Of cyclical backlash: revisiting the astrology of how we got here

 

In his Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present, historian/analyst Fareed Zakaria suggests that our current precarious situation in the U.S. (and in much of Europe) has its roots in the “hyper-globalization” of the 1990s and the deep economic fallout that followed from 2007-on. 

This makes sense looking back: the 1990s were in large part consumed with the disintegration of the then-Soviet union and the transformation of former soviet republics into a more democracy-minded (or at least more free-market minded) Eastern European bloc. 

And all of this unfolded in the midst of the "hyper-globalization" that Zakaria cites and in the very early days of two critical Saturn cycles:

        --the Saturn-Uranus cycle that launched in the final degree of Sagittarius (within minutes of being         in Capricorn) in February 1988, and 

        --the Saturn-Neptune cycle that kicked off roughly 11 degrees later in that same sign in March               1989. 

Between both cycles, the corporate world was giddy with new found markets and new found Power-writ-large--often gained by tearing down corporate structures and "globalizing" them. Workers who were downsized, right-sized, replaced by the boundless availability of cheaper offshore labor or who lost their healthcare coverage in the mess that ensued were not so impressed.

As Zakaria (and others) have suggested, those heady late 1980s-early 1990s years paved the way for the turmoil and dysfunction of our times, and it's no coincidence that both of the Saturn cycles that took off in Capricorn now nearly 45 years ago are now in the waning days of their 3Q phases. Neptune is due to ingress Aries at the end of March 2025 and Saturn will catch up with it in February 2026 at 45 minutes into that sign; for its part, Uranus will enter Gemini in April 2026 and will shortly after begin returning to its radix Sibly position of 8+Gemini, a transit that could very well coincide with volatile times, especially involving workers, the military and other 6th house issues. 

So, even though it will take until June 2032 for Saturn and Uranus to complete their 1988 cycle and begin anew at 28+Gemini, we are likely to be feeling the impact of a volatile Saturn-Uranus 3Q phase in our everyday lives. Will this long stretch from now to 2032 coincide with the Trump regime's autocratic experiment? Unfortunately, the Saturn-Uranus cycle has been known in history to support (and perhaps even promote) this type of struggle, but the bottom line, as always, will be determined by how we choose to use the energies in play. Our 1770s Revolutionary War was fought during the fiery first quarter of an Aries Saturn-Uranus cycle, which King George III might have expected to favor his rule, but that cycle was what we made of it in the end. Planets don't care if we are free from tyranny--that's our job.

As for the fallout from the 2007-08 Stock Market crash and housing crisis that Zakaria alludes to above, the entire Obama administration (2009-2017) bridged that rough period with our current situation, and it inspired not only a race-related backlash, but also ended up scapegoating Barack Obama for the economic mess created by the preceding administration. And for not being able to resolve the wars that the prior administration launched in the wake of the 9/11/2001 attacks in New York city.  

That “taint” of unresolved wars and economic crises, of course, spilled over on Biden in ways both blatant and subtle. Biden finished what Obama was never quite able to accomplish with the war in Afghanistan, but our pullout in August 2021—mandated by an agreement Trump made with the Taliban before leaving office the first time—was shocking at best. Biden moved forward with a strong, pro-worker/middle class economic agenda and stronger climate change-sensitive environmental agenda than Obama was ever able to, but the corporate pushback deepened greatly during Biden's administration and was undoubtedly one big reason the billionaire class came out strongly for another Trump administration. He would give them another tax break...Biden threatened to make them "pay their fair share." The nerve!

Bottom line, this support now amounts to an oligarchic vanguard that is poised to do Trump's bidding from day one and has financed an actual plan called Project 2025 that would not only destroy our democratic institutions, but it would also pull the rug out from under everyday Americans in everything from healthcare, social security and education to civil and reproductive rights, and it would turn back the clock on our collective response to the climate crisis. 

