The Afghanistan Taliban government’s increasingly repressive measures, described by one woman living there as Islamic fascism, are causing growing dissatisfaction among the Afghan population and continuing international isolation. Despite promises to the contrary when the USA withdrew in 2021, stricter morality laws have been enforced with girls and women banned from attending secondary school and university plus plus plus.
An Afghanee woman anonymously described the government there: “It controls everything from what we wear and where we go and most importantly, what we are allowed to think. Women are denied education – removed from all areas of life, our voices and presence erased from society. Democracy and human rights are completely ignored. Thousands of innocent children are being educated in Taliban’s schools to become adversaries of women’s rights, democracy, progress and freedom. Through extreme religious indoctrination, they are being shaped into a serious threat to the entire world.”
There are hints of rebellions and disruptions ahead with transiting Uranus upending the Afghanistan 19 August 1919 12am Kabul chart at the moment and more so through 2025 with tr Uranus square the Sun, conjunct the Moon and square Uranus. The population (Moon) may well have reached its tolerance limits. The Venus in Virgo is also catching the running Pisces/Virgo Lunar and Solar Eclipses right through into early 2026. And the Solar Arc Neptune will be in an undermining square to the Sun by 2025; at the same time as tr Uranus is square the Saturn from mid 2025 into 2026.
Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada who took over as Taliban Supreme Leader on 15 August 2021 also has Venus in late Virgo on his Term chart being triggered by the eclipses running on for nearly two years. His Term chart has a yod onto the Sun from Neptune sextile Pluto hinting at an erratic approach to stamping its authority and identity – and that is being jolted by tr Uranus square the Solar Arc Sun now and into 2025. Though it is a chart with a strong Jupiter which can bring undeserved good luck.
The original Taliban Afghanistan government of 4 April 1996 is also showing signs of uncertainty and considerable unrest ahead with tr Neptune (Scheat) conjunct the Saturn in final degree Pisces with Solar Arc Uranus square the Pluto in 2024/25 and tr Pluto conjunct the Uranus in 2026/27.
It’s tempting though not always helpful to be optimistic about positive changes lying ahead. But with the Afghanistan chart having a yod of Mars sextile Venus inconjunct Uranus – and the Uranus getting a sharp elbow from transiting Uranus from mid 2025 onwards there is no doubt the country will be shifted force majeure onto a new path.
I have never understood religious fundamentalists’ fear of women rolling right back to the mediaeval Vatican. Extreme Neptune misogynists.
Just a glimmer of hope then. Thank you Marjorie
‘Extreme Neptune misogynists. I genuinally do not understand what this means and I have a pretty good understanding of the fundamentals of Astology. Since when is Neptune mysoginistic? oppression of women a Pisces issue? Is it a generational thing that shows in historical charts of events? Neptune is far to flip floppy to be responsible alone for aeons of mistreament of women in society, honestly it’s just not dark enough or driven enough to get the job done.
I accept that religious issues are connected to Neptune but sexism and mysogyny goes way beyond religion. I think that Uranus and Pluto have more involvement in this and it feels weird to just throw it all at Neptune and Pisces and call it a day – also Scheat has nothing to do directly with women so I do not know where that connection is coming from.
I find the regular ‘blame Neptune!’ on this site takes strange, so I will just put it down to the sheer amount of Virgo energy here lol feel free to correct me if there is genuine evidence out there of Neptune = women bad
Nazi doctor Josef Mengele and serial killer of teenage boys John Gacy – both massively Neptunian.
Yes, and there are more than a few Pisces Sun serial killers too. Richard Ramirez the Night Stalker, 28 February, 1960 for instance – Pisces Sun, Moon, Mercury. Neptune in Scorpio square Mars and Venus in Aquarius, and trine the Pisces Sun. Claimed to worship Satan, adding a ‘religious’ element perhaps.
I agree Marie, it is odd.
The problem I suppose is negative Neptune effects include; confusion, delusions, obscuring, shapeshifting, misrepresentation, often seen in the charts of murderers.
Then there is Neptune’s idealism which can be good, but can also be very bad indeed it is excessive and when there are afflictions involving Mars, Saturn, Uranus and Pluto. Then it can lead to injustice and tyranny.
That’s my view anyway.
Nevertheless, we all have free will, and a chart heavily afflicted by Neptune does not mean you are bound to end up a bad person.
I always think of the crime writer P D James who made such good and creative use of the difficult aspects in her chart.
Marie – you seem to have misinterpreted “extreme Neptune misogynists”.
Neptune is describing the mysognists, not misogynists describing Neptune.
Sheat is not the only major fixed star to be activated recently, we’ve also had Uranus crossing Algol and even Regulus activated by transiting yod from Pluto/Neptune. All these things are in the brew
Yes, this is Pluto’s final retrograde and it will re enter Aquarius on November 20th this year. At the 29th degree you can see its impact on individuals in the news right now with powerful individuals like Sean Combs (Mars 29 Capricorn) and Prince Andrew (Venus 28 Capricorn) facing the music.
