Happy festivities – I hope everyone has some fun despite the panic and confusion around. Stay safe and well.
The Red Kite in mythology is sacred to Isis, the sky goddess of magic and wisdom, and integral to the quest for resurrection. In Shakespeare’s time they were as common as crows, scavenging round London for food and stealing clothes off washing lines. In the 20th Century they were on the edge of extinction until a reintroduction programme brought them back to rural skies in abundance.
Above the fields beyond where I live now on the edge of Cambridgeshire, they swoop and soar in groups of a dozen or more. With a five foot wing span they are quite a sight.
Joan Didion, the literary icon who chronicled the fragmentation of 60s and 70s American culture in her reporting and was a successful screenwriter and novelist as well has died. The 1976 film A Star Is Born was one of her credits and she won the Pulitzer Prize for The Year of Magical Thinking about her own grief following the death of her husband.
Critics said of her:
“In her view she lives in a world of people moved by strange, conflicted, poorly comprehended, and, above all, devious motivations which commit them inevitably to conflict and failure.”
“She was perfectly matched to the times, with her slightly paranoid, slightly hysterical, high-strung sensibility. It was a perfect conjunction of the writer with the moment.”
“Everywhere she went she found the identical set of circumstances: looming chaos, an atmosphere saturated with dread and absurdities described by unwitting participants in clichéd language indicated by quotation marks.”
“She always seems to be writing on the brink of a catastrophe so awful that her only available response is to withdraw into a kind of autism.”
“I have a theatrical temperament,” she once told an interviewer.
Born 5 December 1934 5.55pm Sacramento, California, with an Army Air Corp father she was constantly moved around as a child and had a fractured education. None of which stopped her winning a Vogue essay prize at college and subsequent Vogue magazine job. She married John Gregory Dunne, another journalist, who moved with her into movie writing and fiction.
She did have a workaholic, driven and quite tortured chart. Her New Moon in Sagittarius fell in her hard-working 6th house conjunct her Venus and square a creative Neptune. But it is her Mercury in penetrating Scorpio which is spotlighted with a trine to Pluto and sextile to a 4th house Mars, square Saturn in Aquarius and inconjunct Uranus. She was not a lady who saw life through rose-coloured glasses or took it lightly. Her Jupiter in the performing 5th house was sparsely aspected with one sextile to Neptune. Such a Jupiter tends to be less sociable, tending towards an ivory tower temperament and more weighted down by life.
Her writer’s 21st Harmonic was exceptionally strong; as was her genius/breakthrough 13H; and successful if not always happy 19H.
Her husband John Gregory Dunne, 25 May 1932 8am Hartford, CT, a Sun Gemini with Aquarius Moon, was a cool companion so not a match of passion. Although they stayed married for forty years it was by no means and easy match with a composite Mars Pluto square Uranus in their relationship chart. Though there was also a creative composite Sun opposition Neptune which may have allowed them to gloss over the rougher patches.
Further thoughts from reviewers to better understand how her chart manifested:
“She was, famously and by her own account, diffident, brittle, runtish, prone to migraines, afraid of the telephone.
I brought her biscuits and, handing them over at the door, she looked down at the package as if I’d passed her a rattlesnake. It’s an effect of chain-reading Didion that small moments become overburdened with spurious meaning and, recalling that scene, it seems to me that when she looked back up at me, it was with an expression that indicated, simultaneously, she was touched by the gesture and that, if we were honest, we might also acknowledge it as gaucheness amounting to lunacy.”
“Joan Didion was 5 years old when she wrote her first story, upon the instruction of her mother, who had told her to stop whining and to write down her thoughts. She amused herself by describing a woman who imagines she is about to freeze to death, only to die burning instead. “I have no idea what turn of a 5-year-old’s mind could have prompted so insistently ‘ironic’ and exotic a story,” she later wrote. “It does reveal a certain predilection for the extreme which has dogged me into adult life.”
