Astrology for the 21st Century

And as for Gordon Brown, the Jupiter-Neptune-Chiron conjunction is close to the midpoint of his Ascendant and MC.....

My interpretation? He's the embodiment of high hopes and dismal failures.

As Neptune returns to the exact conjunction with his Asc/MC midpoint he faces a choice: make a few mollifying false promises and perhaps spread some disinformation thus precipitating the deluge and maybe more leaks and scandals, or come clean and flush things out.

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More on the planetary meanings

Neptune is the planet of, amongst many other things, fraud and lies.

When major transits of Neptune are afoot it's always better to check, re-check, re-check again your information, and still be prepared to subsequently find out that it was wrong all along.

Jupiter-Neptune is a classic for delusions of grandeur. At its best Jupiter represents honesty and forthrightness, Neptune the clarity of epiphany and the desire to redeem, refine and rescue that which is gross and decrepit. Together they represent a range from total openness and transparency, to large-scale fraud.

The choices the politicians make during these transits will decide which behavioural expressions come into play. Since few things are black and white, we're likely to see a mixture of the best and the worst across the board, but a lot depends on the most powerful leaders, who are of course Gordon Brown and David Cameron.

The values they live by will determine their actions and whether they will tend towards continued deception, or genuine transparency.

Is David Cameron in a position to win?

'Not really' is the short answer.

The current Jupiter-Neptune-Chiron conjunction is opposite his Mars, so he's probably having more than a few delusions (Jupiter-Neptune-Chiron) about his prowess, vigour and leadership (all things which Mars represents).

With Neptune stationary too, there's a standstill and a reversal going on, where things are likely to unravel further in due course.

He doesn't have a green light to go forward; few do, since it's time to take a look back before we can proceed.

Judging by their statements in the media recently some MPs seem to have forgotten that they are obliged to abide by a code of conduct if they want to hold this particular public office.

No, wait, they haven't forgotten, because some of the currently-known-about abusers of their privilege are sort-of quoting from it in the hope it'll get them off the hook:-

"14. Members shall at all times ensure that their use of expenses, allowances, facilities and services provided from the public purse is strictly in accordance with the rules [emphasis added] laid down on these matters, and that they observe any limits placed by the House on the use of such expenses, allowances, facilities and services."

The problem with that is that it's only one section. There is more than one other section that they're in breach of. Section 15 is a pretty fundamental one:-

"15. Members shall at all times conduct themselves in a manner which will tend to maintain and strengthen the public's trust and confidence in the integrity of Parliament and never undertake any action which would bring the House of Commons, or its Members generally, into disrepute."

If only they all acted in accord with that!

Here's another:

"9. Members shall base their conduct on a consideration of the public interest, avoid conflict between personal interest and the public interest and resolve any conflict between the two, at once, and in favour of the public interest."

You read it right, it said 'in favour of the public interest', i.e. the public interest comes first.

I don't think that refusing to release this information was putting the public interest first, despite the claims of the now-gone Speaker and Andrew Walker on behalf of all the House in their taxpayer-funded legal bid to prevent us receiving this basic information about where our money goes, of 'national security' as one of their beneath-contempt excuses for not revealing the addresses of MPs. The House's attempt to preserve this so-called 'national security' and 'privacy' was going to have the curious effect of covering up outright fraud.

How about another:

"Accountability Holders of public office are accountable for their decisions and actions to the public and must submit themselves to whatever scrutiny is appropriate to their office."

And another:

"Selflessness Holders of public office should take decisions solely in terms of the public interest. They should not do so in order to gain financial or other material benefits for themselves, their family, or their friends."

So when they say they're within 'the rules' they're being very selective about which rules they're claiming to be within, aren't they?

And there's still the valid response of why should they be judge and jury over their own pay and performance. Being judge and jury over your own public office activities is surely one of the biggest god-like 'perks' that exists in a society, and therefore one of the most dangerous powers a society can lend to a public office-holder since it encourages them to feel that they're in a different league to public servants, not answerable to the public they are meant to serve.

Yes, there's a department/office that deals with breaches of this code - the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards -  but don't worry, it was de-fanged early in 2002 when the office holders started taking their job seriously and the government hounded out the then-Commissioner, Elizabeth Filkin. Her crime was that she investigated their corruption and they didn't like it, so they got rid of her.

But that's probably okay-ish (well, not really, given the other sections of it) under this code because it only explicitly forbids leaning on members of the Committee on Standards and Privileges (CSP), not on the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards (OPCS). The OPCS comes under the CSP therefore surely requires the same protection from this kind of 'lobbying':

"19. No Member shall lobby a member of the Committee on Standards and Privileges in a manner calculated or intended to influence their consideration of a complaint of a breach of this Code."