It sounds dystopic, but the "blueprint" (as the Project people like to call it) lays it all out in black and white. The nation's purpose going forward--it's imagined "mandate"--would be to feed corporate profits above all else and to reward billionaire "fixers" who do the dirty work of streamlining our federal government into a lean/mean autocracy that answers only to Christian nationalist ideals. It'll be every man/woman/child for themselves: if you're not white, male and wealthy, you're expendable. You think the price of eggs was bad in recent times?

Perhaps the excesses of the corporate world should be no surprise to us at this moment: in fact, the concentration of Capricorn energy that focused the world around globalization in the 1980s and 90s has only been empowered and emboldened by Pluto's recently completed transit through billionaire happy Capricorn and especially by its transiting return to our national Sibly Pluto. Add to that the fact that we are still in the 1st quarter of the Capricorn Saturn-Pluto cycle that launched in January, 2020, reinforcing the so-called 1%'s throttle-hold on the levers of American government power. This form of power is known as "oligarchy," and we can be sure that the 1% now intends to use it to maximum advantage, with MAGA billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy about to take a wrecking ball to the Federal government workforce, among other things. 

We can all conjure up horror stories about federal bureaucracy, but in fact, our security, well being and livelihoods often depend upon the professionals who operate in various federal departments. The infrastructures that underlie American life can't simply be defunded for the sake of greater tax breaks to the super wealthy. You think the roads and bridges are bad now? And for those who thought "defund the Police" was an extreme, wrong-headed stance, imagine defunding every agency that keeps the lights on in your pocket of America...it would be irresponsible and chaotic, full stop.

Recall that Pluto's recent Capricorn transit culminated with its return to our Sibly Pluto (Pluto is still working its way through a final 5 degree separating orb through late 2025) and that Pluto wasn't the only "heavy hitter" impacting the U.S. chart in dramatic ways. In fact, Neptune is still completing its half-return (opposition) to our Sibly Neptune (Virgo), a transit that coincided largely with the Trump years and--like his Big Lie about election 2020--has gradually eroded public trust in our institutions and in America's founding ideals--dynamics, in other words, that have served the cause of deconstructing the American government as we've known it. 

Europe is as threatened with illiberalism (aka fascism) as we are.

 

Even his supporters might agree that Donald Trump has been and promises to remain the perfect agent for the kind of transformative destruction Pluto transits often deliver. Stoking hatred and grievances was the driving force of Trump’s first campaign and these tactics are already being reprised in his new administration--look no further than his nomination of extreme loyalist and QAnon-influenced conspiracy theorist Kash Patel to head the embattled FBI. 

From the very onset of his 2016 campaign, Trump seemed to sense that the nation was sinking into a foul, defiant mood that he could leverage, and the astrology of the day—especially as reflected in the cyclical index numbers—was, indeed, trending more negative by the day as his administration proceeded. A few examples will illustrate:

·        June 16, 2015: Trump took his trip down the golden escalator, announcing his presidential campaign -- the index number was negative (-) 800; shortly thereafter on September 17, 2015, the Jupiter-Neptune cycle achieved 2Q opposition (9/2015), putting that cycle into waning territory, so deepening the negative numbers by over 300 points.

·        November 26, 2015: by this time the Saturn-Neptune cycle had reached its 3Q waning square, with the chart for that day clocking in at negative (-) 1205. Only the Jupiter-Uranus, Uranus-Neptune, Uranus-Pluto and Neptune-Pluto cycles offered positive numbers.

·        January 12, 2020: a powerful new Saturn-Pluto cycle launched in Capricorn this day, lifting the index numbers by about 360 points, but at a negative (-) 1599, it felt less like a lift and more like a warning shot that the election year looming ahead was bound to be a titanic power struggle. By the end of 2020, the Jupiter-Saturn cycle had launched anew in Capricorn, as well, lifting the index again, but not enough to spare us from what was soon to come.