“The case for the prosecution has been her snobbery, self-absorption, humourlessness, conservatism and overweening privilege.”
“I don’t know what falling in love means,” she told her husband. “It’s not part of my world.”
She wrote: “I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package,” she once wrote. “I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave’s a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that’s what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.”
Russia is fast winding up to become the west’s bogeyman again as it masses military might and nuclear capabilities in the Arctic in a bid to secure its northern coast and open up a key shipping route from Asia to Europe, as well as pose a threat to Northern American coastal areas. It has also scaled up its military resources on its Western border with Ukraine and Eastern Europe, with Putin warning NATO/USA to back off. The EU has also allowed itself to be hemmed in by Putin over the indispensable Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline which will be effective leverage to stop any EU repercussions against his military forays.
His 4th Term chart always did have an air of ruthlessness about it with a composite Mars Pluto in Capricorn in the 6th, which as I recollect is a mundane house ruling the armed forces. That conjunction won’t move to exact by Solar Arc until 2023 but is ramping up with tr Pluto conjunct the Mars now and through 2022. That last can also accompany a sense of being trapped which may reflect the internal situation in Russia.
Through 2022 tr Uranus will conjunct the Putin’s Term Sun from late May onwards for sudden changes of direction which will go along with luck and an adventurous/risk-taking streak as tr Uranus is also opposition the Jupiter. It sits on the Jupiter from July to mid October, returning in 2023. So it’ll be a pro-active year. Where his grip on power moves into a shakier patch will be in 2023/2024 with tr Pluto square the 10th house Uranus.
The Bank of Russia, 13 July 1990, does look stressed this year from May onwards with a catastrophic tr Pluto square the Mars in 2023/24 to fall in line with other global central banks. Economic pressures may unsettle Putin’s plans.
The Russia 8 November 1917 2.12 am chart will be depressed in January with tr Saturn square the Sun and then Mercury; and rocked by tr Uranus in opposition from late April onwards into early 2023 so a year of sudden lurches, jolts and changes. These roll through into 2023 with tr Uranus square the Uranus next year as well. Nothing will be settled.
The Russia 8 December 1991 chart is showing odd ripples of discomfort but it is really 2023 when it gears up for a major turnaround, with a hint of a financial bubble bursting late in 2022 as well.
Relations with the USA will be stressed and undermined in 2022/23. That shows up on the relationship charts with both old and new Russia with tensions running on until the 2025 planetary shift of Neptune and Uranus into new signs. Ditto with NATO.
With Ukraine the high-pressure years with Russia will be 2023/2024. Though the Ukraine chart itself is having a confidence-denting 2022 from May onwards.
There will be ripples of discontent and perhaps a reset of diplomatic ties with the EU and Germany in 2022 with tensions and disappointment running on till 2024.
The USA is the most obviously perturbed by Russia.
The winter Solstice (in the Northern Hemisphere) brings with it the Capricorn Ingress which is one of the four entry points through the year of the Sun into a Cardinal sign.
Capricorn has a duality which is not reflected in its standard interpretation as a coldly ambitious and materialistic sign. The old glyph was of a goat fish, so able to move in both in the realms of Water and of Earth, able to dive deep into the unconscious to come up with imaginative ideas and make them real on dry land. Creative and practical. It is also associated with Janus, the two-faced god – not duplicitous, but able to look back over the year that has been and forward to the one that is coming. A stander on the threshold.
In theory the Ingress chart shows the theme of the months ahead, though there is debate about which of the four in the year works best. Last December’s Capricorn Ingress had the frustrating, scary, trapped Mars square Pluto, a confused Moon Neptune and a high tension Saturn square Uranus – which sounds reasonably descriptive.
Most notable about this Ingress is an emotionally intense Moon opposition Venus Pluto hinting that feelings will run high. The Saturn square Uranus is still in place but it mercifully lacks the blocked Mars Pluto. And there is a smidgeon more Jupiter around – sextile the Sun and square Mars for a surge of uplifting enthusiasm.
