us right now from all the metal ores already refined, lumber cut, glass produced, etc. is staggering. Should populations decline significantly as fossil fuel agribusiness is no longer viable or some other reason, then again the potential abundance of wealth available for whoever is left is astounding. I can envision a couple hundred years of declining populations who have available to them all the material wealth and knowledge we’ve accumulated in these times of excess.
How long would it take the ruinmen of Star’s Reach to extract all the value from remains of the cities? It seems that a period immediately following the end of a culture of mass growth might be a prosperous one indeed.
Hi everybody:
First of all, thanks for writing this essay. It is really interesting… and confortable to read.
I found it ‘better than expected’, as you said, due the economic progress ahead you point out.
Now, my question: is possible that few of the trends you paint here are already in place or had started years ago?
I have a front row seat in the technology sector that placed me in the peak oil fringes back in 2012 when I became aware of the fad of technology. In 2015 in some rural areas, those harded hitted by 2008 crisis I found that many people begin to drift off from technology and became aware that it causes more problems than those it solves.
Last year, in the cosmopolitan urban area where I work, I began to sense that people begin to feel the same too, that technology (and progress) is ‘not for us anymore’.
And also those rural areas in 2015 were the first to mention ‘ecofascism’ in a different sense of what many over here use the same word (but for different kind of policies). Clearly Autoritarianism had been on the rise for some time now.
So, is it normal that those changes started earlier than the Grand Mutation? Or is that somehow I managed to sense this kind of change before others?
Since The Archdruid Report was dealing exactly with this kind of change, it seems to me that at least those changes started time ago…
Thanks again for your interesting essays.
Beamspot.
@polecat – this glossary of symbols might help. https://cafeastrology.com/astrology-symbols-glyphs.html
Ok, i find it curious that the 9th house has nothing to do with people of other countries, but i’ll take your word on that.
Then, taking the moon in piscis, with neptune near in the same sign, irrespective of house placement, it strikes me as a “dissolving” and “undefined” way of life, one with few certainties, and at the constant mercy of uncontrolled factors.
…in square with sun in capricorn,it talks about a fixation on tradition and classical forms of ruling, legislating and organizing on the part of goverments.
Moon square Sun also talks,i think, of a raw feeling of failure.Failure of goverment, and a way of life wich does not grants succes.
Does that seems more likely?
I think you have touched on this briefly in your fascinating post, but the defining political characteristic of the period after 1842 was nationalism, in the sense of the construction of nation-states with defined ethnic and cultural characteristics, and in which, in theory, there was a direct correspondence between people and territory. This started in Latin America after the weakening of Spain during the wars of the French Revolution, moved to Europe with the progressive disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, to Africa, the Middle East etc. Because of the tedious failure of political and ethnic/cultural boundaries to coincide, we got the wars of the twentieth century. The evolution of “scientific racialism” in the late 19th century provided a pseudo-basis for wars of conquest. Nationalism was an ideology but not, by definition, one you could impose upon others: the Nazi invasion of Russia was certainly partly motivated by anti-communism, but they wanted to exterminate the Russians, not convert them. Is all this visible in the 1842 chart? The period since 1945 has seen a general decline in violent nationalism leading to outright conflict, but a massive multiplication of nation states replacing old empires. I wonder how you think this will play out? Ideologically, I’d be interested on what you see for the future of Political Islam (I don’t mean Islam as a religion, that’s a different thing). It’s been an increasing force since the Arab Spring, and is fighting ideological wars from Mauritania to Mozambique, to (re)establish the Caliphate. With money from Qatar and Saudi Arabia, it’s also making considerable inroads into Muslim populations in Europe. Does your work suggest this might be a long-term problem?
Thanks.
Thecroatoan, one of the most unexpected directions absolutism has ever taken has to be 19th century Paraguay. All the hallmarks of a classic Latin American dictatorship, but turned all its force against the oligarchs for a change.
CR Patino, parlimentary democracy being seen as an alien force was a theme in the Russian Revolution too. Only a few intellectuals in the cities and those who had travelled abroad really knew what it was. While there was a more abstract enthusiasm for the Constituent Assembly, many just wanted to go with the workers council ‘soviet’ – the indigenous Russian innovation of the 1905 Revolution.
Ecosophian, Leigh Philips wrote a book called Austerity Ecology and the Collapse Porn Addicts: A Defence of Growth, Progress, Industry and Stuff. He claims that things went downhill after the 70s because that’s when neoliberalism took over and governments stopped funding large-scale scientific research. The book overall may be the ultimate cringe of the religion of progress, but on that he does have a point.
Unless something significant changes, I think this model is a likely candidate to replace democracy:
https://enoughproject.org/files/Economics-of-Ethnic-Cleansing-in-Darfur.pdf
https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/conflict-minerals/exposing-rsfs-secret-financial-network/
JMG, you mentioned to Coboarts that the nemesis for the psycopathy class is predicted in the circling skies. Can you talk a little more about what is indicated? A collective fightback, a something-else fightback, or their collapsing in on itself from overpuff?
I have an anarchist heart – the overwhelming desire to see power spread out amongst much smaller governing communities, ruling themselves, developing quite different characteristics as each takes its own natural shape, all connected via the internet but with globalisation blown necessarily to smithereens by energy constraints but a great deal of sustainable trade going on nevertheless.
Does any of this possibly line up with what the GC suggests? Thanks so much
@Jay Pine
France is making a start at encouraging repairability by requiring labelling on certain products.
“From January 1, the repair rating will be compulsory for smartphones, televisions, laptop computers, front-loading washing machines”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/france-fights-throwaway-culture-with-repair-labels-gcbncv9vb
I have been path working for the past six months and lately have been getting a lot of messages to look towards astrology, basically multiple warnings. A couple weeks ago I made an appointment with a local astrologer for my natal chart and it was really disappointing, as they used psychology tricks instead of doing the hard work of a drawing out all the aspects. It cost 10x what the online computer printout ones are and had a fraction of the information. Since then I bought some cheap software and after a bit of tinkering the screen lit up with with all sorts of difficult aspects from malefic planets over the next few months. It turns out my natal Saturn was square the GC as well. Your suggestion to study from a real pro is well received. For me it is preferable to get the bad news up front and watch where I step rather than stumble blindly into the briar patch.
Greetings.
When you say that the Sun is more dominant and that this means more monarchies/dictatorships, is there any chance that big corporations belong to this group? Since I’m having trouble imagining a return to monarchies, but I can totally see how big corporations might rule the world.
It is completely possible that a lose in high technology becomes an improved economy. We are right now seeing the effects of the CRISPR-cas technology in action. It may have been the culprit of the coronavirus modification that lead to covid19, but it is also the technology behind these ultra rapid vaccines. I think it is completely possible to develop some really amazing things with this technology: better crops, gene diseases removal, even new types of bacteria for industrial purposes or energy catchment. Once the gene is created, it becomes a new life form and it will stay here regardless of our knowledge of the technology that created it, until natural evolution dictates its fate.
Say a new corn variety is developed that can truly withstand any pest, climate and harshness. And that this plant is allowed to reproduce, so that its seeds are fertile. Even if we forget how to make this corn variety again, as long as we can keep the specie alive, we will be benefiting from it. In the centuries to follow, it might evolutionate to a less benefitial variety, or even become extinct due to being too successful.
Another possibility is that the energies that are right now wasted on videogames and social media are returned to the productive world once the devices that support our vices are hard to come by. We might have other distractions, but certainly not so addictive.
Hello JMG,
I was under the impression that undiscovered planets didn’t cast their influence upon us, from what I could gather from your previous discussions on Pluto’s discovery and recent demotion to dwarf planet (which to my mind didn’t make much sense, as the influence would be there whether we’re aware of it or not).
But now you explain the effects Uranus and Neptune had on the 1226 mutation, several centuries before their discovery. Was I wrong on my impression? I know barely anything about astrology, so there’s probably something I’m not keeping in mind.
I’ve been thinking about the specifics of your forecast, and I’m probably not saying anything terribly controversial around this particular crowd by suggesting that the idea of a reversal of the hyper-gizmofying of our society comes as no surprise. We really have overdone the “technology for the sake of technology” thing, and because the Law of Polarity demands a certain amount of balance, I can very easily imagine a forced technological regression happening as soon as in our lifetimes. There will certainly be some trauma and dislocation associated with that as is the case with any forced dramatic change, but in the long haul, I have no doubt it will be a very healthy thing.
It strikes me that this mundane astrology has signifiers for governments, and for ordinary people, but if it has signifiers for other power blocks, I have yet to see them. Just for example, one could call the corporate sector a generic “power block” (the “power” which, for example, is currently pushing FOR more globalisation – ie fewer checks on the scope of their “multinational” power), but other than the Uranian theme of “technology”, which may, or may not be a useful proxy, I wonder how one can read power blocks other than government (Sun) and people (moon).
Is there, for example, a planetary signifier for bureaucracy – which one might read as a society’s class of “scribes” and record keepers?
Another example that comes to mind is the “Secret Society” sector discussed in last week’s post. It is more “of the people”, and yet does not necessarily fit the definition I saw you use in a previous ingress (paraphrasing) “those people who get involved in a nation’s politics.” (I may have remembered this wrong).
Has anyone gathered experience in how to read the presence, and relative strength of some of these other types of “non-trad” power blocks?
@JMG – understood – and apologies for asking so bluntly. I started a polite “If they’re at hand” and in an attempt to correct a typo, auto-idiot-editor sent the entire phrase into the bit bucket. And thanks.
@Denis – what parts of Pennsylvania? Does this division reflect the Philadelphia/Pittsburgh cultural division?
Further to my last, I have just found this “ready reckoner” (I cannot speak for its reliability, as I am just paddling in the shallow end here) https://www.astrology.com.tr/articles.asp?artID=73.
But I see that it lists “multinational corporations” in the 8th House, which, fittingly, I’ve also heard is the house of “other people’s money” – LOL! In my local chart, this house cusp is Aquarius, so I take it that it is ruled by Uranus, and is technologically inclined, but, as you say, in his fall and retrograde. Uranus is also squaring the conjunction of Saturn giving ““all the measures of the whole creation” to Jupiter, which in my local house occurs in the 7th house, where foreign relations and treaty matters are (presumably) going to be rectified (by the conjunction) in ways that will, over time, decrease their international clout.
Meanwhile, confusingly, the 6th house is where I find both the civil service AND the working class, although these currently appear to be at loggerheads (if “civil service” can be the proxy of the PMC and managerial/scribal/bureaucracy class I asked about above). In my local chart it is in this house that the Mercury/Sun conjunction appears, with its cusp in Capricorn, making Saturn, which has just given the measures of the whole creation to Jupiter, the ruler here, too. Although the three way interaction of government, bureaucratic class and working classes here are way too difficult for me to parse.
Still, I must admit this is a fascinating exercise, giving a lot of scope for exploration! Thanks for giving me a handle on it! 🙂
The concept of change for its own sake sticks out for me. In both my workplace and local government there are always big expensive plans to replace X and when you ask “What’s wrong with our current X?” they either laugh it off as so obvious as to not require an answer, or point out details that could be fixed without replacing the whole thing. Then of course the new thing has problems of its own that never get fixed, setting the stage for the next big re-do a few years later.
I guess that I’m looking forward to that trend changing!
Dear Mr Greer
I am somewhat skeptical about astrology. However in order to argue with you about it I would first need to spend a year studying it. As I have not got the time, or inclination to do that, it is probably best for me to keep an open mind. You can’t argue with someone who is an expert in the subject, when you yourself know nothing about it. I wonder if it would be possible for me to ask the following questions.
1- How much control do the stars and planets have over us? Is our destiny in the stars, or is it only our tendency that is in the stars?
2- You say that the grand mutation indicates that the ordinary people are going to be prosperous. There is no way we are going to enjoy the kind of prosperitiy we had 50 years ago. When you say prosperous, are you talking in relatives terms, compared to the elite? In a hundred years time I could imagiune a society of farmers and artisans with something like a 19th or 18th centuary lifestyle, but which woud be considered prosperous by 18th or 19th centuary standards. Does this sound about right?
3- What you say about the prosperity of ordinary people indicates that climater change will not be too much of a problem in terms of the more extream scenarios. It doesn’t sound as if London is goung to be 100 feet under water and billions of refugees are going to be fleeing into Europe to North America. It sounds like the kind of slower collaspe you would get from peak oil and resource depletion. Does this sound right?
4- Would the prosperity of ordinary people be in part explained by a decline in population. You have shown before a decline in population can occur without mass death.
One last comment. One reason why governments may gain strenth, is that the only alternative will be a failed state. You only have to look at Syria or Somalia to see where that leads. If I lived in Syria I would probably wish that the Arab spring had never happened.
This is actually on-topic for last week’s article, so only post it if you want.
American Greatness has a good article about the value of social organizations, although not exclusively the secret groups that were the topic in last weeks post. It’s an interesting comment about how important joining and participating are to civic life in general and what price we all pay for the decline in membership in such groups.
https://amgreatness.com/2020/12/20/the-lost-art-of-association/.
Thanks for sharing the charts with the “public”, JMG. Looks like you shouldn’t be expecting a call from a Hollywood executive wanting to make a blockbuster disaster film based on your 2020 Grand Mutation chart! 😊
It is interesting to see in which ways your predictions overlap with your general predictions about the decline of industrial society – and in which ways they do not. Of course, you have been divining through various methods for so long that you are able to watch out for, and avoid as much as possible, weaving your biases into your predictions. I certainly hope that the prediction of a relatively prosperous world comes into being despite the restrictions imposed by the need to live more sustainably.
Good to know that Richard Morrison got so many things right about the 1841 Grand Mutation. Of course, some “howlers” can be expected (side note: some astrologers in India predict earthquakes, but few are even close to the facts “on the ground”; however, there are saints and spiritual teachers who insist that in ancient times astrologers were able to accurately predict earthquakes). We are all limited by our own imaginations. I am in the process of reviewing the numerous geomancy charts that I cast for family and friends for the year 2020 and now, with hindsight, I can see the thread of a pandemic’s impacts on our lives running through them all. But other than a general feeling of dread regarding the coming year of 2020 (when I cast the charts in December 2019), I could not imagine the magnitude of changes that would affect us. And for once, I did not cast a 2020 chart for my country because I thought that “nothing interesting ever happens in Canada”. Great opportunity lost; lesson learned.