·        January 6, 2021: not a cycles milestone, but a moment of crisis in American history that was reflected in the negative (-) 1300 index number. Many people were waving Confederate and Christian Nationalist flags at this attack on the Capitol, which was baffling then, but more understandable now that Trump has been re-elected on a Christian Nationalist agenda. The U.S. Civil War was at least fought over deep cultural commitments and what both sides considered noble causes at the time. That conflict was launched with 8/10 waxing cycles and a positive index number of 90; January 6^th was about supporting one man’s refusal to accept defeat by violently perpetrating his “Big Lie”—as a nation, this was hardly a noble, positive or uplifting cause.   

·        November 5, 2024: flashing forward to our recent election, the index reveals a considerable shift upward, but it’s still been lingering in overall negative territory with (-) 12. Two recently renewed cycles contributed to this upward swing: Jupiter-Neptune (April, 2022) and Jupiter-Uranus (April, 2024). With only two cycles remaining in waning mode until at least 2026, the positive numbers will be increasing for some time after the election. It's hard to say at this juncture how these lighter numbers will manifest, but I sense from the determined resistance of people on Bluesky that the Trump administration will not find an easy path ahead for its Project 2025 "blueprint."

 

L-R, Margaret Hoover, Fareed Zakaria.

 

In his recent Firing Line conversation with Margaret Hoover, Zakaria characterizes America's situation today as being in the “midst of a full-blown cultural backlash”—“too much change, too fast.” The Obama years did highlight progressive causes like universal health care, gay marriage and transgender rights, but if other gnarly, intertwined issues hadn’t converged in this same packed timeframe—like a global immigration crisis, the growing climate emergency, a global pandemic and the planned obsolescence of human labor that seems to be looming with AI development—would we find ourselves in the deeply divided state we’re in this election year? 

In fact, the global disorder that exists today--take your pick of imperiled governments and regions (So. Korea, Syria, Georgia, Germany, Romania, France, Russia, and a large swath of the Middle East) seems to shake out in favor of protecting democracy or at least rejecting thuggish authoritarians. Perhaps the backlash pendulum has swung the other way for now? This is a story that bears watching, but for now I trust that the increasingly positive cyclical index numbers have something to do with this trend.

Meanwhile, technological progress (Jupiter-Uranus) such as the so-called AI Revolution often seems to operate according to its own logic, which in keeping with Uranus, is often disruptive to the larger society in jobs lost, in whole industries made obsolete and in new pressures on individuals and families. On the flip side of that, however, who could have predicted in 1980 that we’d all be carrying powerful, miniaturized computers in our pockets and basically managing our lives “online” by 2024? 

With the 2024 Jupiter-Uranus cycle now in its opening phase, we can expect a lot of attention to be paid to this for at least the coming seven years, and we may find that many of the developments feel quite positive, despite the precipitous spike we've been seeing lately in cyber-hacking incidents, cyber-ransom, etc. In fact, I suspect this spike is more about the Jupiter-Neptune cycle's impending first quarter (it flirted with it this past October (just before Jupiter turned RX in communications-related Gemini, widely square Neptune's continuing sojourn in Pisces). 

Cyber warfare is elusive and difficult to control, but it achieves its goal: to gradually erode people's confidence in security systems, which leaves openings for greater governmental control. If we're upset at the prospect of Tik-Tok being banned, wait until Trump tries to "protect" us from other media outlets we love because they don't flatter him. I fear some of this may come to pass while the Saturn-Neptune cycle finishes out its current cycle in 2026.

Returning for a moment to Jupiter-Uranus and its drive to develop new technologies, it's worth noting that the gradual process of normalizing new technologies in society always takes time—which is why these disruptive periods are stimulated by Jupiter cycles but are gradually smoothed out and integrated into our daily lives by the dynamics of the Saturn cycles. Over time, we humans can usually be counted on to find ways to adapt to and eventually embrace change.  If we have competent leadership and humane governance (Saturn takes the lead here), we can hope to accomplish this without leaving too many behind.  

