Have a look at the night sky. At around 11 pm, to your south, you’ll see Jupiter, clouds permitting. Look a few degrees to the left of Jupiter, and you’ll another planet. Not as bright as Jupiter, but still pretty clear. That’s Saturn. If you have a telescope or a good pair of binoculars, take a good look at Jupiter. You’ll see its largest moons. Then turn your attention to Saturn, and check out its rings.
The spectacle won’t last forever. From the Earth’s persective, the Sun is moving towards Jupiter and Saturn, and they’ll become visible later and later in the evening and night. What we are witnessing is the lead-up to the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction, which takes place just before Christmas, on December 21. But right now, in late August, Jupiter and Saturn appear to be moving apart. Right at the end of the month their angular separation is at a maximum, and through September they start getting closer.
From an astrological view, the movements of Jupiter and Saturn suggest that the real global crisis hasn’t really started. Or as Winston Churchill might have put it, it’s the end of the beginning. Talking about the Second World War, we’re arguably in a phoney war, like Britain and France were, in late 1939 and early 1940. At that time, Jupiter and Saturn were also moving towards a conjunction. The start of the war with Germany didn’t directly impact the people of Paris and London, and it wasn’t until the summer of 1940 that German troops marched into Paris and German bombers started dropping theirs loads over London. The 1940 Jupiter-Saturn conjunction was on August 7 and August 8. By that time, France was under German occupation and the Battle of Britain was in full swing.
Moving forward eighty years, and a lot of what I say is obvious, and doesn’t need astrology. The global economy is holed below the waterline but many people are in denial. They think a vaccine for the COVID-19 is going to save the day, that things are going to get back to normal by Christmas. You can see this with the property and stock markets – they are going up. Though bear in mind that markets can go up in a crashing economy, at least in local currency. Look at the Venezuelan stock market – it is up over six times since the end of March.
As far as September is concerned, Mars is moving very slowly from the Earth’s perspective, and it turns retrograde on September 9. This is interesting. Mars is usually regarded as a fast-moving planet, but now it is behaving like one of the gas giants. To give you an idea of how slow it is becoming, it starts September at 27 degrees 34 Aries and ends September at 25 degrees 3 Aries. This is bad news, because Saturn starts the month at 25 58 Capricorn and ends the month at 25 20 Capricorn. Put another way, we have an ongoing Mars-Saturn square. The Mars-Saturn pairing is about death, annoyance and frustration. People and governments are going to try their hardest to normalize the situation, but it’ll be a waste of time. Indeed efforts to get the global economy back on track are doomed to failure.
The highlight of the month is the Autumnal Equinox. This is the point where the Sun moves south of the celestial equator, when the hours of night and day are equal. The Equinox happens at 2.31 pm British Summer Time, on September 22 2020. That’s 1.31 pm GMT, 9.31 am New York time. Here’s the chart, set for London:
The chart gives a snapshot of the following three months, until the Winter Solstice on December 21 2020. It is also a good way of seeing the broad, astrological themes.
We can see that Mercury at 24 degrees 15 Libra is opposition Mars at 26 degrees 59 Aries and square Saturn at 25 22 Capricorn. From a collective perspective, we see anxst, frustration and despair. The future looks grim, and anger could bubble to the surface. This is particularly the case as the Moon at 10 38 Sagittarius makes 45/135 degree aspects to all three planets. The populace, the crowd, the mob, are restless. And there is almost certainly going to be an unusual level of violence.
Looking at the hypothetical planets, it is worth noting that Jupiter, the planet of optimism and expansion, is at 17 degrees 33 minutes Capricorn, exactly sesquiquadrate Admetos at 2 degrees 30 Gemini. Admetos is the planet of delay, and from a mythological point of view we have a king who doesn’t want to die – to the extent where a younger person dies in his place. The central banks want to keep the economy alive, by printing more money – with younger generations having to pay the price. It is ultimately a waste of time, because the economy is going to die anyway.
We also have the Aries point making a 45 degree aspect to the Neptune-Hades midpoint. This has been going on for some time, but the Equinox chart reinforces it. Neptune-Hades is about an infectious disease causing havoc and death. In other words, there is unlikely to be any respite from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Have I got anything nice to say? Well, I think September will be a better month than October. More about that later.
Omfg this is great! Imagine if our suffering upon the Path was the true currency of the Multiverse?
Doesn’t astrology kind of reveal the machinery of our existence a bit like a Pachinko machine?
Thanks for reading the article, and I am glad you enjoyed it. I suppose astrology gives us something to hold onto, so symbolic pictures of the chaos we are experiencing can be useful. And yes, it is part of the multiverse, even if the way it fits together is totally incomprehensible.
Thanks for this post, which functions as a timely Alert. In this case, the ill auspices are so obvious–no exceptional skill or subtlety needed to be at least on guard–that astrologers are posting their apprehensions, some in alarmist terms.
Of course the worldwide manifestations (e.g., fire, fever, violence, hostilities, inflammatory politics, disastrous accidents, international disputes, disrupted relations) will be modified by the charts and circumstances of the various national capitals.
I would agree that one doesn’t need any special skills to see what is going on. The astrology of 2020 was pretty obvious, and even my sceptical wife concedes that my broad predictions about 2020 were correct.