It was the software I used, a reminder for me that direct knowledge is important and you cannot always rely on software or algorithms
Adept at parsing a period of time hundreds of years in length, your article on the Great Mutation stands in the best tradition of mundane astrology. It does seems odd, however, that you would restrict your conceptual horizon to the late 19th century, when Britain ruled the waves and Pluto was yet to be discovered.
Thus, there is no ontological reason why this epochal chart should be set for London (specifically Greenwich), except for the fact that Victorian Britain was in those days the regnant imperial power, making its fate of paramount importance in world history. Because the USA has since appropriated that role, it would seem more appropriate to set the Great Mutation chart at Washington. Of course this generates a wholly different pattern in which Pluto becomes the most elevated planet.
To omit Pluto from consideration also neglects the close Mars/Pluto quadrature, which is given added prominence in the chart set for Washington since both planets aspect the angles (Mars falling in the Gauquelin Sector). Taking this quadrature into account drastically challenges your meliorist view of future world conflict, as it points instead towards ruthless depopulation measures such as global-warming inaction or thermonuclear aggression.
Given the vastness of their subject – the relationship between macro- and microcosm – astrologers are apt to disagree on many points of detail; however, I think the issues raised here are sufficiently weighty to merit your consideration.
Thank you
Great Article JMG. Hope you had a wonderful Alban Artan.
I saw this picture this morning, the ISS seeming to pass between the two planets.
Thought you might like it.
https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2020/12/issgreatconjunctionfeat-800×800.jpg
I was wrapping Christmas presents so missed the news of a Brexit deal by nearly 40 minutes, but it hardly mattered because I’d already read:
https://www.ecosophia.net/an-astrological-interlude-brexit/
From August 2018, covering March 19 to March 20 mostly on Brexit but includes a passing mention of a public health crisis involving the neck and throat. My personal TSW moment for mundane astrology. It seems to have held up well, particularly given that at the time the forces of remain looked overwhelmingly strong. PM May was still in office at that time. One consequence is that the Grand Mutation is occupying my thoughts a great deal this week along with a personal Saturn return a few months into the future.
@JMG, you’ve had quite a lot of practice since then, is there anything in this original piece that you would now interpret differently?
Andy
Archdruid,
The rise of illiberal democracies was a major subject of discussion in foreign policy and political science circles a decade ago, it wouldn’t surprise me at all that we’ll see a continued trend toward that and centralization. Governments are going to do everything in their power to keep the wheels from spinning off the wagon, so I’m willing to bet that we’ll see state capitalism and state industrialism being used to by governments to maintain a technological edge over peer-competitors. From the trends I’m currently observing the masses will be forced to rely on appropriate technology, while the governments will co-opt any useful bits to integrate into their patchwork defence industries. Whichever government invests into their human capital (skills, knowledge, and health), and supports environmental technologies (restorative agriculture, geo-engineering, and conversation programs) will have a far greater chance of competing over the next 100 years.
I suspect, though am still not sure, that smaller countries are going to play a very big role in international relations in the years ahead. Not the least because their size gives them ample ability to invest in their populations and environment.
Regards,
Varun
I’ve been paying attention (as well as I can for somebody who isn’t yet fully fluent in astrology-speak) to what both you have been saying and what Gordon White and Austin Coppock have been saying about the Grand Mutation at Rune Soup (they’ve been talking about it for maybe 3 years now.) There has been one major discrepency in my interpretation of both of your interpretations, and that has been the role of tech. I always thought Gordon had more of a belief in progress, and he has been talking about how the change from Earth to Air will mean things like a digital currency, mass surveillance, technocracy controlling all the tech and such… that now actually seems to square with what you’re saying. The “archons” are going to be consolidating their power with tech, but the people will constantly be adapting, hacking, etc. It is a long descent, all the tech and oil isn’t going to just disappear suddenly, the elites will use it to consolidate power, and they will consolidate power by trying to control tech and oil.
“Coboarts, those criminals were predicted in the circling skies, and so is their nemesis.” Fair point!
I read an article about the conjunction just passed that related the concept of private property and cash to Earth sign ideas and equated the movement into Air signs with the effort being made to move away from cash and private ownership. They say that you won’t “own” your cooking pots.
On the surface the idea seems to work. However, after a little thought it becomes clear that the concept of private property is very old and has gone through all of the elemental signs before. It was the concept of private property that would seem to be an “Air” attribute, not just not having physical property. In light of your analysis of the Great Reset, I wondered what you might think.
Greetings ADJMG!
I’ve solved the riddle of the coming prosperity.
This is taken from the leftish website “Right Wing Watch” discussing demographic trends:
“Demonstrating the power of a higher birthrate among conservative religionists, Turley said at WCF, is demographers’ predictions that there will be 300 million Mormons in America by the end of this century, and 300 million Amish by the end of the next.
Amish and Mormons are both known for being good with money. I suspect both have outside the system financial institutions.
Not just tech and oil, information! The very airy stuff, mining data from the ether.
Hi JMG,
What orb(s) do you use for the aspects in your mundane charts? I am taking an astrology course and have the orbs in the software I use set to the values given for the course so I can check the calculations I make by hand against the software. With the course orbs, there are more aspects than you show, so I assume that you use smaller orbs than the course has me using.
I thought it would be fun to work up the GM chart for the state of Missouri using its capital of Jefferson City. For Jeff City the GM occurs in the 11th house rather than in the 10th as it does for Washington DC. I interpret this as meaning that the change and disruption of the GM in Missouri as a whole will focus primarily on the state House. Because Capricorn is on the cusp of the 11th, I expect the change is going to go in a more conservative direction, in the sense of the way the House has worked in the past. For the last four years and for the next two as well the state House and Senate have had veto-proof Republican majorities, and the governor is Republican as well, so the R’s haven’t needed to work with the D’s. Thus my interpretation is that the change will mean a reduction in the R majority in the House so that the D’s need to be considered again, and that this in turn reduces the R governor’s power. Does this sound reasonable? If so, I’ll go ahead with my interpretation and post it to my blog. I know there are other Missourians in your readership so it may be of interest to us at least.
Chronojourner and JMG:
Our Vermont governor, Phil Scott
Behind his outward demeanor as a kindly, genuinely nice, ‘aw-shucks’ kind of guy lurks a nitwit, aided and abetted by an equally nincompoop, very left-wing, legislature. Mr. Scott and our esteemed representatives have busied themselves these last years not in expanding Vermont’s business opportunities or cutting some of the more ridiculous business regulations of which there are many or lowering income and (insanely high) property taxes, but in trying to lure IT workers from other states to move here and work remotely. This, they are convinced, will expand the tax base with little effort on the state government’s part. We are, by the way, ranked by Forbes as the least business-friendly state in the US.
It was clear from Phil Scott’s decision to compel schools to question returning students about their Thanksgiving plans in order to ferret out uncooperative families who dared mingle with anyone outside their ‘bubble’ over the holiday that he is ignorant of 20th century history. He is also dismally uninformed about the history of New England during the Industrial Revolution: the once-thriving factories of the Northeast packed up and went south to save on labor costs; from there they migrated to Mexico and Puerto Rico, now they’re in China and Vietnam. Obviously it has not occurred to the brilliant minds in Montpelier that any job that can be done remotely from a small hamlet in the Green Mountain state can be done just as well – and a whole lot cheaper – from India. When, not if, his plan goes bust, where will that leave us?
Scott is not making much effort to invest in the sort of jobs that stay here; it’s a darn good thing that Mr. Beekeeper is an electrician who worked decades in construction and can fix nearly everything, electrical or not, but now we need a new float on our spring’s water tank and a few soldered faucets replaced. Mr. Beekeeper is not confident enough in his plumbing skills to risk a massive flood in the cellar so we called the local plumber, who told us we shouldn’t expect him before late January or early February at the soonest. In the meantime, we’ve got to manually turn the valve on and off whenever we need water in the house.
What’s all this got to do with your observation about internet service? In much of rural Vermont (Vermont and Maine alternate year over year as the first and second most rural states) it either stinks or it sucks. It’s so bad that friends who live near Williston (outside of Burlington, the state’s biggest city) can’t use two devices at the same time in their house. Cell phone service is almost as bad. Where the heck does Phil Scott think all these new IT workers, used to instant broadband in the big cities, are going to get this service? Another clear win for incompetent government.
JMG, thanks for this post, there’s a lot to think about there.
If you will permit, I’d like to offer a reply to your commenter Abraham, who wrote:
“Say a new corn variety is developed that can truly withstand any pest, climate and harshness.”
Someone may already have addressed this but as a former plant scientist, I want to explain. There is unfortunately a misapprehension here about genetic modification of crops. The one feature all genetically modified crops share is that they are monoclonal, it is an inevitable product of the way in which the crops are made. That means each plant in the batch is an identical clone of each other plant, genetically identical. This means the crop has a maximum lifespan of just a few years — as soon as a pest or disease develops a way to attack the crop, the crop is no use as it will suffer very heavy damage. So there is not going to be a magic genetically modified crop — these crops are a money maker for the developing company which they sell for just a few years until useless and then start marketing the next. Nothing useful is likely to survive the eventual demise of that high tech path — although there is a danger of outcrossing and genetic escapes.
Compare for instance traditional rice planting methods where six cultivars are grown. Trading between farmers means each of these is from a different place, and is a different strain of rice, each strain having a small amount of variation in it. When it is hand-planted, the planter takes from each cultivar in turn. So the field ends up with six strains of rice growing side by side, thoroughly intermixed. I saw a good paper which I reviewed in an essay for my undergraduate degree which showed that this practice alone can be responsible for a ~95% reduction in incidence of rice blast fungus. The genetic variation of the crop makes it more difficult for a pest or disease to make a serious impact on the yield. A traditional small scale sustainable practice is a good solution here, and much of the future of food sovereignty lies in such low-fossil-fuel-input systems. See further UN FAO’s ‘Agroecology and the right to food’.
Must dash — all the best to you JMG and the commentariat. I don’t comment often but in honour of the season want to offer my heartfelt appreciation for the feasts of thought that you provide for us, JMG, and to the commentariat for all the interesting news and views to learn from.
This might sound a little wacky, and I couldn’t of course “prove” this in any normal, materialist fashion, but I wonder of planets, and suns, are actually conscious beings, and are perhaps radiating, or emanating, their intelligences and influences. And further to that, perhaps they may occupy not only the dimensions of space and time, but also ‘higher’ dimensions.
I always think of that book Flatland by Edwin Abbot, about beings living in a two dimensional world, and where one day, one of the two dimensional square beings visits a one dimensional world. The one dimensional beings of course can only see the square as a series of points on a line.
After this, the two dimensional square is visited by a three dimensional sphere, and the square cannot ‘see’ it has such, and can only see it as a series of flat circles.
So in the realm of planets and suns, what if the world of these ‘giant beings’ live in a world of six dimensions, seven dimensions? Seems very likely to me.
And, of course, thanks for your work!
John N, that makes sense to me. My Pluto transits are reliably nothingburgers, while other transits are significant enough that I track them on an ongoing basis and plan career moves based on them.
Mr. Nobody, so noted.
Kevin, some astrologers use those as minor considerations. I don’t find them useful in mundane work.
Your Kittenship, “fading out” does not mean “already gone,” and one of the things that came up in the discussion of my post on the subject is that there are still some people who do in fact have their prayers answered by the Christian god — it’s just that there are fewer now than there once were, and a steadily growing number of people who’ve prayed their hearts out and found themselves staring up into a void.
Polecat, so noted!
Huangdavid, that’s an intriguing possibility and, to my mind, quite a plausible one.
Beamspot, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if this was the case — I’ve noticed in casting ingress charts that the events predicted by the charts sometimes start showing up before the moment of ingress.
Guillem, those are certainly considerations worth integrating into the whole pattern of the chart.
Yorkshire, those are known in historical circles as “warbands,” and they’re an inevitable feature of the decline of civilizations. Yes, that was spelled “Visigoths” and “Huns” the last time around — or in your neck of the woods, “Saxons.”
Sue, the Grand Mutation chart isn’t that specific; it simply indicates that, since the Moon and Sun are square, the Moon’s essential dignity is stronger, and it’s got that sextile with the Grand Mutation itself, that time is on the side of the people rather than governments. How that will play out in specific areas has to be read from local charts. One caution, though — the internet supports the governments, not the people (Sun trine Uranus) and international trade also supports governments (Sun conjunct Mercury). By including global internet and international trade in your plans for the future you hand the other side a pair of weapons it’s proven very adept at using.
Aloysius, I’m sorry to hear you had a bad experience with your astrologer! Unfortunately free-association psychobabble has become too common in some parts of the astrological community. If you can get an old (pre-1980) edition of Llewellyn George’s A-Z Horoscope Maker and Delineator and go through your chart one placement and aspect at at time, that’ll give you an extremely good overview of your chart.
Abraham, no, corporations are Jupiter, not the Sun. The monarchs of the future won’t call themselves “king” or “emperor” — they’ll call themselves “president,” “chairman,” “general,” or what have you, but they’ll still be monarchs, that is, individuals who rule entire countries according to their will.
Alexandros, like any researcher who isn’t stuck in dogma, I modify my views based on experience over time. I’ve found, rather to my surprise, that charts dating from before the discovery of the outermost planets still make more sense when those planets are included. Yes, I’ve tried integrating Ceres, Pluto, et al. into that, and they don’t add anything useful.
Mr. Nobody, it certainly makes sense to me.