Cross the spine-chilling intrigues of King Henry V111’s court and Arabian Nights and you get a whiff of the atmosphere around the £500,000 divorce of Princess Haya, daughter of King Hussein of Jordan, and the youngest of six wives of Sheikh Maktoum, billionaire ruler of Dubai.
She fled Dubai in 2019 saying she was in fear of her life, after discovering the Sheikh had previously abducted two of his daughters – Latifa and Shamsa – and rendered them back to Dubai against their will. Though the affair she had with a British ex-military bodyguard may have soured the marital mood as well. The bodyguard and other security staff blackmailed her, threatening to expose the affair which cost her seven million pounds.
Princess Haya alleged her husband was trying to marry off her 14 year old daughter to Mohammed Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia.
She had claimed £1.4 billion to keep up the lifestyle she was accustomed to, running two multi-million pound properties in the UK and though she got less there is still plenty to cover a substantial “security budget” as well as holidays, salaries and accommodation for a nurse and a nanny, armoured vehicles for the family, and the cost of maintaining various ponies and pets.
The divorce judge didn’t mince his words about the threats she and the two children faced from Sheikh Al-Maktoum, prime minister of the UAE, influential horse-racing owner and erstwhile friend of the Queen.
It takes a fair amount of nerve/courage to face up to this situation and push through a stratospheric divorce claim. She was born 3 May 1974 in Jordan, and is a stalwart Sun Mercury in Taurus; with a hard-edged, used-to-scary-situations Mars Saturn in Cancer square Pluto Moon in Libra; with a hopeful Jupiter square Neptune, trine Mars and sextile Sun. She has a steely core.
It was never going to be an ideal match with her Uranus squaring the Sheikh’s Cancer Sun and her Mars Saturn conjunct his Mercury Uranus in Cancer with her Pluto Moon square – so she was always going to bolt at some point.
His chart, 15 July 1949, assuming the birth date is sound, is not quite as barbaric as his actions sound so it will presumably be the houses which root him in a mediaeval past.
She has a rocky road ahead with her Solar Arc Sun Mercury conjunct her Saturn, square her Pluto and then conjunct her Mars for several years up to the end of the decade.
Add obscene quantities of money to Royals and plant it in the Age of the Tudors you have a tale stranger than fiction.
The EU is in the thick of escalating economic problems with the tectonic plates under its stability shifting. The tr Uranus square tr Saturn is hammering away at its 8th house Taurus Moon and 11th house Uranus and its Solar Arc Mars exactly now. This runs in jolts and jangles throughout this month with increasing gloom in the final days over the New Year and tr Uranus returns for a final upset through February into the middle of March.
There will be an almighty push to rebuild confidence as tr Pluto squares the EU Jupiter from early March onwards, which runs on and off till late 2023. But since that Jupiter is conjunct an overly hopeful Neptune, the coming years may see recurring attempts at uplift running into sharp disappointments.
Then Uranus moves on to square the financial 5th house Venus from mid May, on and off into January 2023, which will throw economic calculations off track. Added onto which the Solar Arc Neptune will conjunct the EU Sun, exact in nine months which is always a damp squib and undermining.
It’ll be an edgy, insecure and disruptive year ahead.
On internal relations with the other major countries. There’ll be upsets and hints of a major turnaround of relations with France this year but substantial ruptures won’t come till 2023. Which doesn’t mean a Frexit but it will mean a jockeying for the power to make radical changes with France rocking the boat.
German relations with the EU look highly confused in 2022 but again it will be 2023 and on before there are major ructions, with the years between 2023 and 2026 being exceptionally fraught.
Italy looks disillusioned and discouraged by EU events this year with tensions erupting but it will be 2024/25 when the real aggro breaks out.
Hungary (1989) oddly will be less affected, still ratty through 2022 and concerned in 2024. But neither they nor Poland (1989) look to be carrying through their threats to walk out. Although their accession chart of 1 May 2004 looks exceptionally droopy and discontented 2021 to 2024.