 

But then there are those who don’t aspire to really lead because leading would require broadly sharing the benefits of progress—their goal is simply Power-writ-large and the lion’s share of the “spoils.” For them, “divide and conquer” tactics and tearing down our trust in social institutions work best, and what divides us better than deeply-rooted cultural issues marinated in sensationalism and propaganda? Issues like race, gender, religion, perceived status and conflicting perspectives about the most fundamental ideas (like what constitutes “freedom”) are all great fodder for the dividers. These divisions don’t just arise naturally; they are cultivated and goal-driven. 

In fact, dividing the public has been approached like a blood sport in recent years: the COVID pandemic could have united us in the fight against a common “enemy,” but no, that would have been too easy…. twisting it into a chaotic, self-destructive political football laced with conspiracy theories is probably still paying nice dividends to key players, especially fringe extremists like anti-vaxxer Robert Kennedy Jr., nominated by Trump to head our Department of Health and Human Services. 

As NPR put it, Kennedy was being charged by Trump with "remaking American healthcare."   Remaking it to do what? Losing children and seniors to preventable disease? IMHO, Kennedy endangering the American public with his unscientific crusade against vaccines is far from "fixing" health care. 

Last time Trump was in office he tried to "fix" healthcare by taking it away from millions of Americans...what makes anyone think he cares about our healthcare this time around? He cares about cutting back on federal outlays and coverage and on basically destroying the ACA, Medicare and Medicaid from within (mostly by promising more benefits if people opt for privatized plans) instead of leaving it to Congress. Bottom line, the blessings we have enjoyed with our federal public health experts and the systems we rely on for our care (as imperfect as they are) could be on life support in a matter of weeks and I find it very difficult to believe that this seriously backward move is really what Trump supporters wanted. 

 

 

Final thoughts

So historically, it’s difficult to dispute Zakaria’s conclusions about the social and political dynamics that have brought us to our present moment. Maybe this should be no surprise: we seem to be good at taking a few key steps forward, only to then hit a wall and end up taking multiple steps back, especially during times of economic stress. Trouble is, systems are in place these days to make sure that economic stress will be a reliable constant for millions, and if nothing changes that, we can probably count on generations of "divide and conquer" tactics pulling our strings like we're all part of some cosmic puppet show. And the more we are kept busy fighting each other, the more impossible it will be to strengthen our democracy against those who find it inconvenient or not "corporate" enough.

So, yes, we’ve been through a lot since the “hyperglobalized 1990s” that Fareed Zakaria writes about in his Age of Revolutions, connecting that period to the 2008 financial crisis and to our present situation. Astrologically, the 1990s functioned like a pressure cooker that would finally explode in our faces with the contested 2000 election and the tragic events of September 11, 2001. It’s difficult to disagree with Zakaria’s analysis—especially once the outer planets have their say!

Even so, as Winston Churchill has been credited saying, “Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted."  The "right thing" isn't always easy to discern, of course--it's a matter of which worldview prevails. Democracy or autocracy? A government of the People or of the billionaires who are busy eroding and buying our national institutions out from under us? (can't get stuck paying taxes!). This goes beyond one election and one pair of candidates, but I don't believe it's too late to say enough is enough and to seek out better possibilities.

For much more on the transformative times we have been living through, or to perhaps explore the basics of cycles-related astrology,  please see my latest publication, A Guide to the Astrology of Outer-Planetary Cycles, Volume 1: the Jupiter Cycles. Both the Kindle e-book and paperback versions are now available at this link!

Thank you so much for your kind attention over the life of this blog—any and all questions or feedback are welcome and much-appreciated!

Keep it light, my friends!

