Astrology for the 21st Century

British playwright and outspoken citizen/artist Harold Pinter has died on Christmas eve.  Few other writers of his time spoke out so firmly in favour of humanity and against oppression and political violence.  Here's his birth chart (ps not sure of the source of the time of birth so please treat cusps etc with caution):-

In his speech upon winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005 Pinter expressed his Sun in Libra (the mirrored self) opposite Uranus in Aries (breaking through to the truth on the other side of the mirror) and square to Jupiter-Pluto-Mars in Cancer (truth as protection for vulnerable humanity) when he said:-

"When we look into a mirror we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimetre and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror - for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us.

I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.

If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us - the dignity of man."

Here are his planet-star parans:-

Stars on Angles at Birth
    Alpheratz - Rising at the Ascendant
        To see oneself as independent of one's culture or society
    Zuben Eschamali - Culminating at the Mid-heaven
        A person who strives for power

Heliacal rising star
    Alkes
        To be the living vessel of a sacred body of knowledge or philosophy

Heliacal setting star
    Markab
        To stand firm for your beliefs and principles

Sun
    Culminating when Antares is Rising
        Someone who is intense and focused, the potential to be obsessed
    Culminating when Vindemiatrix is Culminating
        The one who gathers information, things or people

Moon
    Rising when Alcyone is Rising
        Insightful into the darker side of life
    Culminating when Phact is Rising
        The romantic adventurer, of places or ideas
    Culminating when Alphecca is Anti-culminating
        A person who wants to leave a legacy
    Setting when Ras Alhague is Rising
        A person who probes the hidden meanings, or sacredness, of life
    Setting when Rigel is Setting
        The metaphysician, or one who is drawn to alternative, or hidden wisdoms

Mercury
    Culminating when Alcyone is Setting
        Insightful and brilliant, but struggling with the darker side of human nature
    Culminating when Aldebaran is Setting
        The noble thinker, the person with integrity, a naturalist

Venus
    Rising when Alpheratz is Anti-culminating
        To demand the right to follow one's own social or religious conscience
    Culminating when Markab is Rising
        Strong personal and moral philosophies, to be unchanging in social ideas
    Culminating when Alcyone is Anti-culminating
        A love of theatre or the rituals of religion: the poetic soul
  
Mars
    Rising when Denebola is Anti-culminating
        To champion the non-establishment cause
    Culminating when Scheat is Setting
        A physically confident person, or a gifted inventor
    Culminating when Altair is Anti-culminating
        Bold and at times rash action
   
Jupiter
    Anti-culminating when Zuben Elgenubi is Setting
        A humanitarian who looks for the big solution

Saturn
    Culminating when Spica is Setting
        To be a prime mover of an idea, a founder, an originator
    Anti-culminating when Arcturus is Rising
        The engineer, the medical researcher, the explorer - the one who finds new pathways

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture-e.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7799708.stm

Canada's Liberal Party has had to find a new leader earlier than expected, as Stephane Dion has stepped down as a result of the continuing controversy over the coalition of political parties' attempts to put themselves in government directly following a general election.

The new leader is Michael Ignatieff, a person known for his, shall we say, overenthusiastic support for the invasion of Iraq. It makes sense when you see his chart:

Venus-Mars conjunct in Aries, loving the exertion of will through aggression. Sun in strong-willed, bulldozing Taurus in close opposition to a runaway Jupiter in Scorpio.  Moon in Aquarius opposite a Saturn-Pluto conjunction in Leo showing a see-saw between emotional detachment and all-consuming fiery passion and the capacity to destroy and tear down rather than create and build.

He has been appointed during the Jupiter-Saturn trine forming a Grand Trine with his Sun and Jupiter square to his Mars, with the Saturn-Uranus opposition squaring his natal Uranus, but also Neptune squaring his Sun and Jupiter. There is a strong element of glorification here, along with tension that could snap. It doesn't bode well, all told.

He has shown his potential for his worse side, now let's see if he can show his potential to be the best of these astrological placements. He certainly has his work cut out for him, let's hope he has some kind of honest personal development relationships in his life to help him lift up from the things that would bring him, and Canada, down.

In future a fuller astrological article about the future President of the USA will be written and published. For the time being here's a re-print of two earlier entries from this blog that are worth bringing to the fore again, since the Barack Obama hype machine is in full swing at the moment:

This years Christmas - or Saturnalia/Sol Invictus - will be more Capricornian/Saturnian than usual.

Why?