Scotlyn, good. Mars stands for the military as a power bloc; Jupiter stands for the rich, and these days, for the corporations; Saturn stands for the rural population and the agricultural sector as a power bloc; Mercury represents the intellectuals, and Venus the world of culture and the arts (notice that both of these remain close to the Sun); Uranus is the scientific and technological realm, and Neptune is the world of subcultures and countercultures — notice how religion, which used to belong to Jupiter, has become a collection of subcultures since Neptune took his place among the planets. Writers in the 19th and early 20th centuries assigned secret societies to Neptune, so that’s where I’d look for them.
Patricia M, gotcha. No problem.
Scotlyn, excellent. May I offer a suggestion? Cast charts for your location for previous Grand Mutations and Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions generally, and compare them to the events that followed. That’ll give you a good empirical way to check your work.
Alex, have you considered writing about this? An essay on the subject of why change for its own sake is a bad idea, illustrated with actual examples, and published someplace like Quillette, might help catalyze the shift.
Jasmine, thank you! You have no idea how refreshing it is to hear from a skeptic who realizes that they have to learn something about a subject before arguing about it; that’s very rare. Most people who attack astrology know less about it than the average creationist knows about Darwinian evolution, which is saying something. I’ll take your questions one at a time.
1) “The stars incline, they do not compel.” Astrological influences are tendencies, not inevitabilities; they tend to work out as inevitabilities on the collective scale, for the same reason that any other statistical tendency acts like a law when n = some very large number.
2) The chart doesn’t say. One of the downsides of astrology is that it doesn’t give quantitative indications, just qualitative ones. Remember that fifty years ago most of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty, as they do today; the chart could be saying that conditions for them will improve measurably.
3) That’s correct. This chart does not indicate total catastrophe — though Uranus in his fall and retrograde could indicate serious trouble of a less drastic kind from anthropogenic climate change.
4) That would have to be read from local charts; changes in population are read from house rulers, and those are specific to localities.
5) Yes, that’s a real possibility.
Beekeeper, thanks for this!
Ron, I do my best to keep my own biases in check by relentlessly testing my own predictions against events, and changing my methods when I miss something. That’s not foolproof, but then nothing is.
Eduardflo, true enough! I recommend that anyone who has a serious interest in astrology learn to cast charts by hand, even if they only do it a few times, so they have an intuitive understanding of the complexities involved.
Douglas, I use 19th-century interpretive methods because they produce accurate predictions, where the more recent and fashionable methods do not. Do I need to remind you of C.E.O. Carter’s humiliation in 1939, when he insisted the stars said there would be no European war that year? Or the way Noel Tyl made a fool of himself with a cascade of wrong predictions after 9/11? Astrology went down a blind alley in the 20th century via the excessive focus on psychology that came in with Dane Rudhyar and Marc Edmund Jones; the traditional interpretive methods used before then produce better results in terms of accurate and verifiable predictions, which is what interests me.
As for Pluto, the same rule applies, in spades. Do you recall the flurry of loud predictions of imminent economic collapse that popped up all over the astrological end of the internet a few years back, due to a square between Pluto and one of the other outer planets? Like so many other Pluto-based predictions, that one flopped — as will your prediction of “ruthless depopulation measures.” (How many times have we heard that already? As my forthcoming book The Rebirth of Cosmos: An Introduction to Post-Plutonian Astrology points out, Pluto really is a minor body, roughly as significant as Ceres or Chiron, useful only in a few specialized contexts; as it was thought to be 7 times Earth’s mass before it was discovered and turned out to be 1/400 of Earth’s mass, one of its particular rulerships is over-the-top hopes and fears that never pan out.
As for placing the chart at Greenwich, since this is intended as a global chart rather than a specific chart for a locality, I simply did that for the sake of convenience. My subscribers have already seen my Grand Mutation chart for Washington DC, which among other things predicts the end of the United States as it is currently structured and governed.
Degringolade, thanks for this!
Adwelly, well, there you are. I’ll consider posting a retrospect of the Brexit post as soon as the yelling over the new trade agreement has settled down and we can all figure out exactly what was agreed to. It looks at the moment as though Bojo got what he wanted — a Canada-style free trade agreement — but we’ll see.
Varun, that strikes me as a very plausible outline of things to come.
Isaac, I think White isn’t taking the condition of Uranus into account. (That’s common enough — a lot of today’s astrologers don’t give enough weight to essential dignities.) That’s why I think a lot of what will strengthen central governments is the blowback from technological regress and disasters driven by technology, while he believes in further technological complexification.
Coboarts, private property has been around through many, many Grand Mutations. As I noted in an earlier post, the so-called Great Reset is just a rehash of early 20th century Stalinism with a layer of high tech smeared over it for decoration.
TomC, funny. As I’ve said before, any linear progression extended far enough results in absurdity…
Isaac, that too.
Slclaire, generally, I give 3 degrees for the planets and 7 for the luminaries. As for your interpretation, remember that the Grand Mutation applies to a period of 199 years, so reading it in terms of today’s politics may or may not work well.
Beekeeper, about what I’d expect. Thanks for the data points.
Dishwasher, many thanks for this! You might be interested to know that in the Middle Ages and early modern period, wheat in England was grown the same way — you had anything up to a dozen different varieties and sowed them all together, so variations in climate and pest activity were already taken into account. Today’s monocultures are an anomaly, and not a successful one.
ShamanicFallout, it’s not wacky at all, at least from the perspective of traditional occultism. In the posts on The Cosmic Doctrine we’ve talked about the Solar Logos, the mighty being whose physical body is the Sun, and the planetary spirits of each of the planets. That’s one very traditional way to think of astrological influences.
Alex, I once worked at tracking mail. We had a computerized system for tracking it that worked well. 5 people were needed. One day some idiot came up with a system that only needed 3 people. Had the technology existed to do what idiot wanted, 3 people would indeed have been sufficient. Within a month the mail was in chaos. Idiot was promoted. People who had to clean up the mess he made were not.
Thanks for this very fine work, and for all you do. I can’t wait to dive in to the comments.
With respect to the chart’s revelations about War, Peace and Death I note that Jupiter and Saturn have been marinating all of 2020 in their traveling conjunction with Pluto through late Capricorn, and are still technically conjunct in the grand mutation charts. Even as they move into Aquarius, I think they’ve been imbued quite potently by this synod. In the Grand Mutation chart Pluto is exactly square Mars, and the Jupiter/Saturn conjunction is exactly square the Mars/Uranus midpoint (which also happens to be
exactly conjunct the US GM ascendant) These may factor in strongly in the business of warring and population collapse over the next 200 years. I think you’ve written that total population at the next Grand Mutation will likely be in the 1-2 billion range.
I know you think Pluto is overhyped and weak in its influence, just as you’re aware that I hold an opposing view. I don’t mean to be a Plutonian gadfly – if you want me to clam up about it I will. You’ve revised your opinion about the historic influence of the recently discovered outer planets, but I also know you’re strongly invested in your theory of Pluto’s diminution. Only time will tell.
Huh. I’ve observed Japanese history cycling between art and war, it really looks like that’s what you’re describing but for the whole world. The cycle is going back from war -> art. Maybe the Japanese are a little bit ahead of the curve, their economy did stagnate first, their population started having demographic problems first, they’re now deep into art of all sorts right now, etc.
As far as economic collapse goes, it’s a process, not an event – and it’s chugging along. Shuttered businesses, bare shelves, shortages and 2 month backorders for parts – where do you point at it all and say “Oh, this is where it collapsed”.
Even the mighty Roman Empire lasted all the way up to 1453 before the last vestiges of it disappeared, although it had stopped mattering for centuries before. You can point to 476 or so but that was just a point along a line.
I’m not a fan of astrology but it does help one look at the world in terms of cycles and I think it’s useful for that if nothing else.
As far as the decline of democracy – hate to break it to you but Murica hasn’t been a republic since somewhere between the Great Depression and the end of WW2. Eisenhower tried to tell people about the miliary dictatorship, but nobody listened or cared, I guess. I will say this, at least the old monarch system – you knew who King Doofus was and that King Doofus was the one responsible for every good or bad policy decision. Buck stopped with him. These days – who’s responsible? Who’s actually flying the plane? It’s not the president, he’s the equivalent of tech support, only there to take your call and listen to your complaints. What we’ve got now is worse than a monarchy, IMHO.
JMG, I’ve only gotten through a third of the comments, so someone may have gotten ahead of me on this. I would like to suggest an additional reasons why at least the first half of this period may be a time of increasing general prosperity.
You mentioned a reduction of unemployment, and that’s certainly a factor, since labor shortages usually result in higher wages or better working conditions. I think that redistribution of wealth, and what follows from that, will be equally important.
During the last thirty years or so, there have been two opposing trends in the worldwide distribution of wealth. The relative proportion of the world’s population existing in dire poverty (by which I mean rags and near starvation), has dramatically declined. (The absolute number of very poor people has not necessarily declined, because of overall population increase during the same period.)
At the same time, there has been an accelerating concentration of great wealth in the top ten percent, top one percent, top tenth of a percent, and top hundredth percent of the world’s people. I’m not an economist, but it seems to me that this has been going on at about equal rates in technologically advanced democracies and autocratic states that are well industrialized (such as Saudi Arabia and Russia) .
Both of these phenomena are based on the kinds of advanced tech and communications that fossil fuels made possible. The latest concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, unlike any previous ones, is absolutely dependent on multinational megacorporations and complicated financial instruments that are characteristic of computerized late stage capitalism. I think their control of wealth will be undone very quickly when the tech that underpins it becomes unreliable and expensive.
The support for the improvement in prosperity among the very poor will also be weakened during the Long Descent, but in its early stages, I think it will be more resilient and partly protected by the workarounds you mentioned in your essay. For once, the rich will get poorer faster the poor get poorer, and some of wealth (real wealth) will be spread around more equitably.
Owen, I too used to say that the (Eastern) Roman Enpire lasted until 1453, when the last Enperor died on the battlements of Constantinople. Then one day a specialist in Ottoman and Turkish history corrected me. He informed me that the victorious Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed II, simply added the title “Emperor of the Romans” to all his many other titles. His successors inherited all of his titles all the way down to the final days of the Ottoman Empire and its last Sultan, Mehmed VI, in 1926. (Mehmed VI himself died in 1926, and with his death the title “Emperor of the Romans” finally lapsed.) So 1900+ years elapsed from the first to the last of the “Emperors of the Romans.”
Thanks for this! This is truly thought provoking. One thing I would like to ask, however: How do you see the Uranian current of the Age of Aquarius manifesting in the centuries ahead, if Uranus is in such bad shape in this chart, and even worse shape in the next Grand Mutation? Or is that the subject of a different branch of astrology?
The general shape of the Age of Aquarius that you’ve sketched out in previous posts deeply resonates with me, so at first I was moderately distressed that it would take 400 years to show up! But it seems as if those manifestations(eccentricity, independent human communities finding unique ways to be human, etc) are not governed by the influences of Uranus upon Grand Mutations, because Uranus here seems mostly to govern technology, while eccentricity and independence can manifest quite handily without complex tech systems. Am I reading that right?
Thanks again and happy Solstice,
Matt
@Martin Back,
Thanks for the link – I didn’t know France had unilaterally gone so far but I did know about the background EU directives due to become live next year. Good for the French (and that’s from an Englishman on this most Brexity of days) – hope other countries use those directives with some force and individuals can support the same happening where they are by linking up with ifixit.com and the like.
Merry Christmas to all here btw. May the wind be always at your back, especially for the next couple of centuries.
Jmg, on the subject of government controlling the media….
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/dec/24/channel-4-under-fire-for-deepfake-queen-christmas-message
Huangdavid,
Oddly I was thinking much the same as you were when I came across your post. A world where such ridiculous amounts cluster around a very few and vast numbers live in extreme want does not strike me as prosperity. Maybe a levelling out is about to take place. I really hope so. I also hope that those countries which have struggled because of an apparent lack of technological advantages start to do much better.
John, Varun—
Along the lines of Varun’s comment above, which I’d agree with, I definitely got a sense of the centralizing forces of government clutching more tightly to control of (what once were) key technologies (e.g. internet), while actual control sips through the fingers as the people, who will have less and less access to those technologies (e.g. internet), develop work-around and/or revert to older technologies. So, for example, internet banking fades in the rural hinterlands, but local credit unions pop up again, staffed by actual people.
So could the “prosperity” be a result in the lessening of concentration of wealth. For instance I’ve heard it said that the US has 5% of the worlds population and yet uses 30% of the wealth and 25% of the resources. I expect a lesser but similar breakdown for Western Europe. So if the concentration of wealth diminishes so that the US is 5% of world population using 5% of wealth and 5% of resources. Would that account for greater “general” prosperity. (Just not for USians).?
Hi JMG –
Since a couple of people have asked about Saturn returns, I’d like to share, with your permission, what you wrote when I asked you on MM about mine:
“Okay, first of all, how well do you know your natal chart? If you’re up on it, pay attention to the house Saturn is in and the house or houses he rules, and also to any planets in hard aspects to him (conjunction, square or opposition); those indicate the parts of your life where he’s going to test you. Any planet that’s in a soft aspect with him (sextile or trine) is going to help you deal with him.
Second, your second Saturn return is the best time to get deep into spirituality if you haven’t done that already. (The first Saturn return tests how you’re dealing with life; your third Saturn return, if you have one, tests how well prepared you are for death.) Beyond that, plenty of rest, plenty of patience with yourself, and whatever you do to deal with stress are high on the agendas.”
Hope this is helpful
Hi John Michael,
It’s a truth universally acknowledged that what goes up, must eventually come down!
Hey, is it just me or do you see the imprint of the inverted bell shaped curve at play here again in your reading?
The sheer waste in our society is an extraordinary one-off never to be repeated again event (for a very long while at least), and one good thing out of the arc of the future, is that there will be a whole lot less waste. This is a good thing, and we will be getting back to our cultural roots so to speak. I’m reading Ruth Goodman’s book ‘Victorian Farm’ at the moment – and the view into the world of those days looks very different to today.
I’m curious as to your opinion on the matter of waste and the question of the future, but I do believe that the arc of decline is written into the waste story all other considerations regardless.