 

Raye Robertson is a practicing astrologer, writer and retired educator. A graduate of the Faculty of Astrological Studies (U.K.), Raye focuses on mundane, collective-oriented astrology, with a particular interest in current affairs, U.S. history, culture and media, the astrology of generations, and public concerns such as education and health. Her articles on these topics have appeared in several key astrology journals over the years, and she has authored three books on mundane astrology topics that are currently available on Amazon Kindle. For information about individual chart readings, contact: robertsonraye@gmail.com.

© Raye Robertson 2024. All rights reserved.

 

 

 

Where the personal meets the collective: looking back at a critical cyclical turning point

 

“The world is always bigger than one’s own focus…”—M.C. Richard, Centering

A woman astronaut looked back at her first voyage into space: “Up there,” she says, “looking down on our beautiful blue planet, with no borders anywhere to be seen, I felt so at one with humanity…and, I have to tell you, I was especially happy to be away from my neighbor’s annoying dog for a few days.”

To my astrologer’s ear, this anecdote evokes Neptune, which operates—as every planet does—on different dimensions of existence. The feeling of being “at one with humanity” is a profound, spiritual perk of Neptune, while avoiding the neighbor’s dog is a nice bit of personal, Neptunian escapism.

That perhaps silly example provided my opening for an article that was published in The Mountain Astrologer in Feb/Mar 2018, entitled “The Disappearing Personal/Collective Divide: Helping Clients to Navigate Insecure Times.” As I recall, it was inspired at the time by not only the lingering impact of the 2008-10 “great” recession here in the U.S., but also by a rush of news about technological developments that seemed sure to cause dislocations in the job market and more havoc of the sort from which people were still trying to recover.

From today’s perspective, those times almost seem innocent compared with what we’ve experienced since as a nation, but it all makes sense, looking back: in the midst of a 7-year mutual reception between Uranus and Neptune (2003-2010, from Pisces to Aquarius), a fiery new late Sagittarius Jupiter-Pluto cycle clicked into place in December, 2007, followed by a new late Aquarius Jupiter-Neptune cycle that conjoined our national Moon in May, 2009, perhaps enabling the Opioid crisis and a host of mental health dysfunctions we are experiencing as a nation yet today.

Then, on June 8, 2010, Jupiter and Uranus convened at 00°+Aries, with Uranus disposing a late Aquarius Neptune conjunct 00°+Pisces Chiron a semi-sextile away—all keen to weaponize deep national divisions and wounds that we might have forgotten existed. Could there be a more blatant erasure of the collective/personal divide than our tortured history with race and the caste system it has sustained all these years? Some benefit; some suffer; the shadow boxing goes on. 

 

 

Clearly the post mutual reception period acted like a key turning point.

So, my goal in writing that 2018 piece was to explore how astrologers can tease out the sometimes subtle personal/collective connections that their clients are faced with every day in trying to plan for the future. As I put it then, it’s healthy to recognize that these domains can’t help but overlap (and often collide) in every realm of life: Employment, career, relationships, family and community life, not to mention our relationship with the environment and geopolitics, are all at stake in these overlaps.

Underlying these concerns, of course, is the universal human need for security, so while we might like to tune out from the broader concerns of our times, as the astronaut did with that annoying “dog,” there’s no real escaping that collective concerns do impact us very directly.

We’ve all endured a recent prime example of this, of course—the 2020-22 COVID-19 pandemic that we were all forced to navigate and survive the best we could. On some level, we all have scars from that period: just hearing the latest death tolls on the news every night became traumatic, even if those tolls were describing others’ grief and not our own.  

 

Nurses linked patients with families during the worst COVID times.

 

We all carry with us at least one searing experience from that time: my dearest friend’s 96-year-old mother died alone in a hospital bed, forced to say goodbye to her family by phone; globally, Humanity lost millions of loved ones who died alone in hospital beds, comforted only by the heroic nurses who allowed their hearts to be ravaged every day they reported for duty—some, at the cost of their own lives. The virulent contagion of this virus confronted us with just how deeply and completely we are “in this together,” for better or worse.

