Astrology for the 21st Century

The website affiliated with this blog is moving homes on the web, and undergoing a re-working, and consequently is temporarily offline.

This blog is hosted separately and so is still available.

Another notice will be posted here once the website is back up and running. Here's a copy of the announcement that was on the website about the changes:

Announcement about this website - June 2009
Published: 19th June 2009

This website is coming up to its 5th birthday and I wanted to let you know that it'll soon be re-worked, both under-the-bonnet and cosmetically. I can't believe how time has flown since its inception in 2004.

It seems like just a few months ago that I sat down to dream it up, sketching it out on paper in pencil and wondering what articles to include. The website started with just a handful of writings in each of the three sections, the same sections which are still the central organising structure of the site today.

Obviously its grown since then and also the web itself has moved on considerably even in just five years. The original philosophy behind the website has altered a bit since the early days too, following changes in my own philosophy of life and outlook.

All this adds up to the conclusion that a re-working is needed.

I intend to keep the website easy to use and easy on the eye, without going all gimmicky; I want to keep simplicity of design and navigation as much as possible.

I hope too that the transition will be glitch-free!

I don't know exactly when the changes will take place but just wanted to let you know so that if the website seems to disappear for a day or two in the next few weeks, you know why, and needn't wonder if its demise has arrived!

With that said, all that remains is to say thanks for reading over the last five years, here's to the future, and I hope you like using the new website when it arrives.

Regards

The Editor

An extract from a Spring 2007 article on the Astrology for the 21st Century website that gives some historical facts about the UK's experiences when it last had a major transit of Pluto to the nation's Sun.

The UK as an entity in itself has never before experienced a Pluto conjunction of the Sun. It has, however, experienced an opposition and two squares (besides other aspects). Below are the years of exactitude, so please remember several years either side would need to be examined for the more-than-cursory at the past that we are conducting here:-

• From 1829 to 1833 Pluto was square the UK's Sun and also the MC/IC axis - George IV died and was succeeded by his brother, William IV. George had been forced against his will (very Pluto-Sun!) to agree to Catholic emancipation. In 1831 riots broke out over the parliamentary Reform Bill - Parliament was dissolved and the General Election was fought on the single issue of the Reform Act - this was unprecedented in the history of the UK.

• From 1920 to 1924 Pluto was conjunct the UK's MC and opposite the UK's Sun. There was the first and only general strike in the UK's history, which echoed again in the 1970s (see below). Women at Oxford were allowed to receive degrees. Ramsay Macdonald became the first Labour prime minister. Irish Civil War broke out. John Logie Baird gave the first public demonstration of television. Winston Churchill - then Chancellor of the Exchequer - returned the UK to the Gold Standard - gold is the metal associated with the Sun. In 1927, the BBC was formed.

• From 1975 to 1976 Pluto was square the UK's Sun and square its MC/IC axis. The UK joined the EEC, forerunner of the EU. The pound was severely devalued. There was the shortest Parliament since 1681. There was a 'hung parliament' which resulted from the question of 'Who governs Britain, the trades unions, or the elected parliamentary representatives?'. There were the beginnings of the 'Winter of Discontent'. The world's first test tube baby was born in the UK.

Two new articles have been published on the website affiliated with this blog, astrology21.co.uk

They are:-

Financial Summits of the G-20: Looking at the foundation of the G-20 and its recent series of special summits to address the 'credit crunch'
http://astrology21.co.uk/b1financialsummits.html

Parliament: Disclosed, or Closed? The MPs expenses scandal - ACA, the FOI Act, and the whistleblowing leak of May 2009
http://astrology21.co.uk/c1mpexpenses.html

Some new articles added to astrology21.co.uk

Tiananmen Square 1989: On the anniversary of the massacre in China the world bore witness to 30 years ago
http://astrology21.co.uk/c1tiananmansquare.html

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

A quote which conveys in a pithy way the current Jupiter-Neptune (and Chiron) conjunction in Aquarius and the 'hot air' society in which we reside:-

"...a society in which, we are told, desperation and despair can only be escaped by being picked out from humanity and elevated to the status of larger than life."

