Neptune opposes its natal position in 2021 and 2022, and by observing previous conjunctions/oppositions, we will see the strong impact these positions have on the US. However, I am not suggesting a cause and effect: As with much of astrology, the relationship between planetary positions and events is symbolic and metaphoric and synecdochic.
The original Neptune conjoined its natal position in 1774, 1775, and 1776 with the natal return being the last of a series; it was during those years that the build-up of tension that finally resulted in the writing of the Declaration was growing. But of course the writing of the Declaration only indicated that the colonists were totally fed up with Britain. The Revolutionary War is considered to have started with the Battle of Lexington and Concord, on April 19, 1775, between the third and fourth exact conjunction.
Neptune then conjoined the IC of the United States, the only other time since the United States was declared a country, which was one Neptune cycle ago in the period 1857 through 1859 right before 1860-1864. That period marked the Civil War, a very important conflict, the most violent on American soil, one that had repercussions for the rest of the century, and one whose lessons we seem not to have learned. This war was between the Northern States and the Southern States, and it has often been said that the North won the war, but the South won the Reconstruction that followed.
The five exact demi-returns of Neptune were 5/24/1857, 7/27/1857, 3/14/1858, 10/31/1858, and 1/4/1859. The main cause of the American Civil War can be considered to be chattel slavery, which was practiced in the southern part of the United States. Those states were attempting to expand the number of states which would allow slavery. The immediate cause was the firing on the Union at Fort Sumter, but two important causes, which spokesmen for the South proclaimed, were the publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (published March 20, 1852) and John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry. This raid took place between October 16 through 18, 1859. This was following the last exact pass of Neptune and was an attempt to start a slave rebellion. Though John Brown was executed by the United States, he was considered a martyr by many in the North, and a popular song was composed at the time: John Brown’s Body. That song was later renamed The Battle Hymn of the Republic and different lyrics were added by Julia Ward Howe. One can only imagine the fear invoked in Southerners to see many in the North so praising someone that the South considered a fiend and often singing a song dedicated to him. It was reasonable for them to assume that even though Brown’s attempt failed, there would be more actions like that, and eventually the South would be faced by a slave rebellion supported by many in the North.
Moving on to the next Neptune return and the first since the birth of the country, we see the following: The three exact transits of Neptune to its natal position were on 10/28/1938, 2/24/1939, and 8/30/1939. These dates are obviously just before World War II broke out, and the last date is one day before Germany invaded Poland, which officially marks the beginning of World War Two. While I am not suggesting that a Neptune transit will be quickly followed by an event whose significance will be immediately apparent, it is interesting to note the strong correspondence. When looking back at the Civil War demi-return, the transits ended several months before John Brown’s raid, not as close to the significant event as in the case of World War II, but of course, there were certainly other events presaging the Civil War that took place closer to the date of the last return.
We can see the equivalent positions of Neptune opposite its natal position in this year and the next: May 1, August 21, and March 1, 2022. The opposition is very close to exact now in the beginning weeks of 2021. On the first of the new year, Neptune was four degrees away from its demi-return and closing.
By now, we can see that the dominant trend setter of the next decade will be the response to Covid-19. People tend to personify possibly non-living entities like viruses, but those entities actually do nothing except be a virus. It is the human response that causes large scale changes to society. A famous example of this type of personification is the book with the title “The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins. Genes do not know lust, pity, selfishness, or any other of the seven deadly sins, and to describe them thusly is extreme personification — ascribing human characteristics to the non-human. This is often done with animals, but to do such personification with micro-entities stretches the bounds of the acceptable.
As of early 2021, the death toll for the Covid-19 pandemic is just over one-half million for the United States, and slightly over 2.5 million for the world. And a death is a binary activity, a person is either dead or alive (unless you inhabit a zombie movie), so one would think the numbers are quite clear in describing the scale of the crises. But in March 2020, after a suggestion from the World Health Organization (WHO), the United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issued a directive on filling out a death certificate for deaths from Covid-19, overriding the method of filling out such forms that had been in place for 17 years. In this new method, deaths was no longer considered to be “from Covid” but rather “with Covid” which meant having a positive (usually PCR) test within 28 days of death. As both the WHO and Doctor Fauci have recently admitted, a PCR test is inaccurate if the Cycle Threshold is too big. The PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) test, which earned its inventor a Nobel Prize (he was also into astrology, but I don’t know if there is a connection!!) works by taking small bits of genetic material and magnifying them a number of times, and that number is called the CT. Tests with a CT of 17 are 100% accurate, and the WHO states that those with a CT over 35 provide mostly false positives. Most commonly tests were performed with a CT of 38-45 before WHO spoke. Anyone who has magnified a low-resolution forty times and seen the huge numbers of artifacts that resulted has seen how this problem works.