This is how Neptune rolls as the ruler of communicable viral diseases, of course, and the sooner we individually accepted our vulnerability during the COVID crisis, the better we were able to navigate its waves and resist the denialism that followed in its wake. Unfortunately, too many individuals emerged from the pandemic traumatized and dealing with new addictions, coping with their grief and dysfunction by trading one Neptunian malady for another.

And the list of such maladies goes on, haunting our times with gang- and drug-related crises at home and abroad (Haiti and Ecuador come to mind, but they’re not alone) and, critically, with climate change and its known tendency to unleash rising sea levels and destructive weather patterns. How could these collective challenges—all tightly entwined with the thorny (also Neptunian) issue of immigration—not have personal ramifications? Do we pursue Neptunian escapism and dismiss the seriousness of these problems, hoping they will fix themselves? Or do we accept personal and collective responsibility for doing our part, whatever that might be?

Bottom line, individual and collective wellbeing only seem separate; in fact, they are as enmeshed as our individual minds, bodies and spirits are. Or as entangled as our current geopolitical realities are. I would argue here that mundane astrology can help us better grasp these realities and their implications for our personal lives.

For instance, during the worst of COVID, epidemiologists often reminded us that “the virus is in charge,” and that a massive public effort was needed to halt its spread. Instead, too many, from then-president Trump on down to ordinary citizens, turned to conspiracy theories that spun masking, social distancing and vaccination recommendations into a tyrannical plot against us all. Talk about self-sabotage…and for what?

Neptune’s transit through home sign Pisces (ongoing since 2011) has proven to be adept at spawning misinformation and conspiracy theorizing, a type of mental “virus” in its own right and one that seems to undermine the ability of many to think rationally and to approach issues like vaccinations without irrational fears taking over. Of course, rationality and science are the province of Saturn, which can counter Neptunian fog and delusions, but as we’ll see, since reaching their 3Q waning square in 2015, Saturn and Neptune have been ill-at-ease with each other—a situation that came to head during the COVID years. 

What was so difficult about accepting the CDC's well-meaning guidance?

Saturnian institutions like the CDC and the WHO have been undermined over the course of this Saturn-Neptune passage, which weakens all our public health defense mechanisms. Unfortunately for our overall COVID death toll and current public health in the U.S., Saturn is in a particularly weakened relationship relative to Neptune today, transiting in Pisces in the deep balsamic phase of their 1989 cycle (first launched at 12°+Capricorn that March). It will remain in this phase until it reaches a new conjunction in February, 2026.  

If there was any silver lining at all in the COVID crisis, it was that the worst of it was behind us before Saturn entered Neptune-ruled Pisces in March 2023.

To examine this Saturn-Neptune dynamic a bit more closely, let’s briefly consider a chart for the inception of the disease in the U.S. In case it’s not burned into your memory, consider the following bit of history from the U.S. Center for Disease Control’s COVID-19 timeline:

“January 20, 2020—CDC reports the first laboratory-confirmed case of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus in the U.S. from samples taken on January 18 (added emphasis) in Washington state and on the same day activates its Emergency Operations Center (EOC) to respond to the emerging outbreak.”

Displayed below is a noon chart for that infamous January 18^th day, set for Washington, D.C. because the emergency declaration implicated the entire U.S. Before we focus on Saturn and Neptune and the influences they brought to bear in this chart, however, we’ll consider the “big picture” of the chart’s cyclical index numbers.

 

Chart #1. First COVID-19 case found in the U.S., January 18, 2020, 12 p.m. (noon chart, no time known), Washington, D.C. All charts are cast on Kepler 8.0 with Tropical Equal Houses and True Node and courtesy of Cosmic Patterns Software. 

 

 

If you’ve frequented this site, you’ll know that cyclical index numbers are derived from the degrees separating each of the outer planets in their various cycle relationships, as listed in Table 1 below. It follows that the algebraic sum of all ten of these cycle numbers (adding both positive waxing ones and negative waning ones) then becomes the cyclical index number for this particular chart and its moment in time.

