The Revolutionary Zeitgeist

It has been remarkable to see the wave of protest and revolution that has swept across the world as Uranus has neared its square to Pluto this year. The Arab Spring in the Middle East and the Occupy movement in thousands of western cities are perhaps the most obvious cases. China has its own unrest, but they keep a lid on it. And now even Russia has joined in, with Vladimir Putin’s party United Russia having taken a hit at recent Parliamentary elections. And thousands have taken to the streets claiming the election was still rigged in favour of Putin’s party.

Uranus is the revolutionary spirit, and Pluto shows how serious people are about change. The Occupy camps can easily be dismissed as harmless. But the fact they are occurring under Uranus-Pluto means they are the expression of something widely felt in the collective: that people have had it with the present system, with its injustices, its instability, its needless poverty and glorification of greed, and the overarching ecological threat to the planet.

We may not yet know we feel like this. These feelings take time to ripen. The Occupy protesters, some of them at least, do feel this, they are the future. I dropped in on the Exeter camp last week, and it was the mixed bag of motivations you’d expect. But somewhere deep down a lot of us have had it with the present system. We just don't yet know it. Time and further events over the next few years, as Uranus and Pluto exactly square 7 times, will widen and deepen these feelings in the collective and bring political reform across the western world. And not necessarily in a way that we would want. It often makes people look for redeemers. In the late twenties, under the last Uranus-Pluto square, Germany was brought to a similar pass, when its system no longer worked.

It is strange that these revolutionary events should happen together across the world, because they have different causes. It makes you think. It is not that Uranus and Pluto cause these events, this spirit in the world. Astrology works synchronously. You notice that 2 types of event tend to happen at the same time, one in the world, one in the heavens. Because we are trained to think causally, we look for a causal relationship and can’t find one because there isn’t one, and so we think astrology is nonsense.

A Native American friend who is a story teller was once invited to partake at an academic conference. And the professors had all their theories about indigenous people and their stories. And my friend said to them that until they learned to think mythologically, they would never understand the way the indigenous people saw the world. The academics were quite put out by this, even quite offended, because to their minds they represent a more advanced, rational humanity. But my friend was right, and exactly the same point applies to astrology.

It is only in the last 500 years, out of our 100,000 year history, that we have stopped thinking mythologically, symbolically. Science and rationalism seem so mighty, but they represent ½% of our history. Astrology belongs to the other 99.5%. We have that weight of history and tradition behind us, we think in a way that has always been natural to humans.

So there is this similar thing happening right across the world for different reasons. It suggests some deep way in which we are all connected, not just humans, but the natural world as well, because look at the number of oil spills, earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis that have been occurring as Uranus and Pluto have started to square up.

It is all one big thing that goes through cycles of transformation in different ways according to which outer planets are talking to each other. What a strange, unknowable universe we live in.

Russia is the latest major chunk of the world to join the Uranus-Pluto revolutionary party. We will have to wait and see with Africa and South America. In the case of Russia, the chart I use does not show a major influence from Uranus and Pluto, not for some years yet (when Uranus then Pluto will hard-aspect its Libra Ascendant.) This is unlike the major western powers plus China, who nearly all have their Suns in early to mid cardinal signs.

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The chart does, however, have the Uranus-Neptune conjunction which saw the end of Soviet Communism. That is at 10-14 Capricorn. Uranus and Pluto are starting to hit that hard, and I think with countries you can take transits to outer planets more seriously than you do with personal charts, because the outer planets are collective, and countries are collective. That said, in Russia’s case, natal Uranus-Neptune does not aspect any other planets (apart from a sextile to Pluto), which weakens the transit. Russia also has progressed Mars at 4 Libra, so again we have a weak effect from transiting Uranus and Pluto.

It is interesting that Uranus-Neptune is virtually unaspected in Russia’s chart, because the idealism of that combination was subsequently completely by-passed as Putin constructed an authoritarian, gangster state.

What I think is currently happening in Russia is more down to transiting Neptune than to Uranus-Pluto. When Putin took over at the end of 1999, Neptune was opposing the Russian MC, suggesting Putin was a Redeemer out of the chaos that the country was descending into. (When Hitler came to power, Neptune was starting to square the MC of the previous Weimar Republic, so he was also a Redeemer. Neptune is currently opposing Italy's MC, so they may soon be seeking a Redeemer.)

Though Putin is no longer President, that has been in name only, and he remains the most powerful man in Russia. Since 1999, Neptune has gone on to square Russia's natal Pluto and oppose natal Sun-Jupiter in Leo. That is now over: Neptune is changing sign, Russia has the new start of a Progressed New Moon, and it no longer feels the same need for a Redeemer.

Putin is standing again as President next March. He has Sun at 14 Libra, and Moon in early Gemini. He is being hit full-on by the outer planets in the next few years, and is moving on to a very different phase of his life. The transits may not be close enough by next March to stop him becoming President; but if he does, I couldn’t see him lasting for more than a few years.