Turbulent Times Part 4

This is the final in my Turbulent Times series: Ancestors + the Great Conjunction. If you have not read Part One – Health & Wealth, Part Two – Magic, Part Three – Mindset & Astro 1 + Astro 2, please check them out first.

First, a reminder. As I said in the ‘what next?’ section of Part 3, July until January is formidable astrology. Saturn zaps back into Capricorn to complete the tri-decennial trip through his home sign. Mars is in Aries for just over six months, repeat-squaring Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto over this phase. It’s an accelerated Zap Zone that we need to zap ourselves up for.*

The Saturn and Pluto alignment that was exact in January but intensifying over 2019 is not going to repeat. But Saturn’s return to Capricorn from July brings it back within orb of Pluto. This phase will test the efficacy of anti-CV-19 measures.  As I write this, the atmosphere outside is surreal. Many of the recent restrictions have been relaxed where I live; the malls are packed and most people I talk to are almost manically invested in the ‘it’s nearly back to normal now, thank god’ narrative.

Astrologically, it’s not ‘back to normal’ – whatever that was. It is the eye of the cyclone, where it’s calm. I would like to be wrong about July/August and beyond but here is a suggestion: Take advantage of this relatively chill Saturn in Aquarius/Mars in Pisces phase (late May until the end of June) to fortify resilience, immunity, and finances.

The good tidings: Geopolitical adjustments aside, the new cycle from 2021 onward is rad. Even without the CV-19, this bubble was going to pop. Socio-economics and ecological settings have to evolve into a saner paradigm, no evolution is tidy and many of us have felt this change coming in our bones.

The Ancestors

The South Node/Saturn in Capricorn effect that began in April 2019 was big-time Ancestor energy. People who didn’t give a s**t about genealogy began to feel a connection with forebears and ancient lands, be it their psychic lineage or biological ancestors.

Embarrassingly, I rejected it at first. In early 2019, my druid Anthony was going on about ancestors wanting to connect with me and I said unless they can code or pull strings to speed up my internet connection, forget it. It seemed waffly and irrelevant. Then the ultra-lucid dreams began and by January, I was astral tripping to chat to great-great-great whatever they are.

But around last Halloween, the Southern Hemisphere Samhain, I had a flash. Anthony had texted me to again crap on about ‘ancestors’. I was livid.  Pacing around, I asked ‘what, seriously, could any of my ancestors have to tell or offer a 21st Century person?’ It sounds arrogant but I was thinking in terms of how different our lives are now, compared to virtually any time before.

The Line Survives

The answer floated up immediately: ‘Plague.’ The sense of something with malicious intent, abroad in the air, its intention to destroy. The energy of this somber little intuition reminded me of a past life dream I’d had recently: I was a child, looking down over wooded hills, asking some adult what the amazing looking huge shimmer of light in the distance was. The answer: It’s the Sun, reflecting off armour.

This intuition had a similar tone but with it came a sense of strength – not hipness or self-actualization – fortitude. We are connected to our ancestors through the elements, when we gaze at stars, a flame, or the ocean. They transcend chronological/societal differences and tap us into this timeless, inexplicable matrix. Giving birth or – less positively – recognizing a predator are fast tracks into it also.

Whether you call it transmigration of the soul (past lives) or transgenerational epigenetics, there is plenty of unmapped DNA to potentially produce a scientific explanation for all sorts of magical fuqery. The human genome, it seems, contains ghosts and Dark Matter. I’m not a geneticist but I think we carry their memories, with all the natural aversions that imply. I don’t get nervous near churches because of anything that happened to me but maybe it’s linked to having a branch of ancestry from a village notorious for once having executed 80 witches in a week.

We also carry our ancestor’s powers. And, if you’re feeling overwhelmed by weird times or not particularly confident of your leader’s ability to navigate complex waters, try the Uranus in Taurus re-grounding meditation or even more easily, this: You are here because of the valor and stamina shown by your ancestors. Their ability to escape peril or endure adversity led to you being here now; the line survives. And, you’re open to any useful instinct.