The point of this long and technical discussion is that we really don’t know how many deaths have been caused by SARS-CoV-2 that can be compared to deaths caused by such things such as heart disease, cancer, or influenza. Thus Neptune has seeped into what should be a simple binary decision. Since both my parents died of pneumonia, though one had lung cancer and the other had just had a heart attack, I’m very sensitive as to how the cause of death is determined and the problems that can occur in such determination.
It is slowly becoming clear that the response by various governments and other bodies around the world to the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19 is having the greatest impact on the world since World War II. This will color the rest of the decade and perhaps years after that. This of course is right on time. As we’ve seen before, these Neptune returns/demi-returns corresponded to the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War II, with each disaster (which means bad stars) being more widespread than the one before. So we now know what the disaster described in the book The Fourth Turning (Neil Howe and William Strauss) will be. Since we are just at the beginning, there are many more derived things to come down the pike. The response of people to the response to the virus will be large and will play out in unexpected ways. Stay Tuned! For example, what is the origin of this virus? Many claim that the virus was created in a lab, and there has been a huge campaign to deny this, but whatever the truth, there have been experiments to increase the potency of viruses in a laboratory called “gain-of-function” research for many years, and sooner or later, one of these experiments will escape into the human population. There needs to be more awareness of this dangerous research.
For the various crises that will develop in this decade, people will use a code word or synecdoche; I have heard several, such as the obvious Covid-19, or the Great Reset (™ World Economic Forum) or Covid-1984 or Flu D’état. The reason so many terms have already been created is that people realize, perhaps unconsciously, that the implications of what has happened the previous year are great and will effect the course of history. I hope everyone is paying attention because we live in historic times.
I have tried to construct a Covid chart. I first looked for Patient Zero, the first patient to get the disease. I then tried to look for when the disease was first identified. There is much confusion (Neptune again) about these things as well as the actual origin and what animals it moved through before coming to humans. But one date kept being mentioned over and over: March 11, 2020. That was the date that the WHO announced that Covid-19 was a pandemic after changing the definition of a pandemic a few years earlier. More Neptune. As he opened the news conference, the Director-General of WHO said “Good Afternoon”, so we can surmise that it was not in the morning.
Looking at the chart, we should first note that Mercury went direct on the previous day. It was as if the authorities could not announce this pandemic until Mercury had turned around. Since we don’t have an exact time, the angles are meaningless, but the several clusters of planets are not. As has been written about before, the three planets that defined the year of 2020 — Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto — are all conjunct in the chart with the addition of Mars to make it more energetic. Then, to again emphasize Neptune, we see that that planet is closely conjunct the Sun, indicating it is a Neptune day, and both are in Neptune ruled Pisces. Perhaps the conjunction is at the Midheaven if the news conference did indeed start in the early afternoon. The Moon was below the horizon for the next six hours, showing that the public (the Moon) was kept in the dark. There is also a conjunction of Venus and Uranus, and the statement Ebertin gives about this conjunction is worth quoting in full: “A strong and hardly controllable tension in emotional life, a self-willed and obstinate disposition, strange urges and inclinations”. It seems like the perfect chart.
There have been some trends in the past few years for a more progressive, more equitable future. All these trends have now been reversed. I’m sure many who have opposed this movement for a more equitable future will be pleased with these outcomes. Consider some of the outcomes that we already see: This last year has seen the greatest upward transfer of wealth in history. Many small businesses ceased operation, and more sales were seen by Amazon and other massive businesses. In addition, most of the “stimulus” in America was given to large corporations while individuals got $1200 or $600 if they were lucky. The stock market is booming while many struggle to get enough to eat since their jobs are gone.
Since many people were without jobs or income, they found it difficult to pay their mortgage or rent. There was an eviction moratorium that temporarily suspended the prospect of losing one’s home, but eventually, the moratorium must end with a huge lump sum payment due and the strong probability of many evictions in the upcoming months. I personally know a large family with a new baby who had just closely avoided being burned out by last year’s fires, who were just evicted since there are many loopholes to the eviction moratorium. We already have a huge homeless population — a noticeable phenomenon of neoliberalism. With all the upcoming evictions, the population of homeless will increase.
Developed countries such as the United States and the members of the European Union will be relatively lucky unlike poorer countries which will not be so fortunate. Oxfam International estimates a potential death of 150,000,000 in the developing countries as a result of the response, and fewer people have jobs in these areas that can be done from home. Many are in what is called the “informal economy”, which is not covered by any government mandates or restrictions. I saw an estimate of 10,000 extra monthly deaths in Africa because much less aid is coming from the developed countries, which currently have their own problems.
Partially because of the lack of affordable childcare, four times more women than men have exited the workforce, thus fulfilling the dream of some to keep women at home and in the kitchen. Once these changes happen, it is difficult to override them in a short time frame.