Welcome to the Mother of All Parliaments.

And we all know that the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), like the other Acts that give us access to governmental/council information, is only effective if MPs, councillors and civil servants are fundamentally honest in their work. John Wick, who is the person who went to the press with the expenses information, has said that the government had intended to provide, under the FOIA, a twice-redacted version of the data:

"Mr Wick said: "There was an un-redacted version and two redacted versions. And the briefing I was given is the fees office had sent them back twice for MPs to cover and take things out.[It was] not going to come out as you have been publishing it, because you'd get the third redacted version."" - Source: BBC News

If that's not deliberately conspiring to deceive and even defraud the public then I don't know what is.

Any MP claiming to not be part of this mess needs to be able to show that they haven't breached this code. For instance, if you were aware of what was going on but either didn't raise it as a formal complaint or if you did but your efforts were thwarted and you then didn't go to the public and blow some whistles, can you really claim to be upholding standards in public life, valiantly championing the public interest?

And finally, in case you were thinking 'this is supposed to be an astrological blog', yes there's some astrology to bring into all this, but it'll have to wait :-)

Looking at the chart for the EU Parliament elections due to be held on the 4th to the 7th of June (the exact date varies by country), two things stand out.

The first is that the current Jupiter-Neptune conjunction in Aquarius (for those readers interested in the planetoid Chiron, it's actually a triple conjunction of Jupiter-Neptune-Chiron) is at right angles to the Moon-opposition-Mars-Pluto in the EU chart. A mixture of expansion and dissolution, some would argue. Growing dissolution? Growth that dissolves? Dissolving growth.

Jupiter and Neptune both deal in the business of hope and vision. We can expect claims of a new start, a new vision, a new hope. A new hype, more like. Venus being on the MC of the European Union's chart adds to the PR exercise, glossing over the unpleasantness and portraying everything as positive, spinning whatever happens as a 'victory', even if it's a comprehensive drubbing.

Jupiter-Neptune are also the planets of religious belief. The EU has a religious crisis close to its centre. It's possible it'll enter a new phase.

On all these issues the keynote is tension and crisis, since the aspects involved are squares. Issues will be faced head-on.

If we want to bring Chiron into this picture, it says something about problematic areas that we keep returning to, all to no avail. That's the EU all right.

Saturn will be trine the EU's Uranus-Neptune conjunction, which is the planetary pair that symbolises the core of the EU dream. This transit is about consolidation, solid ground, reality. It speaks of a desire to incarnate the dream, to bring it down to Earth and give it form and substance. To build institutional structures that embody the spirit and concept of a united European continent.

With Uranus in trine to the EU's Mars-Pluto conjunction there is a sense of lighting the blue touchpaper and standing well back. Action is sparked easily, both rebellious action to liberate from oppression, and autocratic action to quell dissent and enforce a more powerful will.

That's all to the EU's chart though.

The EC (formerly named the EEC; the name was changed in 1993 and is likely to change again if the EU Constitution is eventually forced upon us) remains active and so we must take its chart into consideration.

In the EC's chart Pluto is heading for a conjunction with the Sun, just as it is in the UK's chart. Although it's a few years away from exactitude, it's within orb and will become exact within the term of this Parliament that we're electing next month. The short explanation of this transit is that the EC is going to die, and then be resurrected in a new form (just as the UK is). What that form will be, nobody can know - life is lived forwards and unfolds organically, not predictably in its details.

The EC is going through a rare Pluto-trine-Pluto transit, reflecting a deep, fundamental change and death/renewal process. This transit also symbolises power and the desire to increase it.

Transiting Neptune in semi-square to the EC's Sun reflects something altogether more nebulous. Aspects between Neptune and the Sun can indicate increased popularity, but they can also signal a time when popularity declines due to disillusionment. The semi-square aspect tends towards the latter. Where Neptune is concerned, any increase in popularity is often temporary and caused by an increase in projections, rather than based on something reliable and tangible. This type of transit often correlates with feeling undermined, directionless, redundant.

There's much more to the charts and transits but this will have to do for now.... will probably return to this topic over the next few weeks.

 

To see which countries vote on which days, click this link:-
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/elections2009/welcome/headlines.htm?language=EN&ref=20090525STO56248&secondRef=0

Two more new articles have been added to the Astrology for the 21st Century website:-

Banco Santander: Rising during the banking collapse
http://astrology21.co.uk/b1bancosantander.html

The USA & the Sun Signs of Obama's Cabinet: Using just Sun Signs to look at how the USA is shaped by this team
http://astrology21.co.uk/c1obamacabinetusa.html

 

Conservative MP Nadine Dorries wrote on her blog (Thurs 21st May 2009) about a rumour about the Barclay brothers' possible involvement, as owners of the Daily Telegraph newspaper, in the paper's publications about MPs' expenses.