I try not to waste anything here, and certainly no materials of an organic nature ever goes to waste. Tell you a little secret, the sheer waste in society does make it easier for me. 🙂
Cheers
Chris
Denis,
“The state finally fined 40 establishments, and 10 of those were in the county that had the greatest percentage of militia fight King George 250 years ago. The counties most in compliance (and these adjoin the most rebellious county) are the ones that were filled with Loyalists to the crown. ”
Interesting! I doubt it is environment. I would guess genetics or culture.
Upon reflection, the roll back of democracy isn’t all that surprising. You’ve said you expect Europe to be at war within twenty or so years – whatever comes out the other side may well not be democratic. (And the EU certainly seems to be committed to rule by porridge-souled bureaucrats as opposed to any actual rule by vote.)
And if China falls apart in the next two hundred years, I can’t see whatever takes its place bothering with even a fig leaf of democracy.
Mexico seems to be devolving into a collection of cartel-run feudal states, and the Middle East isn’t looking so hot either.
And here in America, conditions raise the question, how can rule by the populace go well, when the populace has been poisoned, root and branch, by out-of-control technology and malicious, corrupt philosophy?
I certainly hope some democracies are left standing in two hundred years, but it makes sense to me that we’re about to see a rollback.
A Merry Christmas /Yule to all.
Kudos to our host for making me think how the astrological predictions worked. Its far outside my usual tool kit.
Tom C. If you were curious Steve Turley is a rhetoric instructor by trade so his videos are steeped in that. Not a complaint mind you, he’s upfront about it. You can still find him on YouTube if so interested.
His predictions are a bit off, the Amish do have high fertility around 5-7 per couple doubling every twenty years at current rate! They are even the majority in one Pennsylvania county. Its a bit precarious though as in a very few years they could be destroyed or subjugated with little trouble if the Left got enough political power and decided to go Panem on them.
The LDS are also now below replacement fertility on par with Mexicans so they won’t be having mass growth
There are sects of all kinds of faith that are hyper fertile though so these families and clans will keep growing.
I suspect the economic prosperity noted in astrology will thus come about as people die off and the limited resources go much farther. Think an After the Black Death economy .” here not Star Trek
Same with more government. It will probably get a lot more efficiency when the bloated empires and nations die back . Local, Local, Local something like Retrotopia . As an aside the “level of government you are willing to pay taxes for.” is quite common in Texas and the South. That area of the US is very country driven.
Cliff, re: the US. many of the edges of the Right figure the US will be somewhere between hot civil war and collapse by the early to mid 2030’s this before the COVID mess and the recent issues with elections. This assuming that the next year doesn’t blow up of course.
In that sense after the mess the US won’t exist and whatever new lands manage stability many will have Democracy or the Republic at various levels of function once the current elite are removed.
Thanks JMG, that’s really encouraging to hear that a similar technique was known to work for farmers here in the temperate north as well, I had not realized it was so widespread in premodern times, I don’t yet know so much about historical food production. It makes complete sense that such a powerful practice would be widespread.
Periods of substantial population decline are often quite prosperous. The Black Death, once mostly over, left those who survived far better off. Since you’re look at a 2 century movement, it will (I would think) speak to the general trends, rather than the specifics. I still find it surprising, since it suggests people will adjust to climate change faster than I expected (or that climate change will be catastrophic but fast.)
Cities will decline, but be fine. For most of history, most cities fed themselves with food from within a days travel, and there were cows and fields in cities, plus almost all significant manufacturing was done in cities. I would expect a reversion to this norm. The transition will, of course, be ugly.
Democracy declining makes sense. I am surprised by the indications of not so much war.
Individual vs. large group predictions. The great yogi masters believed in astrology and also often made a point of denying it themselves to show the greatness of God. Yogananda made a point of starting projects at the worst possible astrological moment and making them successful, as one example, to prove that astrology could be challenged and also that karma was not absolute, that there were “higher considerations.” (This is not to say I think these predictions can be overcome, just a comment.)
The prophecies of Edgar Cayce w/respect to sea rises, which I read when young, struck me as obviously correct. I’m not sure why, since I was not mystical at all. HIs model is very sudden sea rises, and that might work with this astrological reading.
Hi John Michael and Chronojourner,
Oh yeah, it gets worse, but all wrapped in a nice present: Off-grid dream becomes reality as bushfire threat creates new era for power networks .
The new era spoken about in the article could also be interpreted as retreat – and you lot in the sticks are on your own.
I’ve been utilising off grid solar electricity for about a decade now, and it’s good, but nowhere near good enough to run an industrial civilisation.
Cheers
Chris
If we’re going to have an age of technological regression, Philippe Bihouix’s “The Age of Low Tech” is a good guide for how to enact this pro-actively.
I suppose that technological regression will be one of the things that increasingly limits idelogicially driven wars, which were only possible in the era of plentiful resources. Otherwise you will tend to get smaller, more frequent wars over more pressing concerns, including the resources themselves! It wouldn’t surprise me if the future European wars are pretty much squabble-wars over fish stocks, drilling rights, pipeline routes etc., much of them being fought by proxies and militias. I can very much see the armed trawler becoming a popular vessel.
The astrologer treads on treacherous ground when attempting to correlate the physical properties (ie mass and diameter) of a planet with the influence it exerts on human affairs. Likewise, the square-of-the-distance law seems not to apply in this realm, otherwise the influence of Jupiter, for example, would invariably exceed that of Saturn due to the fact that the former planet orbits closer to earth. Hence it is not appropriate to dismiss out of hand the pertinence of the dwarf planet Pluto in the practice of divination. I believe you have already conceded this point in acknowledging in your Grand Mutation article that the mechanism responsible for the astrological effect remains unknown.
None of us will live to see the validity of our future projections on the order of a century, and most of the claims we make now will be forgotten long before their time comes due. But for a consulting astrologer operating within the Western tradition it verges on professional dereliction not to factor in Pluto when delineating a client’s chart. Too many drastic upheavals will be overlooked; too many opportunities for agonized growth will be missed.
On the matter of Pluto’s influence we already possess a considerable literature, beginning with Reinhold Ebertin and ranging through Dane Rudhyar and Robert Hand, to Jeff Green, Donna Cunningham and Liz Greene. One can only benefit from a close study of the works of our prestigious colleagues. But whether it includes Pluto of not, our frame of reference will remain in essence provincial until we shake off certain constricting eurocentric habits of thought. In this regard it would be a useful exercise to read a work like Achille Mbembe’s Necropolitics alongside The Long Descent.
.
Ian, thank you for your post.
I’m fascinated to learn that “Yogananda made a point of starting projects at the worst possible astrological moment and making them successful…”
A similar idea is expressed by Richard Tarnas in Cosmos and Psyche:
“In effect, planetary archetypes are considered [by archetypal astrology] to be both Jungian (psychological) and Platonic (metaphysical) in nature: universal essences or forms at once intrinsic to, and independent of the human mind, that not only endure as timeless universals, but are also co-creatively enacted and recursively affected through human participation.” p. 86.
You mentioned being “surprised by the indications of not so much war.”
As others have noted, this is likely due to the lack of consideration of a significant square between Mars and Pluto.
While Pluto’s influences may be subtle and even imperceptible in a personal chart due to a nearly infinite variety of mitigating factors, the influences may be more easily perceptible from a collective (transpersonal) perspective. Tarnas offers many compelling examples of such influences in his (in my opinion) brilliant study.
Voter regarding the antics in DC:
https://goodmorningkitten.com/kitten/4654/
What more can our leaders (Trump excepted) do to show us they don’t care if we live or die? And Trump may not be a genuine exception. He may be using the Covid bill to embarrass his enemies, although I don’t see how he could have failed to notice they’re incapable of shame or embarrassment.
What should we do about them? Try voting in a new crop of shady lawyers, or vote for our state to split off from the union? Either way will be very hard. What do you all think?
Jim, should I dismiss your comments by suggesting that you’re strongly invested in your theory that Pluto really is a full-fledged planet? That kind of ad hominem argument really is rather tacky, you know.
Owen, exactly — that’s why I prefer to use the term “decline” in place of “collapse.” It’s not a sudden event — it’s a long ragged process that began quite some time ago and will continue until long after all of us are dead.
Deborah, that’s certainly a plausible scenario. I’ll want to look for some good proxy measures to try to track it, and see if it pans out.
Matthew, the age of Aquarius is a cycle on a much larger scale. What this tells us is that the opening 199 years of that 2,160-year cycle is going to be pretty rough. When the 2219 Grand Mutation happens, Uranus will be in Libra and not retrograde, so the next section of the age will be less difficult.
J.L.Mc12, thanks for this.
David BTL, that’s certainly a possibility to look out for. I’ll want to work out astrological and non-astrological ways to try to see if that’s in process.
Candace, that’s also a possibility, and will want to be assessed by way of local charts.
Dave in WA, many thanks for this.
Chris, one of the things I’ve suspected for some time is that our landfills will be one of the most useful things we’ll leave for the dark age cultures who come after us!
Cliff, I have to say that “porridge-souled bureaucrats” is perhaps the best phrase of 2020! Thank you for that. As Spenger points out, the weakness of democracy is that it always turns into plutocracy just as soon as the rich realize they can buy votes, which rarely takes them long. That’s why the populace turns to Caesarism — it’s the only way they have a chance to get policies that favor their interests rather than those of the self-proclaimed Good People™.
A Dishwasher, I suspect that the technique has been used over much of the world, but it would take some research to find that out — I simply knew about Elizabethan farming practices because I did some research for a novel in process.
Ian, of course it’s possible to overcome the influence of the stars; all you have to do is work on a plane above the one where they function (hint — there’s a reason they call it the astral plane). Any enlightened saint or sage can do that without raising a sweat; it’s the rest of us who have to work on it. As for sea rise, it’s normal for that to happen in sudden surges, or what geologists delightfull call “marine transgressions;” I suspect we have one of those baked into the cake in the fairly near future.
Chris, too funny! No, it doesn’t surprise me at all that they’re trying to wrap that up as a present.
Phil K, er, I can name quite a few ideological wars that were fought with swords and arrows.
Douglas, a fine spluttering tirade! The fact remains that as a practicing mundane astrologer, I find that including Pluto as a major planet in delineations results in less accurate predictions than treating it as a minor body. Since most of my predictions are based on ingress charts — which are good for between three months and a year — I can’t afford to adopt the insouciant dismissal of issues of accuracy you’ve suggested here; my readers and clients will know within a matter of months whether I’m shoveling smoke or not. For that matter, while this Grand Mutation remains in effect for 199 years, as a great conjunction it has special applicability to the next 20 years and its effects should be very clear during that time. Thus we’ll know quite clearly by 2040 whether your Plutocentric prediction of mass dieoff or my more traditional prediction of a less cataclysmic future is correct — and if my own theory is correct, by 2036 a great many social phenomena typical of the Plutonian era (1930-2006) will have gone away as well, just as a great many social phenomena typical of the era when Ceres was considered a planet (1800-1855) were gone by 1885.
Hi JMG,
Do you think that an increase in wealth could come from people finding a currency that is not based on our current fiat currency? I think much of the wealth we have lost, especially over the past two decades, was because of the financialization of our economy. It led to cheap credit allowing those at the top to strip assets away. Perhaps we’ll use some form of digital currency that sidesteps the central banks or use a precious metal currency?
p.s. Thanks for being the first person to actually say that learning magic was boring! Believe it or not, I was never told that. I had thought I was incapable of progress. Not true, I just didn’t put in enough work. Sometimes it’s best if we’re told up front that our attempts at accomplishment are not easy– but that’s out of fashion?
Intrigued by both the prediction for a general decline in the US population indicated by the first and eighth houses, as well the prediction for an eventual demise of the United States as an entity, I made charts for the capitals of all 50 states. Several patterns became apparent, among them that the US could be split up into chunks of the ruler of the ascendent.
The Northeast has Venus as ruler of the 1st house cusp, and the planet itself in the 7th (the Sun was however in the 8th house), New York notably being in this group by seconds of arc (though the Sun was in NY’s 9th house). The Mid-Atlantic had Venus in the 1st, and planet itself in the 8th. The vast plurality of the states from Virginia down to Florida, and west to the West Bank of the Mississippi River has Mars ruling the 1st and 8th houses, while itself being in the first house (except North Carolina and Virginia with Mars in the 12th and Virginia having Jupiter as its 8th house ruler). The Plain States down to Texas have Neptune ruling the 1st from the 12th house and Mars ruling the 8th from the 1st house, while the Four corners and Wyoming have Neptune ruling the 1st from the 1st, and Venus ruling the 8th from the 9th house.The West Coast plus Nevada, Montana, and Idaho have Aquarius ruling the 1st house with Uranus in all of its afflictedness ruling from the 2nd, with Venus ruling the 8th while hugging the 10th house cusp, either from the 9th (MT and ID), and from the 10th (all others). To finish things, Alaska and Hawaii have Saturn as the ruler of their 1st house from the 1st, with Alaska’s high latitude reaching the limits of Placidus with its 8th house is ruled by Mercury (other methods indicate the Sun as the ruler), Hawaii has its 8th house ruled by the Sun.
As far as the Grand Conjunction though these regions, the Taurean ASC group all had the GC in the 10th. The Aries ASC group was split between those more easterly regions with the GC in the 10th (AL, FL, GA, SC, NC, VA, IN, KY, MI, OH, TN, WV), and those more westerly regions in the 11th (WI, MO, MS, MN, LA, IA, IL, AR). The Piscean ASC group had the GC in 11th house, save for Utah with the GC in the 12th. The Aquarian group all have their GC in the 12th house, and Hawaii and Alaska have the GC in their 1st house.
The Sun-Mercury conjunction tended to be in the 8th house in the Northeast group. The mid-atlantic group as well as all of the Aries ASC group, the Sun Mercury conjunction was in the 9th house. The Pisces ASC group had the Sun-Mercury conjunction in the 10th house. The Aquarian ASC group had the Sun-Mercury conjunction in the 11th house (except for Idaho straddling the cusp from the 10th). The Capricorn ASC group had the Sun-Mercury firmly planted in the 12th house.