To be honest I did mean extreme Neptune misogyny. It has always fascinated/obsessed me this connection between organised religion/spirituality and an anti-women worldview.
Carl Jung associated Christianity with the Age of Pisces – admittedly Jesus was pro-women but that didn’t last long after the zealots got a grip on the organization.
Islam got under way in the late 6th Century when Saturn Uranus Pluto in Pisces was square Neptune. During the Al Quaeda years many of the terrorists had charts that resonated strong with Neptune and/or Pisces.
Even Tibetan Buddhism was largely focused on all-male monasteries. Judaism reportedly has certain adherents thanking their god everyday they were not born a woman. What gives with religion?
It obviously it is not the whole story about Neptune since it has produced top level mathematicians, creative types and top athletes etc etc.
I suppose in part it is something to do with denial of the flesh and its passions which supposedly serve as a distraction from a “holy” vocation. Or maybe just mummy issues writ large.
The Medusa myth was alive in the debate. Trump could not bring himself to look at Kamala as if he feared her gaze would turn him into stone. A woman will bring him down, which will drive him and many of his followers up the wall. The end of Pluto in Capricorn is also the end of extreme partiarchy. The Saturn-Neptune conjunction of 2025-26 should bring a resurgence and reaffirmation of the rights of women.
He has a natal Venus Saturn conjunction in Cancer (quincunx Moon in Sagittarius).
The taliban are repressive and from the middle ages but ironically, just like Iranians, most normal Afghans are relatively modern regarding women compared to many other muslim countries.
‘I have never understood religious fundamentalists’ fear of women rolling right back to the mediaeval Vatican. Extreme Neptune misogynists.’
Neptune’s position on the star, Scheat and at final degree of the Zodiac seems to have ramped up hatred of women and not just in Afghanistan, where women have been forbidden to speak or sing in public. Recently I saw an interview with an American, Trump supporting self-styled misogynist where he states quite openly that he hates women and wants to take their rights back to the Middle Ages and another who wanted in his words ‘to burn childless women alive.’ When Taylor Swift endorsed Harris recently, Elon Musk’s response was a creepy and unpleasant threat to impregnate her. The case of Dominique Picot’s horrific crimes against his wife, Gisele has shocked France. I don’t understand male hatred of women either. My mother always said of woman-hating men: ‘they truly fear us, they project their own darkness onto us because they are too cowardly to face it within themselves. They have founded religions and ideologies and institutions in order to convince themselves of our inferiority.’ And it strikes me how very apt the Medusa/Perseus myth is here, tied up as it is with the constellation of Pegasus, Poseidon the rapist and the fixed star, Schea at 29 Pisces.
Yes, the story of Medusa, Poseidon/Neptune, Perseus and Pegasus has been reflected in our current astrology this year – Neptune with Scheat, the mutable eclipses, Uranus with Algol/Medusa…..The fear and hatred of the Gorgon’s Head, and Medusa’s own understandable rage at what happened to her after she was raped by Poseidon seems to be an especially notable theme at the moment. Not that it isn’t always around.
The fear and mistrust of women, their fertility and sexuality, and on and on sadly lies further back in human history. One hint of this arises in the ancient Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, parts of which are said to be 4,000 years old. The story of the handsome hero, Gilgamesh, includes an episode where he rejects the amorous advances of the great goddess Ishtar – mother goddess, lover, war goddess and so on. Here’s an example of the scornful insults he throws at her, while accusing her of cruelty towards all her former lovers:
“What could I offer
the queen of love in return, who lacks nothing at all?
Balm for the body? The food and drink of the gods?
I have nothing to give to her who lacks nothing at all.
You are the door through which the cold gets in.
You are the fire that goes out. You are the pitch
that sticks to the hands of the one who carries the bucket.
You are the house that falls down. You are the shoe
that pinches the foot of the wearer. The ill-made wall
that buckles when time has gone by. The leaky
water skin soaking the water skin carrier.”
—Tablet VI, Epic of Gilgamesh
Also worth considering the ancient and terrifying Greek Erinyes or Roman Furies, female deities who wreaked vengeance on those whose crimes transgressed social ‘norms’, such as murdering family members. They were often called the Eumenides, a euphemism designed not to attract their attention or wrath.
Fear of feminine rage, and angry goddesses, may be one of the threads in the tragic story of one half of humanity turning upon the other? Tantric Kali and Egyptian Sekhmet also spring to mind. In western astrology, we don’t seem to have a place for these figures – although possibly the sometimes fearful attitudes towards eclipses may contain a little of this, if the Moon is considered to be a mother symbol, and also associated with witches. But we’ve mostly lost sight of the capricious nature of Venus/Aphrodite, her original independence, and links with the wild oceans of the world. Perhaps the use of Black Moon Lilith is significant, often associated with a darker or more hidden symbolism in current astrological writings?