According to a Guardian newspaper report legal people acting on behalf of the Barclay brothers took action to have it deleted.

The Independent newspaper also edited the same or similar information from their online version.

Culture of secrecy?

Legitimate freedom of speech?

Use and abuse of power?

As they say on Big Brother, you decide:  the blog entry is easily viewable via caches on search engines like Google and at the Wikileaks.org website.

Update 28th May: It's now being said that Nadine's blog wasn't pulled due to legal action at all. Although another of Nadine's blog entries mentioning the 'wealth and power' of the Barclay brothers exerted via lawyers to 'shut her down', is still online:

"As well as waiting during the night on Friday to see if my career was in tatters, I also had to deal with the minor problem of the Barclay Brother’s use of global lawyers and the removal of my blog site on behalf of the Telegraph Group. At 1am I felt as though I was in a very surreal place. This was just little me, and two of the richest men in the world who own a newspaper empire and can pretty much say what they want, when they want, to who they want, had, using their wealth and muscle, shut me down."'Why I did what I did' by Nadine Dorries http://blog.dorries.org/id-1395-2009_5_Why_I_Did_What_I_Did.aspx

Who knows if she's just toeing the party line, or what. It doesn't matter about her theory, which seemed to be relatively speculation on her part and surely not libellous, what matters is whether free speech is being used legitimately, and if so is it being stifled, no matter who is the source of the stifling.

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The Barclay twins purchased the Daily Telegraph in June 2004, the sale being completed shortly thereafter. The astrology of their acquisition is interesting.

And the previously written about Saturn station was closely conjunct Neptune in the charts of the Barclay brothers. Here's their chart (they were born within minutes of each other but as yet no birth time found on the web):

Note the position of the Sun-Jupiter conjunction in Scorpio at the top of the chart, and the square to the North Node in Aquarius.

And here's the chart for the completion of their purchase of the Telegraph:

In this chart Jupiter and Pluto are square one another.

These two squares interlock and form a symmetrical arrangement:

Transiting Pluto is halfway between the brothers' Sun-Jupiter and Node.

The brothers' Sun-Jupiter is halfway between transiting Jupiter and Pluto.

In astrological terms of 'midpoints' this is written as: Pluto = Sun/Node, Pluto = Jupiter/Node, Sun=Jupiter/Pluto, Jupiter = Jupiter/Pluto.

And in addition, the transiting Node is picking up the brothers' Sun-Jupiter.

What do these planets represent? Power. Acquisitiveness. Expansion. Takeover. Big money. Corporate assets.

In the UK the Barclay brothers have gained a reputation of reclusivity, and have also been accused of undermining democracy by their actions in Sark - they deny both accusations. Aside from their Scorpio planets, their Neptune being on the UK's 12th house cusp symbolises this sense that some people have of the brothers of something influential going on in the nation behind-the-scenes.

For those new (or fairly new) to astrology there are some teleconferences coming up in June to introduce you to the basics.

They're a combination of teleconference and webconference, permitting use of both audio and visuals (animations, diagrams, etc).

The current dates and times are:-

10am Pacific Daylight Time (i.e. 6pm UK time)

• Thursday 11th June
• Sunday 14th June
• Thursday 25th June
• Sunday 28th June

6pm Australian Eastern Standard Time (i.e. east coast of Australia) (i.e. 9am UK time)

• Thursday 18th June
• Sunday 21st June

For the full information, including Q&As, please visit:-

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

The website affiliated with this blog, Astrology for the 21st Century, has just been updated with two new articles (at long last.... it's been ages since the last update).

They are:-

Barack Obama & the USA: A chart comparison of the president and the nation
http://astrology21.co.uk/c1obamausa.html

Obama's Moment: 'The Audacity of Hope' keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention
http://astrology21.co.uk/c1obamasmoment.html

 

Of course the current Freedom of Disinformation [sic] fiasco is not just a Labour party or governmental thing. But it includes them, and they have form in this area.

The current government has been caught fiddling the public records before, and has endured three major financial scandals prior to this one: huge debts, cash for (dis)honour, and cash for influence.

The astrological patterns were written about here http://astrology21.co.uk/c1labourfinances.html

One of the patterns showed the involvement of Gordon Brown's Venus at 24 Pisces. That's where Uranus is now. Looks like the patterns from years ago are still operative...

The continuing financial meltdown and the EU elections (for what they're worth) are both due for crunch-time/crisis in June.

The Sun will be in square to both Saturn and Uranus (in that order), and although the opposition between Saturn and Uranus is technically out of orb at the moment the Sun will 'translate the light' from one to the other as it transits the midpoint of them both.