Hmm! I just found five utterly acceptable posts from yesterday evening in my trash folder. I have no idea how they’re ending up there, but I’ve just restored them, and amended my comments above to include responses to them.
Jonagoddard, it could involve that, or simply a move away from currency toward local economies based on other principles — it’s very common in the declining phase of a civilization for people to ditch the market economy altogether when it becomes too heavily burdened by rent-seeking behaviors of various kinds, and support themselves by way of other modes of exchange (and of course their own labor directly). As for magic, you’re most welcome. Magic is hard work, and yes, much of it is very dull; the payback is spectacular, but you’ve got to put in the sweat equity to get there.
Ighy, fascinating! Delineating all that would be a lot of work, but the mundane astrology of geographically larger countries needs more study; it will be worth noting, for example, if the states with Aquarius rising are hit hardest by technological regress and/or disasters, while the states with Aries rising see more violence and those with Pisces and Taurus rising are less vulnerable to trouble.
Greetings ~
I have difficulty discerning “a sputtering tirade” in the considered rejoinder which I addressed to you. However, in your own remarks I note a recourse to defensive rhetoric in characterizing my views as Plutocentric (which they are not) and by ignoring my reference to eurocentrism, a perspectival issue that dogs most first-world practitioners who have little knowledge of the world beyond their own cultural borders.
Events of a Plutonian character are already taking place in great swathes of the world which have been subject to colonial depredation, including India, the Middle East, parts of South America and much of Africa – not to mention the Native reservations in your own country and mine. To get a sense of how the world overall is trending, it can be rewarding as a thought experiment to imagine oneself situated at the periphery rather than the hub of empire. This actually was a project that I undertook in a series of articles published in the now-defunct journal Considerations, edited by Kennet Gilman.
In re-reading your Great Mutation article I recognize that while you domnify the Greenwich chart, this is only by convention since you draw no inferences from the House positions occupied by the planets. My apologies, in that regard.
I look forward to reading your forthcoming book on the topic, but in the meantime may I once again point out that the neither its mass nor its distance from earth determine the influence which a planetary body exerts. This is vertiginously apparent when one moves onto the meta-plane of progressions, directions and transits. In the final analysis one must adopt, as you say, an empirical approach in assessing planetary influences. In my own experience, spanning several decades of practice, I would have been sorely remiss to ignore Pluto afflictions when counseling clients in distress.
Hi Jonagoddard,
Your remarks prompted me to do a mental review. Everything worthwhile that I’ve ever learned became boring at some point. So you’re not alone.
Darkest Yorkshire
Ecosophian
re: Leigh Philips’ book Austerity Ecology and the Collapse Porn Addicts
and the claim “that things went downhill after the 70s because that’s when neoliberalism took over and governments stopped funding large-scale scientific research.”
Ummm – I haven’t checked the numbers for Europe since I can’t find a long enough history to encompass 1970, but here in the US he is _demonstrably wrong_.
From the Congressional Research Service:
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R44307
Figure 1 shows that starting in the 1970’s both Federal and business R&D funding grew substantially.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science tracks federal R&D spending closely, since most scientists in the U.S. get Federal grant money.
https://www.aaas.org/programs/r-d-budget-and-policy/historical-trends-federal-rd
The AAAS accounting shows waxes and wanes, but an upward trend.
My reading of Philips is that as a lefty writer, whose only tool (“hammer”) is left-wing rhetoric and government policy, and who apparently doesn’t really do fact-based numbers, he thinks that political people (“nails”) talking about limits are similarly dealing in rhetoric and policy and he can out-argue them (“beat on them”). Also he gets to ding one of his whipping boys, the neoliberals. So he’s ineffectually wasting time beating on things rather than admitting certain very real physical limits (and dealing with the angst of letting go of “stuff”).
The coalfields in the video you posted are pretty worked out, and that’s why they’re mostly closed – not just ineffective nationalisation strategies.
US anthracite peaked in 1950, long before Barry Obama’s “war on coal”.
US bituminous coal peaked in 1990, admittedly partly because of pollution control laws, but also because it was running out.
https://www.eia.gov/coal/annual/pdf/tableES1.pdf
Ighy, if you have the desire to explore any of that in public (I.e. a blog), less astrologically astute readers (myself very definitely included) might very much benefit from what your findings imply. No pressure, just interest.
Ecosophian
Thanks for those charts on energy use and wages.
I note that for a long time – 1700 to late 1800s, per capita primary energy consumption was roughly 100 million BTUs per capita/year,
or 29,307 kWh per person/year, or 80 kWh/day. That seems crazy large, especially compared to the current US household electricity consumption of 30 kWh/day!
(And I note that about half the houses in the US could meet their current/wasteful daily electricity requirements with rooftop solar!)
I didn’t really believe the 80 kWh/day figure, but have done a few calcs and it seems true.
https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/pdf/aer.pdf
appendix E and
appendix F (note comma for period error in table F2), and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_the_United_States#Historical_Census_population
My guess is that things like burning wood for heating and cooking in buildings where a log cabin was the epitome of insulation is just so insanely inefficient that the waste was even more enormous than in our time!
(and the passive house and net-zero building movements show that the waste is truly enormous).
JMG, Could you tell me which states have Aquarius rising? Or how I could find out?
Regarding technological disasters, quite a few people around me have noted that we have lost our bees in Japan, but the news stays mum on it. My husband says a few days ago they did feature farmers whose crops have been diminished by loss of pollinators, and that they had little success with hand-pollination but are finding new ways of doing it themselves that are more effective. So that will be an important new technology.
The problem of course is that only extends as far as the human sphere. There was a rash of bear attacks all across Japan this fall, some fatal, caused by skinny bears seeking food in the human sphere. Wild boars have also become aggressive, they say. Where I am living now, I only see bamboo and evergreens on a daily basis, with isolated hardwood trees, but by Mt. Fuji last summer, entire hillsides of broadleaf forests were dying off, especially along the ridges. I don’t know how widespread this was. The news stays mum.
In the midst of this, I was very shocked this morning to learn a close friend who was electrosensitive died yesterday (Christmas). He was with friends at a restaurant, when he seemed to fall asleep. The entire restaurant was shocked when he was found to be dead.
A couple of weeks ago, they put up new Wi-Fi signs at the public building where I teach English once a week, and I felt okay, but suddenly in the middle of my second class, I passed out, slumping onto the table in front of me. I recovered right away and laughed it off, but it is no joke. Every time I go to a doctor about this, they find nothing wrong with me, because of course a smartphone would disrupt the EKG. My mother passed out a decade or so ago in a hospital hallway and they did find she had arrhythmia.
I hope I don’t come across as babbling, because I am still in shock. If I go missing for too long here, ask Quin Arbeitman to check with my friends. I promise that in the unlikely event I get disgusted with you all and huff off, or more likely become too sensitive to my computer to spend time on it, I’ll say so.
Gotta go do a prayer for my friend Greg Morris.
JMG, thank you for responding to my comment, which I thought had vanished into the ether.
I have an afterthought..
I think debt forgiveness may also be a factor in the prosperity of the people. In the United States, most people own almost nothing of value and are deeply in debt. The transition from computerized record keeping back to keeping accounts on paper is going to be erratic and drawn out, just as the transition to electronic record keeping was in my lifetime. In the process, a lot of information is going to be lost.
The financial records which were in use in my condominium association when I moved there in 2007 were compact and kept in a durable medium (a ledger book). Now they are stored on someone else’s server, and no one is tasked with keeping paper copies.
During the Great Recession, banks foreclosed on many mortgage loans without being able to produce documents to prove that they actually held the loans. They got away with this because governments backed up their unproven claims. Debts can only be collected if the courts side with the lender, and the lender has means to collect.
John Michael,
Please accept my sincere apology if I have offended you…that was certainly not my intent. I just meant to say that I knew you would likely ‘stick to your guns’ on this topic for the time being, seeing as you have the book coming out in 2022 (great title by the way). If it came across as snarky or tacky I’m truly sorry.
Jim
Off topic, but relevant to last week. The Prince Hall Masonic Temple in Providence was struck by fire Christmas morning. Once I find out how to donate to help them rebuild, I will post here.
On the subject of Uranus and technological adaptation, IBM and Fujifilm have developed high-density tape storage: https://www.ibm.com/blogs/research/2020/12/tape-density-record/
A whole bunch of tape-based technology may be about to be revived.
Douglas, I didn’t respond to your comments about multiculturalism because virtue signaling doesn’t greatly interest me. You might want to refrain from jumping to conclusions quite so ebulliently, however, as I grew up in a multiethnic and multicultural family (my stepmother and a large part of my extended family are Japanese) and east Asian thought was at least as formative for my thought as the European tradition. As for being on the periphery of empire, clearly you haven’t read any of my historical writings; here in the US we are on the periphery of empire, in that distinctive phase of a late civilization in which a succession of peripheral centers exercise a brittle temporary hegemony over the imperial core, in this case western Europe. We’re well along in the process of losing that hegemony, of course, and it’s an interesting question right now whether Russia, China, or one of the rising regional powers will step into the role next.
As for Pluto’s mass, you misunderstand; the steady decline in Pluto’s mass is merely a symbolic reflection of one of the most characteristic things about the dwarf planet’s influence, which is that the things it rules in mundane charts very reliably turn out to be much less important than they look. As I noted earlier, it’s the dwarf planet of overblown hype and unfulfilled promises. A typical case is the profoundly Plutonian phenomenon of nuclear power, which was going to transform the world…until it didn’t. Finally, please note that I don’t counsel clients in distress. My work is in mundane astrology, not natal astrology; what my clients expect from me is not personal advice, much less psychotherapy, but accurate predictions of political and economic trends — and giving Pluto planetary force in ingress charts and other traditional mundane charts, as I said, results in less accurate predictions than casting those charts without reference to Pluto. What works in natal practice is not the same thing as what works in mundane practice, and vice versa — which is why I don’t practice natal astrology professionally, or try to tell natal astrologers how to do their jobs.
Patriciaormsby, I was using the indications in Ighy’s comments above. I’m horrified to hear about the pollinators — not at all surprised, but horrified. Please stay safe if you can.
Deborah, that’s an interesting possibility. I’ll want to check the 8th house of debts and their repayment in locality charts to track it.
Jim, no problem. It’s an ongoing source of wry amusement to me that when I take up a viewpoint that differs from the conventional wisdom, so many people seem startled that I don’t simply abandon it when they say, “But that’s not the conventional wisdom!” (or words to that effect). That I might have looked into the matter extensively over a period of years, given it a lot of serious thought, and assessed the claims of the conventional wisdom before rejecting it somehow never seems to cross their mind, and they very often get huffy with me, insisting that I must be emotionally invested in my view — why else could I possibly disagree with the conventional wisdom?
Peter, thanks for this! Please do post that information here.
Kfish, fascinating. I wonder if the tape will be any more durable than it was back in the day!
sunnv, have you got any data estimating the historical and present use of embedded energy? The contemporary total energy usage will surely be higher when that is included, as for the average 1700 -1800 family, a great deal of production would have taken place within the household economy, and durable goods were replaced only when necessary. Through the 1800s when manufactured goods became more widespread that would have changed, as people of modest means stopped producing their own textiles and clothing and later canned food was sold.
JMG,
Hah! In “Living with the Himalayan Masters”, the author (Swami Rama) recounts that when he was a child, astrologers predicted that he would die at 19. He ran to his master (who had raised him as a child) and his master said (paraphrasing), “this is all true, but there are higher considerations. I will give you some of my years. There will still be a close call, however.”
At nineteen he fell and impaled himself, but survived.
JMG,
What’s your theory on Pluto and Ceres and the 30 year period after which their effects appear to disappear from society? That sounds like it could be its own weekly post, but I’m quite intrigued!
Sunnnv, whatever problems it may have had, nationalisation created probably the safest and most efficient coal industry in the world. It was closed down to destroy the power of the National Union of Miners and nothing else. While some seams may have beed reaching the end of their lives, even Thatcher never claimed there was no coal left. Consider this 1979 plan to expand Thorne Colliery: https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/887/images-of-a-slaughtered-past/ (I’ve looked for a more in-depth description but couldn’t find one). I’ve been to the National Coal Mining Museum and asked about reserves. The most conservative estimate is 300 years, with 500 more likely. If you count untouched seams under Kent, Wales, and out under the North Sea – who’s yields are unknown – it could be a thousand years. Especially as we no longer need it for fireplaces, steam trains, or factory boilers – a big part of the drop in consumption since the 1950s. Even if Kentucky and West Virginia are running on empty, Britain isn’t done yet. 🙂
>At the same time, there has been an accelerating concentration of great wealth in the top ten percent, top one percent, top tenth of a percent, and top hundredth percent of the world’s people.
Most of that is due to stock market prices. Which are essentially numbers in memory registers. Magic numbers. I think the smarter of that bunch are beginning to figure out that maybe that’s not really wealth at all and are as quietly as they can doing their best to translate those magic numbers into things that are real. But not all of them. Some of them believe their own marketing.
People don’t like stock market crashes but they do serve to slap the bejesus out of that 1% to take care of the real economy. All of that has been short circuited though with money printing. Bigger numbers are better numbers? Be careful what you wish for.
@IGHY – and what about the Rocky Mountain states? New Mexico, Colorado, etc …. where I have family?
Pat in Florida.
Hmm… so a telecommunications hub in Nashville was bombed last night leaving people without cell phone service in a rather large region. Very interested to hear your take on this. Quite fits with the stars.
Sorry, early morning yesterday. It seems like they didn’t want to kill anybody and it was just about crippling communications. We are far from Nashville but we had very slow service all day yesterday and that is unusual.
Awesome analysis. Most astrologers talk about historical parallels without detailing the specific aspects that differ and create differing outcomes! I wonder though what specifically you see in these charts that indicates that the collapse of the ecosystem and climate change will still result in kind of a mean reversion in global political economic and social change, rather than either a collapse, slow or fast, or a revolutionary kind of change, good or bad, whatever.