Anyway, here’s something about those snaky Furies:
“On the stage, however, and in works of art, their fearful appearrance was greatly softened down, for they were represented as maidens of a grave and solemn mien, in the richly adorned attire of huntresses, with a band of serpents around their heads, and serpents or torches in their hands. With later writers, though not always, the number of Eumenides is limited to three, and their names are Tisiphone, Alecto, and Megaera.” theoi.com
The Furies were sometimes said to have been born from the blood of Uranus falling on the Earth/Gaia, or from Nyx – Night. So with tr Uranus aligned with the Medusa/Algol the whole theme seems to be packing quite a snake-haired punch! I see the Moon for Afghanistan 1919 is 27 Taurus, Algol’s current home is 26 Taurus.
It’s all in Aeschylus’s Oresteia, Jane. I think Liz Greene goes into this in her ‘Astrology of Fate’? It may be another of her books, but she looks at the curse of the House of Atreus and how that affects the generations. It’s the ‘pick-me’ goddess, Athena who casts the final vote at Orestes’ trial which acquits him. The Erinyes are then known as the Eumenides, which translates as ‘the kindly ones’.
Thanks VF, I will look for my copy of that! The Eumenides euphemism has a touch of that old theatrical thing “The Scottish Play” about it I feel. Occurs to me that the ancient, female Fates were also said to operate outside the realms of human beings and the gods, weaving and snipping the thread of life and so on. Nemesis was also able to influence the lives of the Olympians I think, and carry on or delay retribution for generations. Ancient female powers everywhere you look! I wonder if the Moon’s Nodes and Black Moon Lilith point resonate with any of this somewhere?
Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, the Spinner, the Alotter and the Inevitable or the Morai as they were known, the children of the Goddess of night, Nyx. The Norse tradition has the three giantesses, the Norns – Urðr (or wyrd) meaning ‘fate, Verðandi, meaning ‘happening’ and Skuld, meaning ‘debt’ or ‘obligation’ who tend to and nourish the roots of the world tree from their sacred spring. It’s interesting how these are all perceived as feminine and how chaos itself is associated with the feminine. Yes, the Wyrd Sisters from the Scottish Play are of course drawn from this particular thread of ancient mythology.
Yes, Virgoflake, it is from the The Astrology of Fate
here’s the passage:
Orestes had been banished to Phokis. The god Apollo visited him there, and commanded him to return to Argos to avenge his father’s death, threatening dire punishments if he attempted to shirk the deed. So Orestes returned in disguise, and plotted in secret with his sister Elektra. First they murdered Aegisthos, their mother’s lover, and then Orestes stabbed his own mother to death. Although Orestes had obeyed the command of the god Apollo, he had violated the law of the Erinyes, defenders of mother-right and avengers of the murder of blood-kin. So the Erinyes pursued Orestes all over Greece and drove him horribly mad. Eventually he begged sanctuary before the altar of the goddess Athene at Athens. Athene, taking pity on him yet recognising also the right of the Erinyes to their prey, placed the case before the supreme court at Athens. Both Apollo and the Erinyes pleaded their causes before the human judges. When the vote was taken, it was equal; so Athene placed her deciding vote on the side of Orestes, and offered the Erinyes in exchange an altar and honourable worship in her land. The Erinyes were afterward called Eumenides, ‘the kindly ladies’, and Orestes returned a free man to Argos and married Harmonia the daughter of Menelaos and Helen. So the curse on the line of Tantalos was spent.
Thank you, Lucy!
The Epic of Gilgamesh may actually depict the changing from the female deity to the male. As he goes on a journey to find immortality. This could sum up the fertility of the goddess’s, who may have been envied by the males. Females have the power to give life and bear their Son’s. It is the continuity of all life. Whereas the male passes on the Y DNA male chromosome , the women passes on X chromosome – the chromosome of the birth of both sexes. Throughout life this is the one power a woman still has over a man. Even today men wish to give birth. For some this power is overbearing. First came the Earth Goddess, then a God in the image of man only. All powerful over women. For each male leader there is a woman who produced him. A woman who they were vulnerable to whilst in their infancy. Yesterday Marjorie added Marquis de Sade’s chart, it struck me how his Moon/Uranus midpoint fell in Scorpio with Pluto also in that sign. A child growing up is influenced by their mother’s love, man’s need for power and sex can lead to a powerful aphrodisiac. With a fear of loathing of the moth – torture? The Rape of Persephone relates this story well.
@VF
Hatred of women comes from religion especially Christianity.
Women are depicted as either talking men into disobeying God ( Eve, Sarah) or as women who used sex to lead a man to his downfall (Delilah).
There were some heroines in the Bible but as it is human nature people tend to remember the negative over the positive.