The Sun will square Saturn first, on the 5th of June, just as the EU elections have finished in the UK and are tallied, and in other EU countries they'll either be having their EU elections or preparing for them to take place on th 6th and/or 7th.

It'll square Uranus on the 17th of June.

The date when it's equidistant in relation to them both is the 11th of June.

June looks set to be an interesting month....

More on the Saturn-Uranus opposition series

I see that the person who facilitated the release of the MPs abuse of public money and their privileged position has revealed his identity and spoken articulately yet plainly about what was going on and the need to flush out the liars and fraudsters in the Houses of Parliament because, quite simply, they're not fit to hold public office.

Most of what I want to say about the Freedom of Information Act was published in 2005, shortly after the Act came into force. You can read it here:-

Astrology for the 21st Century - Freedom of Information Act: A 'New Era of Openness'?

Here's an extract:-

Mars and Pluto here [in Sagittarius in the 3rd house] both suggest fierce battles to be fought in the arena of information and publication, above and beyond what would normally be expected of such a piece of law. Mars is where we are prepared to go to war, and this placement suggests two things: (i) the people are prepared to fight for access to information, which is just as well because (ii) the government are prepared to fight to withhold it. Thus, publication of information is turned into a theatre of war.

Here's a link to the Telegraph article where you can watch a short clip of the whistleblower speaking about how the government was determinedly editing out our right to know what they do with our money, usurping our democracy, and deceiving us in order to in some cases defraud us.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/5367470/Video-MPs-expenses-whistleblower-John-Wick-explains-his-role-in-exposing-the-scandal.html

Saturn has been stationary throughout May. This whole secrecy/fraud pack of cards came tumbling down with a thumping great Saturnian 'reality-check' just days before the exact Saturn station - the station was on the 17th, and the Daily Telegraph published whistleblowing information starting on the 8th and continuing daily right up to the Saturn station, with pressure mounting for the Speaker, Michael Martin, to resign on 16th, 17th, and 18th May and his resignation being given on 19th (the first Speaker forced to resign in 300 years) - which took place almost exactly on the UK's 12th house cusp, which is itself the same as the Freedom of Information Act's 12th house cusp. The 12 house denotes secrecy, fraud and imprisonment, and traditionally is associated with 'hidden enemies' (in this case that is clearly what our MPs are). It's also the house of self-undoing. That says it all quite nicely, doesn't it?

Deep and lasting constitutional change is on its way folks. Previously published astrology articles covering this are:-

UK's Identity Crisis http://astrology21.co.uk/c1ukidentity.html

Pluto in Capricorn http://astrology21.co.uk/c1plutocapricorn.html

Saturn opposite Uranus http://astrology21.co.uk/c1saturnuranus.html

Uranus square Pluto http://astrology21.co.uk/c1uranuspluto.html

As you'll gather when reading these articles, the UK (and other countries too) are just at the start of these major changes. Any government or committee or institution claiming to be 'well on the way to sorting this out' (Peter Hain, Labour, speaking on BBC2's Newsnight tonight) is talking out of their behind.

We're on our way to a new country. It's just going to take time and patience, two quintessential Capricornian virtues, and continuing with this Plutonic restoration of Capricornian virtues, it's going to require the willingness to be open-minded enough to realise that, despite the naive beliefs of the Blair era, the only way to become young again is to embrace the old - that which has stood the test of time.

If the UK ought to be good at anything, it ought to be good at that.

The BBC are saying:

'Prepare for a heatwave' UK told
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8057528.stm

Of course, everyone should always be taking precautions to cope with extremes of weather, especially the vulnerable.

What I'm interested in doing here is testing the principles of Astrometeorology (weather forecasting using correlations with planetary cycles).

Here's the chart for the summer season, i.e. from 21st June to 22nd September:

If astrometeorological principles are correct, then although there may well be weeks or days within the season that are hotter than average, the season overall won't be hotter than average, in fact, it'll be cooler and more blustery than average.  In other words, more of the same as what we've been having lately.

The main indicators of this are that the UK will be sandwiched between the planets Saturn and Uranus, both representing cold weather and Uranus in particular representing gusty winds and suchlike.  The two red lines on this map show them - Saturn on the left, Uranus on the right:-

(Sorry about the images' quality, the blog restricts image sizes and I didn't have time to play around with it to sharpen the view.)

The astrological aspects are more complex than this, but I don't have time to write about them at the moment.  Having looked at the chart for Summer though, I'm not optimistic of anything particularly warm for any consistent length of time.

So now the test is to observe and relate what actually happens back to this astrological chart and the principles of Astrometeorology, and learn from it.