Hi JMG, I have a question that is off-topic, but that is in response to something you said in a reply to a commenter a month or more ago, and since you’ll be on a much deserved vacation soon, I thought I’d ask now, but if you want to ignore it until February that’s fine. I don’t remember who you were replying to, but a while ago you told someone that if they wanted to understand the current situation in the US today, that they should find and read a book about Nevile Chamberlain’s government shortly before WW II. I found that intriguing, and looked around for such a book and found “Troublesome Young Men” by Lynn Olson. It was about several young, idealistic young British MP’s who opposed appeasement and wanted Chamberlain out at a time when that was still not popular in the government. I have read a lot of books about WW II, but never one that is about that particular time when Neville Chamberlain was still in power, so I found it fascinating. And indeed, there were startling similarities to today: the same kind of censorship in the media, their own “cancel culture”, friends and families strongly divided on the issues, some permanently,a lack of courage and vision among the British elite to face the real problems of the time, anger at those speaking the truth, and on & on. My question is this: the culture of the time in Britain did seem so similar to what we have seen here increasingly over the past months/years, but the causes seem quite different, on the face of it. Could you expand on a that a little? They were facing a clear threat from a dictator whose aims were quite obvious, yet the British elite seemed to want to ignore it and to appease that dictator. Our situation, while it does include threats from abroad, seems more in response to problems within our own country, and fury at a populist president who threatens elite power in many ways. Is there something else I’m missing that connects those two time periods? Thanks, and have a relaxing January if possible.
Off topic, but I hope useful for those with access.
The film “Feels good man” covering the meme wars and Pepe is available on BBC iPlayer. A story that quickly moves from the charming to the surreal. Also starring our host. I particularly liked the book emerging from the shelf. Something of a Boxing Day treat.
Andy
@temporaryreality
@Patricia Mathews
@patriciaormsby
While I protest that I am more of a Vincent Wing than William Lilly, I submit that work which I have made. I do warn that I mostly only made summarizing notes on what groups and subgroups of charts are doing in common. I leave delineation to those who have the patience to do so for their local area. The images are minimized, and you will have to click on each entry to see their thumbnails.
https://ighy.livejournal.com/tag/grand%20mutation
Deborah Bender says: During the Great Recession, banks foreclosed on many mortgage loans without being able to produce documents to prove that they actually held the loans. They got away with this because governments backed up their unproven claims. Debts can only be collected if the courts side with the lender and the lender has means to collect.
They don’t even send you anything showing that you paid the mortgage off! I just recently paid off my house. When I asked if the mega-bank would send me a deed, they said no they don’t do that. They do send a letter to the county regarding the pay off, and the mega-bank rep said I could get a copy of it from the county. Yep, in the middle of a pandemic that has government buildings closed. I thought it odd that I could pay something off and receive nothing in return proving anything. Even when paying off a car, I can get the title, although my brother in another state said they do it all digitally there. It’s kind of scary.
Joy Marie
“A typical case is the profoundly Plutonian phenomenon of nuclear power, which was going to transform the world…until it didn’t.”
A case could be made that the development of nuclear power did indeed transform the world by making vastly more energy available for human uses, with both beneficial and malign results.
Driven by political (Saturn) and military (Mars) forces, this power was first used to wreak destruction on an unprecedented scale. The Allies won the war, and I believe it could be said that this transformed the modern world.
This same destructive power was clearly demonstrated, not only in the weapons that were developed using it, but also in events such as the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters. In the case of nuclear power’s destructive capabilities, the terms “overblown hype” and “unfulfilled promises” would not apply. Rather, the recognition of the massively destructive (Pluto) power of this technology has served to limit (Saturn) its expansion and has led to its being phased out as an energy source.
The shadow side of nuclear power was of course underplayed and hidden by the corporate and governmental powers who promoted its development as a beneficial energy source. Although there was certainly overblown hype and promises that were not fulfilled in that case, I would assign these to the influence of Jupiter (inflation, excess, hyperbole), rather than Pluto.
I like your idea about the potential windfall for future cultures represented by our garbage middens (landfills). Whether this will also be true of our buried nuclear waste remains to be seen. I recall how your wrote, in Star’s Reach, about the less fortunate 25th century scavengers working in the abandoned ruins of our civilization who “got reborn.” (Rebirth is also associated with Pluto, for what it’s worth.)
Again, thank you for hosting these online forums which have given me so much to think about.
Thanks for the pardon. Since you’re a great champion of challenging and questioning the status quo and conventional wisdom, it’s no wonder you’re so often overflowing with wry amusement!😉
If I may elaborate a bit further on Pluto, my considerations are based primarily on personal experience. Pluto is very prominent in my natal map and many of my most dramatic and powerful life experiences have been marked very clearly by Pluto transits so, in a way, my personal, anecdotal evidence is the opposite of yours! I can certainly see your point about Pluto’s insignificance in mundane charts, so the Mars/Pluto square in the GM chart offers a good test.
And then there’s 2020, which to my mind, has been profoundly Plutonian. The ‘pandemic’ and even more the world’s lockdown response seems almost perfectly represented by the Saturn/Jupiter/Pluto conjunction in Capricorn. Recently I discovered that the late French astrologer Andre Barbault predicted the pandemic in 2010/11, at least partially on the basis of interpreting this synod. I’m not trying to back you in to a corner, and I have absolutely no doubt you’ve investigated it extensively. To me it seems so obvious, but clearly you’ve reached different conclusions.
I mean no disrespect and am grateful for your tolerance of opposing views. Will you be offering us your views on the year ahead in 2020’s final post? It seems you’ve had an extraordinarily productive, successful year and I hope you will thoroughly enjoy your much-deserved January respite. Take care.
Ian, that’s exactly the sort of thing I’d expect from someone who had, in the language of Western occultism, attained to objective existence on the mental plane and therefore could master astral plane phenomena pretty much at will. That is to say, a saint or a sage.
Dennis, there’s rather more than a weekly post of material! Fortunately the manuscript’s already at the publisher and will be published in the spring of 2022. The very, very short form is that the downgradings as well as the discoveries of planets are reflections of astrological forces; a planet is discovered when, in the cycles of time, its influence is ready to differentiate itself from the cosmic background, and a former planet is downgraded to an asteroid, a dwarf planet, or what have you when its influence has run its course and is declining to a more minor status. (That’s what happened with Ceres and Pluto; both were considered planets for a while, and a variant happened with Vulcan and the “dark moon’ Lilith, which never existed at all but were considered to exist and had astrological effect for a while.) In all cases there’s an onset period of roughly 30 years, or one Saturn cycle, before the moment of discovery, when the influence of the new planet is felt, and a period of decline of the same length after the downgrading takes place, during which the influence of the former planet gradually declines to whatever its final level will be.
Isaac, I’m still waiting to get a clearer idea of exactly what happened — and more to the point, whether it was a one-off, or the first of a series.
Curtis, any sort of serious collapse or any sort of world revolution would leave distinctive signs in the chart. (Look at the 1226 chart for a good example of dieoff indicators.) None of those are present in this chart. There will be wars, probably a lot of them, but not the kind of appalling slaughter that followed the 1226 Grand Mutation; there will doubtless be revolutions — consult your local chart for that — but the sort of all-encompassing change in which so many people place their faith these days simply does not appear in the chart. Thus my sense of a reversion to the mean rather than anything more over-the-top.
Lydia, the cause is different but the situation is the same. In both cases you’ve got a declining global empire ruled by a senile elite that refuses to deal with the imminence of massive systemic crisis. What drove the English elite’s behavior in the late 1930s was not merely the rise of Hitler (and Mussolini; it’s often forgotten that until the war showed just how much of a paper tiger he was, most people considered him and his regime the real threat to world peace and dismissed Hitler as a second-rate Mussolini wannabe). It was the decline of the British empire in general, of which the situation in Europe was one facet. In the same way, our senile elite refuses to deal with the accelerating decline of America’s global hegemony, of which the rise of Trump was one facet.
Adwelly, delighted to hear it. Yes, the bit of gimmickry with the book was a lot of fun; we shot it six or seven times to get it right.
Goldenhawk, except that it didn’t. Nuclear power was supposed to make vast amounts of cheap energy available, but that’s not what happened — instead of “electricity too cheap to meter,” it turned out to produce electricity too expensive to market, which is why no nation anywhere on Earth has been able to launch a nuclear power industry without massive, continuing government subsidies. As for the destructive side of nuclear power being overblown, I gather you’ve been dozing off every time the media or the various protest outfits have been shrieking about the imminence of a nuclear war that will kill us all; I treasure all the times I’ve been told that peak oil, for example, doesn’t matter because by
198019902000201020202030 we’ll all surely have been blown to smithereens in a nuclear war. As my forthcoming book points out, across the board, every Plutonian factor in contemporary life has had the same profile that Pluto itself had — it shows up surrounded by a vast amount of overblown hype, convincing most people that it’s about to transform life utterly for good or ill, and then it gradually trickles away with a whimper rather than a bang. Nuclear power? Freudian psychology? Communism? Space travel? I could go on at quite some length — and in fact that’s one of the things that The Rebirth of Cosmos discusses.Jim, since my theory holds that Pluto did in fact have planetary force between 1930 and 2006, and will continue to have some effect until 2036, a case could doubtless be made that Barbault was correct. Yet there have also been some spectacular false alarms based on Pluto. Do you recall the Uranus-Pluto square of 2012-2015, which was widely claimed to be the herald of a major depression? There were some nasty stock market crashes, but that’s all — again, Pluto showed itself as the dwarf planet of overblown hype. That’s one of the reasons why I don’t do predictions based on Pluto aspects!
Patriciaormsby,
thanks for the info and I wish you good health!
If you know good books on Edo Japan, I would like to read. If this is off-topic, I will ask again during the open post next year.
Thanks!
“Pluto showed itself as the dwarf planet of overblown hype.”
For some reason I can’t help picturing the Wizard of Oz projecting all sorts of grandiloquent effects from behind the curtain, until Toto pulls the curtain away…
If this IS the nature of Pluto, then his effects will be as real and powerful (in their ability to change consciousness in accordance with will) as people “perceive” them to be, and the key to his strength/weakness may be the degree to which Pluto’s curtain can continue to hide his props and effects from general perception – ie less and less, but not yet entirely diminished.
Hi Lady Cutekitten,
Lovely name, by the way. Yes, sweat equity is definitely necessary for all worthwhile endeavors!
Aethon – re history of embedded energy.
Sorry, no I don’t. Anything like good energy consumption data (actual measurements) only dates from the 1973 oil shock, previous production/consumption data are based on taxation data and historical estimates.
So my impression is that embedded/embodied energy studies are still in their infancy and that actual hard historical data is lacking.
The early historical consumption data behind the EIA paper came from
Energy in the American Economy, 1850-1975: An Economic Study of Its History and Prospects by Sam H. Schurr, Bruce C. Netschert
The Johns Hopkins Press 1960.
You might pursue later work by Schurr and Netschert to see if they get into embedded energy, but nothing stood out in my brief look.
Another lead would be the publications of International Association for Energy Economics.
Note they were only founded in 1977, and their journal _The Energy Journal_ in 1980.
https://www.iaee.org/
Thanks for asking the question though, a web search for: historical data for embedded energy
brought me to this site:
http://chesterenergyandpolicy.com/2018/11/21/thanksgiving-redux-embedded-energy-carbon-emissions-of-turkey-cooking-methods/
As far as “surely will be higher”, ummm – I’d wait for/look at some data. Sometimes small scale production can be very inefficient. I’m thinking home canning vs. industrial, firing pottery, loss of mill scale from blacksmithing vs. mass production stampings, etc. Other things you’re likely right: sturdy wooden children’s furniture vs. “modern” plastic junk.
It would be good to have some real data, or at least some reasonable estimates.
I do note that in studies I’ve seen, mostly for vehicles but also for many buildings, that embodied energy is typically smaller than lifetime operating energy, except in the case of net-zero/passive house structures that trade up-front investment to eliminate/reduce operating energy.
This thesis from Switzerland confronts the “objection that the embodied energy affordance may overcompensate the reduced heating energy consumption” (i.e. assumption that embodied energy is high relative to operating energy), and shows that the added embodied energy for conservation is only 5% of the _reduction_ in energy use – a big win.
S Hegner, Embodied energy for energy efficiency measures, an assessment of embodied energy’s relevance for energy saving in the Swiss residential building sector, ETH Zurich 2007
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.603.9360&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Ighy, thank you, that’s very helpful and I very much appreciate your taking the time to do that! I’ll go ruminate on that for a bit.
Add me to the growing list of your readers who eagerly look forward to the publication of The Rebirth of Cosmos!
Darkest Yorkshire re: UK coal industry “safest and most efficient” in the world.
Sorry, ain’t buying it (the efficiency part at least).
In the 70’s and 80’s, UK coal had hefty operating losses and international market prices were circa 25% cheaper than National Coal Board coal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_miners%27_strike_(1984%E2%80%9385)#Background
https://www.cps.org.uk/files/reports/original/111028092310-PutPitsintoProfit1985.pdf
UK Coal extraction peaked in 1913, long before Ms. Margaret.
It costs money to go deeper and further. And wind and solar and storage keep declining in cost.
Reserves are actually only 377 million tons, though at current production of 2 million tons per year (and imports of 6.5 million tpy), that would last a while. Note that in the heyday of coal, the UK used 200 million tpy, so reserves would last less than 2 years.
Resources are certainly higher, but there’s some “small matters” like: climate change, (lack of) economics and certain ecological matters (fly ash disposal, air pollution, etc.) to deal with.
While looking for UK reserves, found this:
https://ourworldindata.org/death-uk-coal
In 2016, BEIS had several coal options in their electricity generation costs publication.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/566567/BEIS_Electricity_Generation_Cost_Report.pdf
In the 2020 version, BEIS mentions “coal” exactly once, under carbon pricing. It’s just no longer economic.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/911817/electricity-generation-cost-report-2020.pdf
Thanks, JMG, for clarifying the two situations and their relevance to each other. I just hope that we can have the opportunity, wisdom and courage to do the present equivalent of voting out Chamberlain–which was not at all easy! So far it doesn’t seem like we’re headed in that direction, but I suppose that it didn’t seem very likely to the British of the time either.
