Researching past times of Pluto in Aquarius which next picks up from 2023 till 2042 it caught my eye that the original Jewish diaspora occurred under the Pluto in Aquarius in 60 to 84 AD when the first of the Jewish Wars against the Romans took place. The Romans laid siege to Jerusalem crucifying tens of thousands of escapees whose bodies encircled the city at the end. According to historical records the stockpiles of food inside were intentionally burned by Jewish leaders to induce the defenders to fight against the siege instead of negotiating peace; as a result many city dwellers and soldiers died of starvation during the siege. “Six hundred thousand engaged in armed resistance – both sexes showed equal determination, preferring death to a life that involved expulsion from their country.”
The final Jewish stronghold to fall was Masada. When the Roman soldiers finally broke through into the city they discovered that the 967 defenders had all committed suicide, preferring death over defeat.
There were a further two Jewish-Roman Wars in the decades following in which between 500,000 and half a million Jews were killed.
Under Pluto in Aquarius in the 13th Century Jews were expelled from England although that was for a complex set of reasons to do with the King’s finances and Jewish usury.
Under the next Pluto in Aquarius 2023/2043 transitting Pluto will be opposing the Israel midheaven, Saturn, Pluto, squaring the Sun latterly and then opposing Mars. So Israel looks under escalating pressure of quite staggering proportions. [From old post 2009].
Additional Thoughts:
From The Astrological History of the World
Certain key dates in Jewish history, and indeed the history of Jerusalem, fall under Uranus–Pluto conjunctions, starting with the Jewish revolt against the Romans in ad 70. The Romans then sacked Jerusalem, destroying the Temple, the ancient centre of Jewish religious life and traditionally the site of Jacob’s dream of angels ascending a ladder to heaven. This was the beginning of the Jewish diaspora, or dispersal; the oral laws of Moses were added to the Pentateuch to form the Torah which would bind future Jews together. The winning of the Six Day War by the Israelis under the latest conjunction in 1967 saw the Jews occupy the old city of Jerusalem for the first time since they had been expelled.
In ad 70, the Romans also destroyed the Qu’mran Essene Jewish community. They left behind the Dead Sea Scrolls, Hebrew and Aramaic texts that were not rediscovered until the Saturn–Pluto conjunction of 1947. Under another Uranus–Pluto conjunction, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, the great mosque, was built on the Temple Mount in 691 by the Umayyad Caliph to commemorate the Muslim tradition that Mohammed ascended to Paradise from this spot, making it the third most holy place of Islam after Mecca and Medina. Jerusalem was also occupied by the First Crusade in 1099.
There were also two major Jewish massacres under Uranus–Pluto, one sparked by religious differences, the other by anti-semitism. The first took place in the Rhineland in 1095 when Pope Urban II called for a crusade to free the holy places in Jerusalem; the second in 1348 in the wake of the 25 million deaths from the ‘Black Death’ plague in Europe, for which Jews were blamed.
“The Jewish diaspora and persecution are connected to Uranus–Pluto, but two major destructive episodes in the Jewish story do occur under Saturn–Uranus conjunctions. One took place in 1306 when Philip IV expelled Jews from France during Saturn–Uranus in Scorpio. More significantly and catastrophically this century, when Saturn–Uranus occurred in Taurus (Hitler’s sign) in 1942, the Nazis met to discuss the ‘final solution to the Jewish question’, the genocide of the European Jews. Six death camps were set up: Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Madjanek, Chelmo, Sobibor and Treblinka; in the USSR, half a million Jews were killed by the Germans. The call for a Jewish national home, made under Saturn–Uranus in Scorpio in 1896, was not fulfilled until the Saturn–Pluto conjunction of 1947–48.
Nothing can adequately describe the Holocaust, but the Neptune–Pluto conjunction in Hitler’s chart (as with Stalin, Mao Tse Tung and Attila the Hun) was obviously a key factor in the delusional megalomania that had such destructively inhumane consequences. But the 1942 Saturn–Uranus conjunction may be a hint of the misuse to which Uranus’s scientific knowledge can be put when in the hands of repressive Saturn, which in its highly negative aspects is connected both to death and to Satan.”
N.B: Uranus Pluto also was significant in the slave trade and colonisation of Africa and its independence.
The Portugese were the frontrunners in opening up Africa, long before the English and other nations. They established trading links with African chiefs and kings, buying and trading all manner of goods; including slaves. These had sometimes been captured during battles between tribes or acquired by chiefs by some other means. Some slaves remained in Europe, but many were sent to Caribbean islands, where they were deemed to be better workers than the indigenous people. Is there anything particular in the chart of Portugal to suggest why it l might have been drawn to such trade, over several centuries?
Ominously, the next Saturn-Uranus conjunction in 2032 will be the first Uranus return for Israel in Gemini in the 8th house. It will also be conjunct US Mars and Trump’s Sun-Uranus conjunction. If the US history of Uranus returns is any guide, Israel will be involved at that time in the most existential war since its inception in 1948 .
Thank you Marjorie.