I wouldn’t have thought (but may of course be wrong) that any of what lies ahead for several years looks terminal to its existence.
Liz Truss, Foreign Secretary, has been named as Frost’s replacement as UK’s Brexit negotiator, on top of her other duties. This either consolidates her power-base or hands her the poisoned chalice of a no-win wrangle ahead along with such a punishing workload that she’ll be less of a threat to Boris’s leadership.
A former employee talked of her ‘unashamed ambition’ and described her as a ‘rottweiler.’ A friends joked “The only difference between Liz when she gets an issue between her teeth and a rottweiler is that the rottweiler will eventually let go.” She reportedly has the methodical mindset of a mathematician, would study data and come up with logical, pragmatic solutions. She was a Remainer but her free-market, small state, libertarian post- Brexit view has made her a favourite with the party grassroots.
She is credited with the £10 billion trade deal signed with Australia last week though questions are being asked about how much its impact has been puffed up.
Born 26 July 1975 Oxford, no birth time, she went to a comprehensive school, then Oxford University, worked as an accountant though was aiming for politics out of university. She was the youngest woman ever to be appointed to cabinet, the first female lord chancellor and justice secretary and now UK’s first female Tory foreign secretary.
She has an attention-seeking Leo Sun trine Neptune and sextile Pluto giving her stratospheric ambitions. It is backed up by an executive-ability focal point Saturn Mercury in Cancer square a lucky and risk-taking Jupiter in Aries opposition Uranus. Such a Saturn is a good organizer though can be domineering and doubles up on the driving determination to succeed. She also has Mars in doggedly stubborn Taurus. Her Moon is Pisces probably opposition Venus in hard-working Virgo square Neptune. Such a Neptune can be disorganized, absent-minded and escapist which will pull against her ramrod-rigid Saturn.
For someone who has just been handed a starring role she’s not looking too happy. Admittedly she has a ‘lucky break’ tr Uranus square her Jupiter/Node midpoint this month but she’s also got a catastrophic tr Neptune square Mars/Saturn now till mid January. Plus a panicky Solar Arc Neptune opposition her Saturn around now – and that brings together the two major configurations in her chart which usually points to a longish phase of crises. 2022 has some ups in January followed by calamitous downs.
She is facing another Sun Leo in Maros Sefcovic, the EU negotiator, 24 July 1966. It will be an easier relationship for him than Frost whose rambunctious Mars opposed his Saturn but that isn’t saying much and there will be a good deal of suspicion and uncertainty ahead.
Her relationship with Boris is uneasy at the best of time since their ambitions are at cross purposes so ego-clashes are inevitable. They may muddle through an edgy February and it is mid April onwards when the real downward slide starts – though that may be because the government ship is listing badly or Boris is in even more trouble.
Her decidedly regal Christmas card is so very Leo.
The UK is blundering into 2022 hoping for the best but not quite grasping that life-as-we-knew-it won’t return for a while – and not all of it will be the pandemic. With such a fixed chart the country is designed for endurance and continuing along the same track. Uranus, bringer of thunderbolts and lightning, planet of sudden change and disruptor of the status quo, was always going to toss stability and sameness up in the air for several years as it jolted its way round the UK’s Taurus, Aquarius, Scorpio, Leo planets from 2021 to mid 2024.
Uranus started its white-knuckle ride in spring 2021 and has intensified this month with the key UK 8th house Mars being battered and bruised by tr Uranus conjunct all month; with the tr Saturn square in the final week of this month raising the tensions further. The 8th house rules financial matters, so economic glitches of considerable proportions will be part of the result. It is also emotional and points to a hidden, slow-burning anger, so the depths of the UK’s psyche are being shaken up.
Tr Uranus will return for a final conjunction to Mars through February to mid March.