The Great Conjunction

Jupiter is conjunct Saturn in Aquarius on December 21/22. Called the Great Conjunction or the Chronocrator – as in time-keeper, it occurs every 19.85 years. Historically, it was so linked to new rulers and sovereignty that olden day aspirant Emperors and Empresses would wait for it. There is even evidence of calendars deliberately botched to give a reign more credibility.

Jupiter has always been associated with the big-end of town; it’s your go-to planet for wealth and being boss. Saturn marked the known edges of the galaxy for millennia. So the conjunction was congruent with wealth and power, an imprimatur to rule. Not only that, but their alignments also form far greater cycles of 60 years/180 years and so on. They’re the basis of many calendars, Feng Shui and astro-financial predictions.

The Great Conjunction has symmetry: It runs in elements – Fire for 180 years, then Water and so on. Each conjunction trines an earlier one in specific, numerically significant combinations too ornate to go into here. It’s easily the most written-about astrological phenomenon in history. Michaelangelo’s David was launched to the public at the exact moment of Jupiter conjunct Saturn in Cancer. It was probably the ‘bright star’ above the Bethlehem stable where Jesus was born and writers like Chaucer saw it as undoing the ill-effect of Saturn.

So every 200 years or so, the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction switches elements. From December 21/22, the cycle changes to Air, beginning with Jupiter-Saturn in Aquarius. It’s the first Air cycle** since the 15th Century. It’s more Age of Aquarius-ish than whatever it was people were talking about in the Sixties.

For the avid astro-fiends and historians, here is a list of the conjunction dates since 2092 BC. But if you’re wondering how this could influence you, listen up.

First of all, it occurs at Zero Aquarius so Capricorn 28 until Aquarius 5 are potent areas in your personal birth chart. You can tell what/where they are in your chart via an Astral DNA report. That’s a zone where you can successfully found something utterly new and expect it to endure. Somehow, the disruption of 2019 and early 2020 will contribute.

It ends the Earth cycle, which began in 1842. Notably, that was the year that the Opium War (between the United Kingdom and China) was ended with the Treaty of Nanking and subsequent ceding of Hong Kong control to Britain. It was 20 years after the start of the First Industrial Revolution – that began with a loose triple conjunction of Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto in Pisces.

2020’s Jupiter-Saturn conjunction has the feeling of a new financial system and paradigm, one that will also involve old treaties set aside and new ones (hopefully) negotiated. It’s been in the works for ages and it’s nothing that the first part of this series would not prep you for.

But timing-wise, see the Saturn-Pluto/CV-19 as cathartic, May-June as a nebulous but relatively calm phase and July-December/January as geopolitical upheaval. Trade and/or cyber conflict is likely to intensify, along with anger from people who put their everything into the old system and don’t want to lose revenue (New trend: Billionaire Activists) or be trapped with a gigantic amount of bubble-era debt. Potential Surprise Trend: The government getting a better grip on the environment and serving its citizens.

To bank on ‘back to normal’ or slack off on immune-boosting protocols would put you in – I believe – too tenuous a position for July onward. Aim to arrive at the December Solstice and Jupiter-Saturn in Aquarius fully ready to make/create/benefit from the new scene.

*Zap Zone is my term for Cardinal Squares – Ninety-degree aspects between any of the Cardinal Signs – Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn – are more overt and dramatic than the others. 2012 until 2015 was an on-off Zap Zone with Uranus in Aries square Pluto in Capricorn. July till January is like that but condensed. It’s the finale of the era that began in the early Eighties. 

By default, the Daily Horoscopes offer individual guidance through this sped-up Zap Zone. Any aspect from Mars in Aries to one of your unique planets, Sun, Moon, or points is a zapper. The delineations will show where it’s influencing you the most as well as the exact dates, down to the minute. With awareness, these sorts of alignments become opportunistic short-cuts and anti-fragility. 

**The second to last Jupiter-Saturn cycle before an element shift is always in the element from the next series. So the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction of 1980 was in Libra. In 1802, a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in Virgo broke the run of the Fire element, previewing the Earth series that ran from 1820 until now.