Table 1. Cylical index for January 18, 2020 (see Chart #1 above)

Cycle	Waxing angle of separation	Waning angle of separation
Jup-Sat		-347.00
Jup-Ura		-248.03
Jup-Nep		-294.02
Jup-Plu		347.45
Sat-Ura		260.49
Sat-Nep		306.48
Sat-Plu	00.31
Ura-Nep	46.00
Ura-Plu	99.42
Nep-Plu	53.42
Sub-totals*	+200	-1804
Total		-1604

*Figures are rounded to the nearest degree by totaling the minutes column separately from the degrees column and then dividing the total number of minutes by 60 to find any extra degrees.

With so many waning cycles in the mix in this chart, it’s not surprising that the cyclical index total in Table 1 is deeply negative. The more subtle nuances of positive and negative index numbers are a long discussion for another day: suffice to say here that the ups and downs of the index are thought in classic mundane astrology to reflect the social and political “tone” of the times for which they are calculated [1]. These numbers—especially when considered over a stretch of time—can speak to the nation’s trending “mood,” its level of dysfunction and its readiness for change.

But these numbers speak to frozen moments of time, as well: the deeply negative index total above clearly reflects the negative and dysfunctional mood of the nation at the onset of the COVID pandemic, despite the brave faces people put on to meet the challenges.

Turning our focus now to the Saturn-Neptune cycle and the additional influences each planet brought to bear during the pandemic, we see in Chart #1 that on the day of that fateful CDC discovery, the Saturn-Neptune cycle was well into its institution-debilitating 3Q phase, a phase that was being empowered and influenced at that moment by Saturn’s then-recent Capricorn conjunction with Pluto (first exact on January 12^th). 

 

So, there were weighty, even ominous feeling forces at work, feelings that may have inspired the backlash that spiraled as COVID vaccinations (Neptune) were rolled out. Many opposing masking,  vaccination regimens and school closures (so necessary in the beginning) cited the “tyranny” of these collective mandates—looking back, it’s quite possible they were picking up on the potent new Saturn-Pluto “vibes” afloat at the time. Yes, there has been an ongoing drift towards authoritarianism in this nation since 2020, but the government’s response to COVID was the least of it.

Others unhappy with this response, however—or just sinply out to score political points—allowed conspiracy theories about evil vaccination-related plots to overtake their thinking and fill their social media feeds. Saturn and Neptune were more than implicated in all this.

Notice that Saturn and Pluto (Capricorn) tightly squared disruptive Eris (Aries) in this chart: it only took then-president Trump a hot minute to realize that he could politicize the pandemic and could tap into those aggrieved feelings by playing the contrarian—refusing to mask up or promote the vaccinations his CDC had developed. He refused to support the CDC’s recommendations, even to protect those around him (Chris Christie comes to mind!) or the American people. Most outrageously, he pushed ineffective and potentially dangerous vaccination substitutes like hydroxychloroquine and bleach instead. Forbes magazine sums up how seriously Trump was flirting with people’s lives with these actions:

“The former president, Donald Trump, repeatedly promoted the use of hydroxychloroquine in the spring of 2020, as both a preventative against and treatment for Covid-19. He did this despite the drug not having proven effectiveness or safety. According to a study published in the February 2024 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy, the pharmaceutical has now been linked to approximately 17,000 deaths.”

Trump also made a habit of referring to the COVID-19 virus as the “China virus”—blatantly stoking anti-Asian sentiments and behavior and using them to justify his “Zero tolerance” and “Remain in Mexico” anti-immigrant policies at the southern border. The Saturn-Neptune cycle is often significantly involved during fraught immigration-related times, and these were definitely those times.