But this is only for starters since the UK 5th house investment-ruling 5th house financial Venus and Neptune in the UK 2nd house of personal money are also in for the dampening, deflating effect of tr Saturn in hard aspect from late January to early February, late February to early March and October to mid November 2022. Tr Uranus will square the UK Venus through May, again in December 2022; and oppose the UK Neptune July to mid October. Both of these Uranus hard aspects linger into early 2023 and it will be spring 2024 before it clears the UK Saturn in Leo, which latter could bring changes to the legislature as well as future prospects. This coming October will be anxiety-provoking and uncertain economically.
All of these influences are part and parcel of tr Uranus moving through the UK’s 8th house until 2027 which will bring a roller coaster economic ride but will also trigger a deeper transformation in the country’s sense of self.
Which isn’t to herald the end of times since Uranus comes round every 84 years so the UK has lived through it twice before and survived. It doesn’t necessarily suggest the pandemic will last for ever but the economic fall out of the lockdowns and the Brexit hit have yet to be fully recognised.
The late April 2022 Taurus Solar Eclipse will also impact the UK Mars which could trigger a flurry of arguments, protests and may accompany major accidents.
What’s to be cheerful about? The empowering, morale-boosting Jupiter/Pluto midpoint will get a lift from tr Uranus mid June to early July, mid October to mid November and April 2023 – which may be sporting triumphs.
The pervasive sense of moving away from a past that is no longer relevant is partly the result of tr Pluto moving through the UK 4th house since 2012 which is when the seeds of Brexit were sown by the EU’s intransigence in the face of David Cameron’s pleas. It rolls on for the rest of this decade, bringing a slow transformation of internal identity and the foundations on which the UK rests.
Tr Saturn is moving through the UK 5th house until February 2024 which won’t make for a light-hearted, party mood; though Jupiter from early 2023 through the UK 7th may help; and better news on the financial front, at least in small ways, will come courtesy of Jupiter through the UK 8th from June 2023 for a year.
Although the Bank of England chart hints at a truly difficult economic patch in 2023/24 with a trapped, scary tr Pluto trine Mars in 2023/24; an uncertain, worrisome tr Neptune square Saturn in 2024 along with a discouraging slog from Solar Arc Pluto opposition the Saturn; and a jolting Solar Arc Uranus square its Sun. This may well be the knock on from a global hiccup since other central banks look agitated as well. See previous post 10 September 2021.
There is a risk in the present climate of confused panic to catastrophise and imagine the worst. It won’t be comfortable but it won’t be terminal. Change is never easy for individuals with heavy concentrations of Fixed planets and it is even more so for a country. This is the breaking-eggs stage of making the new omelette which will take several years but a new day will dawn down the road. Transitions always involve a step backwards before progress comes. Worth remembering in personal turnarounds.
The surprise departure of David Frost, the UK Brexit negotiator won’t cause any tears in the EU given his truculent rhetoric and bullying tactics. Though it will add to Boris Johnson’s woes as his ship lists badly with one calamity after another. A right-winger, Frost has gone he said because he was concerned about covid curbs and high taxation policies. He leaves the intractable Northern Ireland protocol issue unresolved.
His relationship with Johnson has been under pressure for some time with tr Pluto square the Mercury Venus. What was always noteworthy was the approaching tr Pluto opposition their composite Mars from March 2022 onwards, on and off till late 2023. This suggests the mood between them will worsen considerably with rancour and bitterness surfacing in public.
Frost, 21 February 1965, was another of Boris’s odd choices for best buddy with a Pisces Sun Saturn Mercury clashing badly with Boris’s Mutable T Square of Uranus, Pluto, Saturn, Mars. And Frost also has a volatile Mars Pluto Uranus in Virgo, leading him to be dubbed ‘the nightclub bouncer.’
Frost looks dismayed in 2022 with the tr Neptune opposing his Mars from mid April onwards bringing a sense of failure so clearly what he hopes for isn’t coming anytime soon.
There’s an uncomfortable sense in the UK of similarities with the USA with the ultra-right wing being more visible and holding more sway than was usual in the past – and often running against the views of the great silent majority.