Hi Jon,
I can’t take credit for the name, the Archdruid himself ennobled me!
I really hope that one of the first things to go as this grand mutation takes effect is TVs….
Thank you! This is the first meaningful explanation about the conjunction I have read. And thank you for the book recommendations as well… I was wanting a place to start learning mundane astrology.
Do you have your natal chart visible anywhere btw?
Also- sorry if this is too off topic- but do you ever write or think about astrological remedies… especially ones that would seem harmonious with modern times and western culture? This kind of seems like the most important subject ever to me.
JMG,
I am waiting for your astrology book.
But then two points: is United States empire also plutonian phenomenon? When Wilson declared that star-spangled banner will be flag of whole mankind, he was bit over the mark…
Second, about signs of prosperity: there is case to be made that between pretty much all governments trying to figure out how to get into sustainable energy (and the technology and government seems to be going to be also important part of next ~200 years and declining population growth (I don’t think we will see an stable up-tick after pandemic crashed it worldwide) we will get far more graceful curve of Long Descent that rough and catastrophic stumble from crisis to crisis?
Sunnnv, after posting that last comment I realised I’d said the NUM’s name wrong – it should have been National Union of Mineworkers. That’s only significant because they were proud of being an industrial union, not a craft one. Surface locomotive drivers and canteen workers were equal members. Just had to correct that or it’d bug me.
I read that Pit Profitability report while trying to find a complete version of he 1974 Plan for Coal. It’s a fine piece of ‘market uber alles’ propaganda. The only problem is the market was essentially irrelevant in the period before the strike. It was a pseudomarket. The names of the main players – National Coal Board, British Steel, Central Electriciy Generating Board – give a hint who owned them. They were essentially government departments playing at markets. In that situation the concept of profit is like asking how profitable your fridge or washing machine is. It’s as pointless as having to transfer money whenever you move food from a packet on the shelf to a pan on the cooker. These kind of pseudomarkets are still going, and wreaking equal havoc in the NHS and other public services.
Aside from that, the other main cause of inefficiency was the managers and workforce hated each other. Mechanisation failed to live up to expectations because it was introduced from above without input of those who knew the conditions and would have to make it work. Only on one face where miners were consulted was a good solution found that combined people, technology, and organisation effectively. But the union as a whole was against anything that would ‘implicate them in management’. However those attitudes are not unique to nationalised coal mines. 🙂
On the question of economics, it’s amazing how the definition of that word changes once it becomes a choice of ‘do this or the lights go out’. The government was happy to spend an extra £20 million a week buying oil to keep the power stations going during the strike. You can read Crisis Management in the Power Industry to see the full extent of the jiggery-pokery that went on there.
Environmental concerns are another thing again. One thing I’ve learned here is that while climate change is bad, it’s running out of energy that’s the civilisation killer.
I do have to say it’s a relief to come across someone who’s cool with energy storage. So many people start waving their arms around and shrieking incoherently whenever it’s brought up. They prostrate themselves before the false god named Baseload. 😉 I’d rather not have to use the coal, but if renewables fail for any reason, I’m glad it’s down there.
On the nights of both Christmas Eve and Christmas, I went out searching the skies for Northern Lights, which aren’t uncommon where I live but, not something seen every day. I was hoping for some spectacular sign from above, and the opportunity to for my wife to see what they look like since she hasn’t had the chance to see them in her life. What I got, was a night sky full of the innumerable stars, and a little humility. This essay came to mind a lot as I looked up there, realizing how many people before me looked up at the same stars and overtime realized that those stars were able to communicate plans set in motion, giving us the opportunity to react to those plans. It was humbling more than just seeing something awe-inspiring as a dark sky full of stars is. Instead, I realized how insignificant I was, and how little my plans meant. I couldn’t cause the Northern Lights to appear just because it was a special day for many around the world, nor would they appear because my wife hasn’t seen them. The stars told me that there are plans set in motion, and just like those planets orbiting around their suns, very little will pass through their orbit to change the way things work, maybe just a little wobble. So too with the plans set in motion here on Earth. They’ve already been set in motion, and very little can I do to alter them. They are more in my immediate sphere of influence but if I don’t react with and move with the plans set in motion, or the tracks in space, I’ll be reminded how greatly insignificant I am. With that experience, in combination with the information shared through this blog and your other blogs, astrology has begun to make a lot more sense to me. I don’t know how much I will ever truly understand it, but my appreciation for the stars is now even deeper.
Scotlyn, that’s an important factor. The effects of Plutonian phenomena in theory aren’t limited to their impact on the collective imagination, though — sooner or later those nuclear reactors really do have to start producing electricity too cheap to meter, or what have you, or people stop believing in the hype. It’s the gradual unfolding of that process that gives Pluto its distinctive profile over time.
Goldenhawk, thank you. I’ll announce it as soon as it’s available for preorder.
Anonymous, in the immortal words of Wowbagger the Indefinitely Prolonged, a being can dream.
Julien, thank you also! No, my natal chart isn’t available; it’s unfortunately the case that if you have someone’s natal chart and know how, you can target them quite efficiently with certain kinds of noxious magical workings, and while I know the countermeasures for such things, it’s still a hassle. As for astrologically based remedies, I haven’t written about the subject but there’s an ample literature on it. Graeme Tobyn’s book Culpeper’s Medicine is one very solid introduction. For that matter, the alternative health care I use by choice — the biochemic cell salts, which are an offshoot of homeopathy — have an astrological foundation; there are twelve such salts, and yes, each one corresponds very precisely to a sign of the zodiac. Because I live in the US and our medical establishment is very defensive of its monopoly, though, there’s not much more I can say.
Changeling, no, empires are Solar, not Plutonian. Every empire thinks of itself as the sun around which all other nations rotate like planets, and every empire is dumbfounded in turn to discover that the sun always sets. Wilson was displaying typical solar arrogance when he said that. As for the curve of the long descent, there are certain to be some rough patches — the fact that governments are scrambling to get into sustainable energy doesn’t mean that the laws of physics will cooperate! — but as I’ve been saying all along, it’s a long slow process with lengthy periods of stabilization and partial recovery between the assorted local, regional, national, continental, and global crises.
Prizm, excellent! One of the reasons that astrology makes a very good element of spiritual or occult training is that it helps communicate exactly the sense of proportion and the awareness of cosmic order that you’ve expressed so clearly and movingly here.
JMG, I wonder if what is conveyed by this and the other charts you’ve drawn up for the GM worries you with regards to your chosen location. Does the bumpy technological aspect (and the signs of techno-failure) cause you to reconsider where you’re living and its proximity to nuclear power plants (within 50-60 miles of two different facilities), or do you figure our inability to maintain them won’t be made apparent until further into the future?
sunnnv, I meant that it would be less because home-based production was already accounted for in the primary energy usage and there would be a lot more embedded energy to add on after the industrial revolution. I suspect the total per capita energy usage, including embedded energy, may have been highest from the late 19th century to the 1950s, when there was large-scale factory production of goods, and most households were also burning coal for heating and cooking. 1700 to 1800s is a long period that involves very different technology levels once you go beyond the home.
If you have visited historic home museums from the earlier part of that era you will have seen how very little ‘stuff’ ordinary people had before 19th century mass production introduced clutter onto the market and into the home. Now these days we still have people renovating their homes every five years or so. Though probably not those who post here! The lockdowns seem to have increased this. I have bought a number of nearly-new items this year from people who said they decided to change their colour scheme months or even weeks after they got the items. Then there are people who chuck these things in the trash and don’t even try to sell them. Their ancestors would have kept the same furniture and textiles for decades.
Craftsman-made items may have individually had a lot of embedded energy but most were kept and used for a long time, and far fewer of them were made not only because of that – but because there were fewer people.
The information about the inefficiency of small-scale traditional production can be useful to people now who want to find out the most energy-efficient way to live, regardless of other preferences about technology and self-sufficiency, and who might have assumed that old-fashioned ways always used less. But as the world population in 1800, for example, was only about 12% of 2020’s, less energy in total was being wasted and used.
@ Chronojourner (12/23/2020 – 6:44 pm) You said, “I find it interesting that, just this Fall, AT&T has declared it will no longer provide Internet service to a number of rural areas in the U.S. An early sign of technological retrenchment? Anyone know of other examples?”
For some reason, I immediately thought of your comment after the explosion neat the AT&T telecommunications hub in Nashville on Christmas day.
Temporaryreality, I expect them to be maintained in working order for a while yet, as a result of the sunk-cost fallacy.
JMG,
Apologies if this has been covered in a previous comment. In your evaluation of the 2219 Conjunction, you associate religion with Neptune. However, both HS Green and Raphael associate religion with Jupiter. Have you noticed something they didn’t? Or, is there another reason?
Will1000
1) JMG, how did you come to conclude that Neptune exalts in Gemini? IIRC the last time you said anything on the subject you were using Capricorn as Neptune’s fall instead, so I’m curious what changed in the meantime.
2) On a different note, I wonder whether/how much of Neptune’s influence in this chart is actually going to manifest in the form of religion; going off precedent from other recent mundane charts, I wouldn’t be shocked if it turns out to be pointing at either some descendant of the Social Justice movement (as in the August 2017 eclipse, which I’m pretty sure was pointing at #MeToo, or the US 2020 Aries and Cancer ingresses where in hindsight Neptune was clearly pointing at the George Floyd protests) or flooding (as in Beijing’s Cancer ingress this year). The latter, of course, is something we would expect anyways…
“the four traditional elements of Earth, Water, Air, and Fire—scientists, who think they no longer believe in the four elements, call those “solids,” “liquids,” “gases,” and “energy” these days”
The last one would be ‘plasma’ :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_matter#The_four_fundamental_states
As for energy, to simplify, the *energy* (density) is instead what determines in what state the matter is in, with Solid < Liquid < Gas < Plasma.
—-
In other news, wind power on ships is indeed making a comeback, either as (relatively) simple Magnus effect rotors (best efficiency with wind perpendicular to ship) helping with up to 20% fuel consumption reduction :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_effect
https://www.norsepower.com/
Or with (more complex) retractable steel sails :
https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/swedish-collaboration-unveils-world-s-largest-sail-powered-car-carrier
—-
As a conclusion, a song about, erm, Uranus :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSWszdSHkyE
(Can you spot the reference to Age of Aquarius' 1969' clip ?)
@Phil Knight
“I suppose that technological regression will be one of the things that increasingly limits idelogicially driven wars, which were only possible in the era of plentiful resources.”
The massive Wars of the 20th Century was only made possible by fossil fuels. Even the Soviet Union had the Oil fields of Baku to fuel their War Machine in WWII. As well as the logistical alongside Industrial support from the allies.
As well as the vast coal in the territory of the Soviet Union itself.
@Patricia T – and there’s your motive for an old-timer whose work is with computers to not only bomb AT&T, but to suicide-bomb them – if they took away his internet and hence his occupation. Plausible. Possible. No saying if that’s the case, but as JMG says, “a case could be made.” Brrrr……
Retreat of technology: The small town of Cool, CA–not incorporated but only 6 miles from one county seat and 20 from another, no longer gets land line telephone installations. I am not clear on whether AT&T is maintaining previous installations–I mean they must have had them. Internet service is good–this is an area with various sized rural properties, mix of State of Jefferson types and transplanted Bay Area or Sacramento folks. It is a 40 mile commute to downtown Sacramento, which is short by California standards so it is not a pocket of rural poverty.
As for long term use of furniture, etc. the quality used to be there. I recall a sofa purchased when I was around 8; in my 20s my mother said, ‘remember the red sofa we had in Roseville? Sherri’s family has it now.” “Oh my gosh, is that thing still around?” That’s how it worked in working class families–you bought a new living room set and sent the old one to the family room, or passed it on to the newly wed younger brother and eventually it got carted off to the Goodwill or Salvation Army thrift store. Many thrift stores stopped taking upholstered items some time ago because the cleaning costs were more than they could sell for, but that seems to have changed. Other item; well by the time you buy a new set of skillets the non-stick coating on the old ones is scratched, so no one wants them; the plastic handles on the spatulas all have grooves melted in them from being rested on a hot pot and so on.
It was a little similar in wealthy families. How many stories of English children on adventure have we read in which it is mentioned that the nursery is the home of cast-off furniture from the rest of the house and that the attic is stacked with trucks of great-uncle George’s clothes left when he marched off to WWI never to return? The really poor, of course, had to sell or pawn anything not in immediate use.
On an entirely different topic, has anyone noticed that we seem to be being charged extra for bones these days? It used to be that boneless cuts of meat, such as roasts and steaks and chops cost more per pound, presumably because you were getting more useable meat per pound and the labor to debone cost something. Now the boneless cuts seem to be cheaper and the shanks, short ribs and oxtails are $8 and up. Hard to even find a pork chop or chuck roast with the bones in, with the flavor that they add. Is the deboning all being done by machine? What are they doing with the bones?
Happy transition of the secular year to everyone.
Rita
A small comment: democracy, rule of law, and liberalism (in the old sense) are not synonyms. Executing people for blasphemy (to take one example) may be profoundly illiberal, but is entirely consistent with both democracy and the rule of law. Even if the heavens say that democracy is in retreat (as it seems to be, heavens or no heavens), it may still be possible to keep (and perhaps even strengthen) the rule of law and even some civil liberties (e.g. freedom of religion). One rescues what one can rescue…
Aha, I always wondered what made the Mongols decide to go on such a devestating bloody conquest. To my knowledge, they diddent have a significant trauma that would make them want to go all out like that. Compared to ww2 Germany for example. Life as a mongolian nomad around 1200 seems pretty nice to me, with plenty of food around. I was thinking all the meat and blood and then iron in the diet might make the pretty groomed for agression and geared for war. Then all the milk should balance that out…
The atrological pice of the puzzle makes a lot of sense. Im officially interested in astrology now.
Thanks for such valuable intersting knowledge!