Source: http://www.socialistunity.com/

Escaping desperation and despair = Neptune

Larger than life = Jupiter

Ordinary humanity versus elevation to the level of the god-like, special, chosen ones = the theme of the Aquarius-Leo polarity

From a blog entry on 21st Feb this year:-

Pluto is currently squaring the UK's Uranus and so, at long last, there is some desire for resuscitating the fundamental freedoms that we used to be able to take for granted in this 'free country'.

Pluto is heading for a conjunction with the UK's Sun, so we are in a process of long-term, radical re-evaluation of who we are and what we're about.

We used to be a country that stood for fair play, common sense, and basic egalitarianism.  Not that we ever really achieved those things as much as we could've done, but we had some pluck, some free-spiritedness, and some sense of ourselves as a people who ploughed our own furrow and didn't get trodden on by illegitimate authority or invading upstarts.

We used to understand how to have revolutions without violence. Nowadays we're too scared to even say the word 'revolution' except in hushed tones for fear of being secretly watched, secretly monitored, secretly added to a database.

These and other transits to the UK's chart denote a time when re-remembering our inherited capacity for non-violent revolution is required, and calls to be put to good effect.

If we don't introduce life-promoting changes to help us flourish as a people and as individuals, history shows that the revolutionary nature of these transits will be seized upon by those with social power to impose changes upon us of their making, and which augment their power over us.

The choice of these transits isn't 'do you want a revolution, or not?' but 'whose revolution do you want, ours or the government's?'

http://astrology.blog.co.uk/2009/02/21/uk-convention-on-modern-liberty-28th-feb-5618679/

His transits aren't anywhere near as Neptunian as Gordon and David's, but he's not got anything major in his chart at the moment to indicate that he's in a position to climb over their corpses and take the reins of the country.

His chart resonates very strongly with the current Saturn-Uranus opposition which makes last year, this year, and next year, in some ways, his time to come forward - his chord is being struck, so to speak.

Whilst he doesn't currently have anything major holding him back - unless his Ascendant or Midheaven axis is connecting with something, we don't have his birth time so can't calculate them - he doesn't have anything showing impetus to charge ahead either.

As I've written before, patience is a key virtue now that Pluto is in Capricorn, and this 'de-corruption-ising' process is going to take several years. It will not and cannot be sorted out prior to an election, as if all it takes is a dustpan and brush and a few quick sweeps of a minority offenders followed by 'business as usual'.

We no longer live in 'business as usual' times.

Gordon and David in particular, and to a lesser Nick, need to wake up to the fact that they can't surf these changes as they are, by trying to retrofit the current events into their 'yes, yes I've been saying this all along' spin, and that they need to deeply reform themselves and their colleagues as human beings.

They're trying desperately to suggest that they're the right men for the job, but times have moved on and none of them are  fit for purpose, unless and until they alter themselves at core.

Speaking half-non-astrologically and half-astrologically, I suspect neither Gordon nor David will be in public office by the time of the next election. They're behind the times, events have overtaken them and made them obsolete, like yesterday's flash cars that today seem archaic.  Despite their mad scramble to climb atop the ever-increasing tsunami of deep change, they're floundering.

We're going to go through mess and chaos and we're going to have to have high tolerance of periods of ambiguity and uncertainty before we can emerge as a strengthened nation (or nations). The politicians' pleas for us to elect them to sort out the mess is, quite simply, off-message as far as the planetary cycles are concerned. And we know what happens to off-message politicians, don't we? ;-)

The MP's salary problem can be solved by applying their own rules to themselves.

The MPs have worked out the precise amount of £ that a human being needs to receive to live in the United Kingdom.

They've put it into law.

So, they ought to be happy to have their pay reduced to match it.

Here it is:-

Source: http://www.swale.gov.uk/index.cfm?Articleid=1664

Government booklet for more detailed payment amounts: http://www.jobcentreplus.gov.uk/JCP/stellent/groups/jcp/documents/websitecontent/dev_015666.pdf