The 3Q phase of this cycle has the potential of tearing down essential social institutions—we would hope for the sake of building them back better—but as I write this in 2024, we have little reason to hope that the mistrust and animus Trump inspired against the CDC, the World Health Organization and our National Institute of Allergies & Infectious Diseases (headed by the unfairly vilified Dr. Anthony Fauci) will do anything but further debilitate all these institutions.

As it happens, the health and welfare of the People is a major focus of Saturn and Neptune and their cycle in our everyday mundane affairs. During the 2020 crisis, we learned that these two primal “gods” represent natural, biological dynamics operating on the broad collective level (pandemic) that we simply had to come to terms with both individually and collectively if we wanted to move beyond that crisis. Even Trump–through his own hospitalization with the disease—was unable to suspend the laws of Nature, as hard as he tried to ignore and downplay them. Causes will always trigger effects (Saturn), and feedback loops (a specialty of Neptune) can, if we stubbornly accept no limits, cascade totally out of control.

 

Economic and cyclical index trends can have a lot in common.

 

Final thoughts

The good news is, as the COVID pandemic has receded into our rearview mirror as a society, we’ve also experienced some relief from those deeply negative cyclical index numbers weighing us all down in 2020. Every time a new planetary cycle launches, of course, it’s added to the waxing column and begins to elevate the overall index numbers. The day before Saturn and Pluto conjoined in January, 2020, the index total was a whoppingly low -1598; when the planets conjoined the following day (January 12^th), the number rebounded to a still-negative, but upward trending -1240. Yes, we hit bottom as the new 2020 decade dawned—and with COVID it felt like it—but in retrospect, that new Saturn-Pluto cycle can be considered an important turning point.

Since that cycle launched, the index numbers have continued trending up: there’s been a new Jupiter-Pluto cycle (April, 2020), a new Jupiter-Neptune cycle in April, 2022, and most recently, a new Jupiter-Uranus cycle that kicked into gear this past April 20, 2024, bringing the index number up to a modestly negative -153. A minor “twinge” to the body politic compared to the heavy, painful situation in 2020!

Obviously, a lot has transpired since COVID swept across the U.S., and the unfolding higher index numbers have not cured all our national ills, by any stretch. But key indicators like job numbers and economic indicators have been more or less positive. Prices are high, but wages have also gotten a boost in the wake of the pandemic, so people are still traveling, enjoying Taylor Swift concerts, filling sports arenas and driving new cars. Congress is still intensely dysfunctional (the Saturn-Neptune and Saturn-Uranus cycles are still deeply waning) but dedicated (sometimes courageous) persistence on key bills has broken through obstacles and produced some progress.

The tougher news is that the two deeply waning Saturn cycles are likely to continue tearing down and potentially reinventing our national institutions—our ability to get things done as a checks-and-balances democracy, basically. Also threatened are the international institutions that support our leadership on the world stage—for years to come. As noted, the Saturn-Neptune cycle doesn’t refresh itself until February, 2026 and the Saturn-Uranus cycle won’t complete until mid-2032. We can passively or carelessly squander our democracy and succumb to its authoritarian reinvention, or we can take responsibility for safeguarding the best this nation has to offer.

As Benjamin Franklin famously characterized that best: “a Republic, if you can keep it.”

 

 

 

 

Notes

[1] for more on this discussion, see Michael Baigent, Nicholas Campion and Charles Harvey, Mundane Astrology: An Introduction to the Astrology of Nations and Groups, Thorsons, London, 1984, pp. 169-174.

 

Raye Robertson is a practicing astrologer, writer and retired educator. A graduate of the Faculty of Astrological Studies (U.K.), Raye focuses on mundane, collective-oriented astrology, with a particular interest in current affairs, U.S. history, culture and media, the astrology of generations, and public concerns such as education and health. Her articles on these topics have appeared in several key astrology journals over the years, including most recently, the TMA blog. For information about individual chart readings, contact: robertsonraye@gmail.com.

© Raye Robertson 2024. All rights reserved.

 

© Raye Robertson 2020. All rights reserved.