Firstly, because the Sun enters Capricorn as usual on the 21st, which is the official start of a new season (winter in the northern hemisphere, summer in the southern hemisphere), but this year it's conjunct Pluto in zero degrees of Capricorn.  Pluto re-entered Capricorn on 27th November.  The two will be closely conjunct on the winter solstice, colouring the whole season weatherwise in particular, and possibly socially/politically too, especially for the UK where the Sun-Pluto conjunction is on the MC of the winter season's chart.

Secondly, because Saturn is slowing down throughout December and stations on 31st December turning retrograde at 6:08pm - New Year's Eve.  It will then move slowly throughout January, while the Sun is moving through Capricorn.

There's a resonance between these three things - Pluto at zero degrees Capricorn, Sun entering Capricorn conjoining Pluto at zero degrees, and Saturn (the ruler of Capricorn) being slow and stationary throughout the Capricorn period.

Capricorn is symbolic of the horn of plenty and the golden age. These days in our culture we translate that into the golden age of consumerism. Slowing down, changing direction, anyone?

10th December 2008 is the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The UN says it doesn't have a record of the time of day of the signings of the UDHR, so here's the chart for it with house cusps removed, calculated for noon:-

And here's a link to an article written in early 2007 about the astrological background in the development of human rights ideas and documents on the continents of Europe and North America:-

http://astrology21.co.uk/c1humanrights.html

And some links to websites about the Universal Declaration, and human rights in the world today:-

Every Human Has Rights

UN's page for the 60th Anniversary of UDHR

Amnesty International's page for the 60th Anniversary of UDHR

Regular readers of the blog will know that I was going to write about Canada's election but didn't get round to it.

It's quite difficult to write about what's currently going on there without spending a lot more time researching it, but I want to put the chart up again and talk about it because it's timely and also it happens to be a good example of what's going on around the world in various superficially different forms that are the same at their root.

The recent Saturn opposition Uranus was aligned with Canada's nodal axis (Virgo/Pisces), and aspected Canada's Saturn. The Saturn-Uranus oppostion can be a time of great and increasing tension, that threatens to snap and break apart the status quo. In Canada for a few years now there has been a kind of stalemate reached in the balance of power in Parliament. When an astrological opposition is reached the message is one of unbearable tension combined with the desire to release that tension in order to make progress, but something's got to give. The latest election didn't bring any release of that tension - probably because it occurred just before the exact Saturn-Uranus opposition, rather than after.

However there's more going on.

Transiting Pluto has been directly opposite Canada's Moon for the past few years, suggesting a deep process of transformation in the national psyche, and in the populace. I'm not aware enough of Canadian society over the past few years to point directly to what this transit has been correlating with, and when the election was approaching I couldn't help being niggled by the frustration of that because it seemed that this transit must have something to do with the political deadlock somehow.

Of course, there's only a stalemate/deadlock because of the adversarial (that is, oppositional) nature of the political system. Instead of changing the system they opted for general election after general election, trying to achieve dominance of the minority winner over the majority election losers. It hasn't worked, and their repeated attempts to solve the problem by pretending that the problem is a solution and applying it back to itself has brought them to the edge of a constitutional crisis, with talk of the possibility of yet another general election. Stop the madness!

Change the system.

New Zealand's general election on 8th November produced a change of party and Prime Minister; no longer are Helen Clark and the Labour Party in government, the new government has been formed by the National Party and its leader, John Key, sworn in on the 19th of November.

Haven't been able to locate a time of birth for John Key, so here is his chart calculated for noon on the day and in the place of his birth:

No matter what time he was born, the Moon was in Cancer for the entire day, so we can rely on its Sign position although not its degree.

As you can see, we have another Leonine leader in our midst..... 

For those who haven't already heard, John Key was born just a few days after Barack Obama, and elected just a few days after too......

Finally, at long last, some updates for the website (astrology21.co.uk) affiliated with this web log.
 
~ Uranus square Pluto is here: All the dates, degrees, chart wheels, and themes for the 2008-2019 series of squares. The revolutions may not be televised, but they surely will be 'world wide webbed'!
http://astrology21.co.uk/p1astrologycalendar.html
 
~ The Lewes Pound: How a local currency demonstrates 'we have it in our power to build the world anew', to bring resilience to our communities and economies and help wean us off oil and onto sustainable alternatives
http://www.astrologicalassociation.com/reference/publications/transit/nov2008/lewes_pound.php
 
~ Astrological Calendar for 2009: A free gift of an astrological calendar for 2009, made exclusively for this website, able to be
viewed online but also downloaded in searchable form, opened in your own calendar software (presuming it supports the standard icalendar format), and merged with your existing schedule
http://astrology21.co.uk/p1astrologycalendar.html