I’ve just peeked at the 2020 GM for Russia and imagine that country will do quite well for the next 200 years. They still have huge reserves of coal, oil and natural gas and those may expand as the arctic melts…Russia owns something like 2/3 of the arctic.They’re also full steam ahead with nuclear (big government subsidy or outright ownership, no problem!). From an energy standpoint they seem very well positioned to prosper and grow in power and influence, quite opposite the US trajectory and the dire energy scenarios we face.
The house placements are interesting: Sun/Mercury in the early 5th house with the Sun ruling the ascendant, Jupiter/Saturn also in the 5th with Jupiter as the house ruler, Venus is the only angular planet in the 4th house and she rules the midheaven, Neptune is right past the cusp of the 8th and rules that house. I can imagine the population continuing to grow for some time.
You’ve seemed reticent to comment much on Russia and I’ve no idea what your reasons might be, but I’d enjoy any insights you might share about their GM chart.
JMG – did you see/hear about the piece in the NY Times about astrology today?
It’s on a the “Sway” podcast, but there’s a transcript.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/28/opinion/kara-swisher-chani-nicholas.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Will, one of the things that happens when new planets are discovered is that certain elements of human culture differentiate from their old planetary correspondence. Jupiter was the indicator, not of religion as such, but of hierarchy — and you’ll notice that from the discovery of Jupiter sometime before 3000 BC to 1846, religion was primarily a hierarchical phenomenon, dominated by priesthoods and religious bureaucracies. It’s been since then that religion has begun to transform itself into a set of subcultures — that is to say, Neptunian phenomena. (Attempts to establish such subcultures in the past came in for violent reprisals, as shown in the 1226 chart.) As history proceeds, I expect to see religion take on more and more of a Neptunian quality, while Jupiter becomes the planet of bureaucracy pure and simple.
Username, (1) I’ve studied the various proposed exaltations and falls, and over the last few years settled on the set proposed by Ivy Goldstein-Jacobson, with Gemini as exaltation and Sagittarius as fall. (2) I see the social justice movement as a secular religion of the sort typical late in an Age of Reason. As our Age of Reason ends — and of course it’s winding down around us — that same impulse will express itself in a more overtly religious framework, thus my predictions.
Singularity, the problem with using plasma for fire is that as far as I know — and by all means correct me if I’m wrong — plasmas are found in terrestrial conditions only in extremely rare and temporary conditions, while the element of fire is supposed to be just as pervasive here on earth as any of the other elements. Energy fills that bill.
Rita, thanks for the data point!
Seidemadr, I recall reading somewhere that there were also serious droughts in central Asia, but don’t quote me on that.
Jim, I’ve been “reticent” about a lot of countries, mostly because I only have time to follow so many news sources or cast so many charts! With the Sun, Mercury, and the Mutation all in the 5th, expect a major stirring in the arts to help drive the opening phases of the future Russian high culture; with Venus in the 4th ruling the 10th, expect warming temperatures to transform more of Siberia into prime farmland, sparking a shift in power and cultural vitality that strengthens the rural hinterlands vis-a-vis the Europeanized cities.
Sunnnv, no, I hadn’t seen it — I generally ignore the Times, given the drastic decline in the quality of its reportage and the accuracy of its stories over the last couple of decades. Thanks for this.
JMG & Singularity – Would the glowing plasma of the aurora be consider a “terrestrial” phenomenon? It’s an indication of flowing energy embedded in interplanetary plasma encountering the Earth’s magnetic field, so it might be good to think of it as a visible link between the terrestrial and the cosmic.
Having “asked the Internet” whether flames contain plasma, I found the answer is “maybe”. Most flames are not sufficiently ionized to be considered plasma, but there’s room for argument. Or, perhaps I should say, room for dissensus.
https://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=19592
https://www.askamathematician.com/2013/05/q-is-fire-a-plasma-what-is-plasma/
Mr Greer, whilst I believe personal horoscopes are forbidden to Christians who want to discover their own futures, I will pray that you might come within the class of Magi who historically came to kneel at the feet of Jesus as King, because of their study of the heavens, in the way it seems to me you are doing in this post. And on that note, I would like to ask if you have any personal views on the Star of Bethlehem?
With regard to the dying of Christianity, I believe that a falling away was also prophesied in the Bible. However, many people do not have their prayers answered because their wills are not aligned with God’s will. In the same passage, where it talks about prayer being able to move mountains, it also talks about us describing ourselves as ” unprofitable servants”. There are certain attitudes which I believe are incompatible with the God of the Bible hearing us, one of which is pride and the desire for the advancement of self. It is always his will rather than ours which should prevail – and the act of prayer should have the effect of realignment of our minds and spirits above all else. If we are not willing for that process to take place first and foremost, then I believe Heavens’ gates are effectively closed to our entreaties. Unfortunately, I believe much of modern day Christianity seems to have developed some bad theological positions which don’t tend towards humility a great deal.
Thank you for your post and the time you spend answering our questions, Magi!
Actually, I think I should have called you Magus!?
JMG, yes, you’re right, plasma is pretty uncommon under natural conditions :
its main difference from gas is that electrons start to get stripped from atoms forming an “electron gas”, just like in metals – therefore plasma is conductive.
So the most common terrestrial instance of plasma is lightning (and related phenomena, like St. Elmo’s ‘fire’).
A bit less terrestrial are the upper atmosphere and beyond plasmas : ionosphere, magnetosphere, and the spectacular polar auroræ.
Finally, fire itself will start to form a plasma if hot enough… but this only happens starting with 2000-3000 °C, so wood or even (char)coal fire won’t cut it.
I’d like to thank Our Lady for interceding with me on a couple of ugly problems. Also St. Anthony for leading me to some lost important papers.
Our local paper won’t take these announcements anymore , can you believe that?
CNN is now insisting that the Nashville thing was the consequence of 5G conspiracy theories. This is going to get so messy….
@JMG
“Your Kittenship, “fading out” does not mean “already gone,” and one of the things that came up in the discussion of my post on the subject is that there are still some people who do in fact have their prayers answered by the Christian god — it’s just that there are fewer now than there once were, and a steadily growing number of people who’ve prayed their hearts out and found themselves staring up into a void.”
At one point this God is so powerful that he was able to overpower all the Gods of Egypt.
Moses didn’t even need to do any incantation or elaborate ceremonies whatsoever. All he needed to do is strike the water or take ash from a furnace and throw it in the air in the eyes of Pharoah and the rest followed.
Although it does seem quite notable that every last one of those miraculous happenings are amplifications of nature. Not its negation. Unusual in its timing and targetedness but it fit the environment that it was in.
I am not sure that any other country had this kind of God doing all those things at its official founding.
Of course like other supernatural happenings this is very often dismissed by materialists and skeptics.
@JMG
“It was an accurate prediction: among the entertaining events that took place during the astrological era that began in 1226 were the Black Death, the Mongol invasions, and the Hundred Years War.”
This coincides with the unusual famine of grass in Mongolia that forced warfare that ensured that it united under one leader. Then afterwards an unusual fertile period unprecedented in Mongol History that allowed the Empire to grow very large.
Afterwards a Volcanic Eruption put an end to the ecological condition that made the Mongols so powerful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8iUXeFxMKc
This also had global effects of rapidly cooling the earth and reducing the crop yields for countries across the world resulting in unprecedented death. This cooling period and the volcanic ash also facilitated the spread of disease.
Change in weather patterns reduced rainfall or increased rainfall in many areas.
I don’t expect you to watch the video of course so I summarised it for you. Thoughts?
@Nomadic Beer.
I wish I had a good book I could point you to. I’ve heard of written works on the sustainability of Edo society, and if I come across any, I’ll be sure to post them here. My knowledge of Edo comes from what I’ve been taught via both scholarly works (Royall Tyler comes to mind), a few historical novels in Japanese (one of which I have started translating) by Nitta Jiro, knowledge conveyed orally by Fuji Faith practitioners, experiences such as touring a massive shrine building with uniquely grand architecture in a shrine compound (Kotohiragu, Shikoku), feeling the spirit within it, and hearing it was built by followers from Edp, and what I know directly from the “Edoko” whose families have lived in central Tokyo residential areas for many generations (Wikipedia does a lovely job with it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edokko ). There was a generosity of spirit there. These people enjoyed life.
@JMG,
It sounds like you could use Pluto in astrology to identify overblown hype without getting taken in.
I am also looking forward to reading The Rebirth of the Cosmos. I must note that if nothing else, all of your books but one fit nice a snugly under the shelf above them helping provide a solid wall of books/wooden shelves by my bed. I sleep very nicely. Eventually I will also pick up Dion Fortune’s book and go through all your posts on that.
@Ighy,
Thank you for the additional information!
Lathechuck, thanks for the links, especially the picture/video !
Yeah, since the electro(magnetic) force is so strong compared to gravity (a factor of ~10^35 !!), even a very weakly ionized gas is going to be visibly dragged around by a strong enough electro(magnetic) field.
Note also that in a candle, most of the light is given off by the blackbody radiation of heated (still solid) soot particles, rather than any spectral rays from specific molecular radicals like CH and C2. (You can kind of see those on the the sides of a candle flame, the parts that look blue.)
Oh, and I of course have to point out that the overwhelming majority (all?) of this light comes from electrons getting excited, then falling back to a lower energy state by emitting photons. See this article for a more detailed explanation :
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2015/05/21/the-surprisingly-complicated-physics-of-a-light-bulb/
I’m not sure how much time these electrons spend exactly in that excited state (and what fraction of them is still bound to an atom vs free), which would give a way to calculate what fraction of the part of the flame that is gas (or even solid soot) is actually ionized, but IIRC it’s very very short.
Regarding whether fire counts as a plasma, a commenter above linked to an article that, in the commenter’s opinion, says “maybe”…
The article says this:
“The big difference between regular gas and plasma is that in a plasma a fair fraction of the atoms are ionized. That is, the gas is so hot, and the atoms are slamming around so hard, that some of the electrons are given enough energy to (temporarily) escape their host atoms. The most important effect of this is that a plasma gains some electrical properties that a non-ionized gas doesn’t have; it becomes conductive and it responds to electrical and magnetic fields.”
Just mulling through this in a thorougly layperson’s way, still…
If one considers situations in which “a fair fraction of the atoms are ionized” to indicate the existence of plasma, and sets to one side the immense heat that is, without any doubt at all, associated with *some* of those situations, it might not be unreasonable to claim that is is possible to detect plasma within living bodies, which (under much cooler conditions) harvest external energy sources ultimately derived from the sun, to power electrons with “enough energy to (temporarily) escape their host atoms” to power various metabolic activities within the cell. Because of this, living cells are certainly “conductive and… respond… to electrical and magnetic fields”.
I have often thought that the metabolism of a living cell IS of the elemental nature of fire, and I see nothing in the usual definition of plasma as “ionised” gas that prevents the highly ionised character of innumerable substances within the living cell to be called “plasma” – so long as one can set any part of the definition that specifies a range of temperatures to be set aside.
JMG and Commentariate
Employing some simple tertiary thinking I wonder if Pluto’s influence initates painful growth in human beings through realizations related to the panning out of false promises.
Or, if overblown hype initates chaotic events in the fallout when expectations aren’t met. In this way Pluto fulfills both suggested rulerships identified in the comment stream.
Or, reversing this duality and thinking about how painful growth through chaotic experiences can be a result of denying the possibility of that profundly disastrous events can occur.
There seems to be something yet unanswered in this play of words.
Although I am not an Astrologer in any sense it is interesting what surfaces when meditating on these concepts.
to all:
In my somewhat educated lay opinion, plasma seems to be a state of matter, as are gases, liquids, and solids.
Energy, as I understand the word, is not a distinct material element or state of matter. It is potential inherent in the physical and metaphysical cosmos.
info:
“Afterwards a Volcanic Eruption put an end to the ecological condition that made the Mongols so powerful:
This also had global effects of rapidly cooling the earth and reducing the crop yields for countries across the world resulting in unprecedented death. This cooling period and the volcanic ash also facilitated the spread of disease.”
Your mention of the Mongols is synchronous with a question that occurred to me while watching a film about ancient Persia and the expansion of the Mongol Empire.
I was curious about the astrology and did a chart for the (hypothetical) September 1257 eruption of the Samalas volcano in Indonesia. The chart shows Pluto at 0 Sagittarius, in a Grand Trine involving Neptune in Cancer and Uranus in Aries. Mars is in Leo opposing Saturn in Aquarius. Jupiter in Virgo opposes Uranus.
This chart looks to me like a Category 5 “doozy,” borne out by the effects of the volcanic eruption on human societies and the earth’s ecology. I wonder if the astrologers of the time, who would not have considered Pluto in their analysis, would have predicted the volcano. Of course, as the saying goes, hindsight is often 20/20.
On that note, I breathe a profound sigh of relief at the turning of this very challenging year, and offer a heartfelt thank you JMG and commenters for your stimulating and entertaining perspectives on the trends and events of our times — past, present and future.
May our collective vision sharpen and brighten in 2021 and beyond.
Scotlyn, living beings just generally don’t neatly fit into the basic physical categories : they generally exist at the edge between solid and liquid : the order of the solid (or “soft matter”) allows them to keep a barrier between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’, while the disorder of the liquid coupled with its high density allows for speedy chemical reactions.
It would probably be abusive to talk about them being ‘plasma’ (well, not speaking about the other meaning of ‘plasma’ – the blood one) just because (weakly ionized) ions play such an important role in them.
I mean, even regular water ‘responds to electric fields’ :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxxmeI1gW0k
(Though AFAIK this is due to the dipolar shape of water molecules, not ions.)
Water is also conductive, but AFAIK for the same reason as living beings (which are made mostly of water) : regular water still contains ions in the form of dissolved salts. (Ultra pure water is actually NOT conductive !)
Greer, you mention in the comments, that you didnt notice any effects of a major pluto transit. I am after having contrary experiences, and notice them show up in other peoples charts as well. Perhaps pluto activates more in some people charts than others? Maybe due to the prominance of natal pluto? Or perhaps something else was going on in the transit that might have nullified/dampened the plutonian influence?