Middle class people often work in offices, and the mandate to work from home was easily met for those who used to commute to the office. So many have decided that working from home is easy and productive that office real estate is seeing a difficult time. If people don’t need to work in a standard office, what becomes of all those buildings that were rented for a high price?
Many people in the working class do physical work (as opposed to shuffling papers), which requires them to be physically present, and they cannot “work from home”. These are the people who will more often lose their jobs during this time. Those who can work from home are often considered members of the Professional Managerial Class — PMC — and that has become the primary constituent of the Democratic Party, which supposedly represented the working class, so you can imagine how the working class will be more angry that they are being ignored by the PMC-loving elite.
Many of the businesses that require people to be present that are not just office work are run by non-white people, more than would be expected by their share of the population. Black owned businesses were twice as likely to be shut down as white owned businesses during the lockdown, thus further increasing black poverty. This reverses trends that have been going on for several years. It may be considered cynical to point out that this increasing black unemployment and poverty goes along with a celebration of black culture by the PMC.
Speaking of poverty, the upcoming world will see levels of poverty not seen since WWII. Again, while the United States will see increased poverty for many of the reasons outlined above, the non-rich countries that are called the developing nations, and which got aid from the developed countries that has now ceased, will see even more increases in poverty, again reversing trends of the last decades.
In today’s highly-industrial society, mental health has been precarious, and now prisons are one of of the few institutions housing those with mental health problems. The constant bombardment by fear and the increasing isolation from friends and support groups has led to increased mental problems in people. At one point, the daily calls to a suicide hotline were approaching the number of calls normally seen in a month. In San Francisco, at one point, a year’s worth of suicide was seen in a month. That area also saw more drug overdose deaths than Covid deaths, and there is much more consumption of alcohol with foreseen consequences.
There have been warnings of increased mental health problems for youth who normally would be in school where potential problems can be observed, where counselors are available, and where free lunches can be provided. Since most children were sitting at home and staring at screens (if an Internet connection was available), mental health problems are not being caught in time, and there are more cases of physical abuse of children who are now with their parents for long stretches of time. Recently the CDC reported a 400% increase in adolescent depression. A sign of this is the fact that schools in Nevada had to resume classes after a spate of student suicides.
Because of isolation and containment, we have seen increased domestic violence and child abuse. Children had their classes curtailed, so many children are fearful and mistrustful; and children are behind developmentally where they normally would be at their age. The whole “Covid generation” of children who have gone through this will reverberate down through the years as a group of people behind where they should be socially. These children, with Pluto in Sagittarius or Capricorn, will be marked for life, especially since they witnessed the Great Recession of 2007-2009 or the aftermath of it.
With the greatly increased unemployment numbers, some observers estimate that the unemployment will be greater than that of the Great Depression; there will be more deaths. For a long time, the unemployment figures have been deceptive since they only counted as unemployed those looking for work; the discouraged workers who had dropped out of searching were not even counted as unemployed, and the numbers of discouraged workers has been increasing for a decade. It has been estimated that for every one percent increase in unemployment, there is an additional 36,000 deaths in the United States.
There will be many deaths from other causes such as heart attacks and cancer that were not caught by early detection because hospitals and doctors were busy dealing with the pandemic. In the early days, many people would avoid the ER or A&E (in the UK) because they thought they would get the virus if they went in. In addition, many children did not get their scheduled vaccinations because they were at home, and of course many people locked in their homes missed exercise, sunshine, and fresh air, all of which helps build a strong immune system.
All of these massive changes to society will not be overcome or reversed in a few months, but rather — as more authorities are now saying — will take the rest of the decade or more to be reversed if that is even desired by our leaders. That of course is if it is possible to imagine that things could possibly go back to what they were after so many things have happened. If you observe the upcoming transits for the decade, which have been talked about incessantly in this blog, you will see that the changes have only started. Those items mentioned above are only the beginning; the reactions — political, cultural, social — will be far reaching and haven’t really started yet or at least have not been publicly recognized.
This Neptune cycle that also corresponds to the first Pluto Return for the United States suggests even more “fun and games” for the U.S. Note also that the Pluto demi-return happened in the years 1935-1938, just before Neptune conjoined its natal position and the world was in the throes of the Great Depression. You may wonder why one full Neptune cycle corresponded to half a Pluto cycle, and the second half of the Pluto cycle corresponds to just half a Neptune cycle; this is because Pluto slowed down during the second half of its cycle, and was even inside the orbit of Neptune for 20 years recently.
This past year has seen the beginning of a crisis which will mark this decade as an important time in the history of the United States and the World. This period will be a critical change to the world and in the next two posts we will show how a conflict will determine what that change will be.