A recent report found that the British public do not share the government’s appetite for perpetual conflict with the EU and more people see the bloc as a key future partner than the US.
The United States poised on the brink of a momentous Pluto Return is stumbling through a discombobulating transition from the wild west of the Trump years into Biden dullsville. What Jon Sopel, the BBC correspondent, described as four years of ‘a Bacchanalian orgy of stories, backbiting, sackings, leaks, fury and indignation, and chaos’; into ‘order, discipline, process and a chain of command.’ From ‘a daily fix of crack cocaine to a half of lemonade shandy once a week.’ For those who view politics as entertainment it has proved a never-to-be-admitted disappointment.
The Biden Inauguration chart did not appear that bland with an explosive Mars Uranus square Sun Saturn. Though the full potential of that volatile mix may be to come. The pandemic has thrown a smokescreen over many political sinkholes though the low ratings of Biden and VP may be an indication of woes to come.
On the USA chart tr Neptune will continue to square the US Mars for the final time mid January to mid February 2022 which usually brings a panicky sense of failure. Neptune will continue to oppose the US Neptune on and off all year, which will tug on the USA Mars, as well as a Jupiter midpoint, so the sinking feeling of all not being well will roll on.
The Pluto Return kicks in from early February and runs on and off till late 2023. There can be events around the exact return – for example Stalin died on ancient Russia’s Pluto Return; and Spain saw the dictator Franco relinquish power on a Pluto Return; in Scotland the Jacobite rebellion was ruthlessly crushed on a Pluto Return in 1745. But on the whole it is a sign of a historic shift, part of a long process; and can bring either a surge to greatness or the opposite as an old superpower fades.
What will help keep American spirits upbeat is Jupiter moving through Pisces trine the USA Venus, Jupiter in Cancer in January and then trine the Sun late February into March. These are mild influences but will boost morale en passant.
Relations with Russia and Iran will be stressed, especially coincidentally during the exact Pluto Returns – February to mid March, late June to early August and mid December across the New Year into 2023. The relationship chart with Russia has a composite Mars at 27 Cancer and with Iran a composite Sun at 27 Aries – so there will be a considerable amount of aggravation and tension. China less so which is reflected on Biden’s astrocartography which puts his assertive/aggressive Mars Descendant line through Moscow and Iran; with dither and indecision through China. (His birth time being sound that is.)
The chart of Biden’s Administration will be ruffled by the Taurus/Scorpio Eclipses hitting on the Mars Uranus and there’ll be a few disappointments along the way. But it is 2023/2024 when the real problems blow up with the Solar Arc Saturn moving to square the Mars Uranus to exact; plus a punishing Saturn/Pluto midpoint.
Biden’s personal chart will be mightily affected by the 2022 eclipses with his Mars in Scorpio catching the opposition from the late April Solar Eclipse; and his Sun, Venus, Mercury in Scorpio getting the same from the May Lunar Eclipse. Arguments will flare and he’ll be faced with rolling crises and mistakes. Indeed 2022 will start with setbacks as tr Saturn squares his Mars and in March there’s an insecure, jolting tr Uranus opposition his Mars. It’ll be a stress-testing time as he moves towards his 80th birthday in November 2022.
His Solar Return from November 2021 for a year has a disruptive Mars opposition Uranus square Saturn which falls (birth time being accurate) in his 9th/3rd/1st which could point to foreign affairs arguments causing upset. I don’t put too much store on Solar Returns but his Returns covering 2023/24 look critical for health and career matters which will put questionmarks over whether he’ll stand again.
The US Federal Reserve chart will also be rattled by the Eclipses hitting on its Mercury Moon and Sun in Scorpio through 2022. But it will be 2023/24 when it faces its greatest test with a devastating confidence meltdown as tr Pluto squares its Neptune.
[For examples of other country’s previous Pluto Returns see post October 16 2020.]
