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Book of British Luxury

The Age of Uncertainty

While the road to recovery might feel rocky right now, is an impending renaissance written in the stars? Writer, broadcaster and astrologer Neil Spencer takes a look into the future...
1st Aug 2022
Book of British Luxury The Age of Uncertainty

How do you like the Roaring Twenties? The 2020s, that is. Astrology has long foreseen the decade as one of upheaval, its challenges reflected in several era-defining planetary cycles. It certainly started bang on astrological time, with the global pandemic arriving in January 2020 simultaneously with the meeting of Saturn and Pluto, a conjunction whose deadly history includes the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and the partition of India in 1947. As these two examples show, Saturn-Pluto events have a long tail, and the ravages of Covid-19 (or other zoonotic outbreaks) are similarly not vanishing any time soon.

The decade has roared on in alarming fashion. The gruesome conflict raging in Ukraine is a reprise of Pluto’s deathly themes and began as Mars – Gustav Holst’s ‘bringer of war’ – conjoined Pluto in late February 2022. Amid the gloom, the cosmos is offering hopeful omens. The response to war in Ukraine has seen a collective revulsion and a renewal of alliances, at least in Europe. As much reflects the ongoing emphasis on the sign of Aquarius, where Saturn and Jupiter met in December 2021 (the pair conjoin only every 20 years), and where Pluto will arrive in March 2023 for a two- decade residency.

Astrology holds all signs equal, but the 1960s made Aquarius more equal than others, thanks to hippy hullabaloo about the Age of Aquarius, a deeply suspect concept with an anthem hoisted up the pop charts by the appropriately named 5th Dimension. Those still anticipating an era of ‘harmony and understanding’ clearly have a long wait.

Yet Pluto in Aquarius signals both hope and deep change. Contrary to its reputation as a sign of wild liberation, Aquarius is fond of order, though it is humane and egalitarian in orientation. An air sign much concerned with knowledge – which the urn bearer pours for all – and centred on community and co-operation, Aquarius stands in contrast to the materialist sign of Capricorn, where, since 2008, Pluto has reigned over an era of kleptocracy, where might is right.

Pluto shows where power lies, so the age of populist strongmen will perhaps give way to a more democratic dispensation once the planet is fully present in Aquarius in 2024. Yet Pluto, as lord of the underworld, is often a dark force and on the downside suggests more micro-controlled societies where the authorities know what’s best and privacy is a mark of guilt. Face recognition of people ‘predisposed to crime’ is already with us. So too algorithms gleaned from online spying. Merely checking one pukka TV chef’s online recipe requires the data-wary to refuse ten different cookies; Big Brother with a smile.

Pluto’s transition from Capricorn to Aquarius hangs over several national horoscopes, not least those of Ukraine (born 24th August, 1991), Communist Russia (born 8th November, 1917), modern Russia (born 12th June, 1990) and the US (born 4th July, 1776). In Ukraine’s case, Pluto suggests the country’s resurrection in spring 2023, whether as a puppet Russian state or as a neutered, landlocked entity is unclear. In the 1990 Russian chart, Pluto reaches Saturn in 2025 and likewise describes resurrection, not necessarily as a friend of democracy. This follows economic chaos in 2022 and 2023 as Uranus transits its banking system.

The US continues to face its Pluto return, as the planet goes back to its position at the nation’s birth 245 years ago. Under this transit – ongoing until 2024 – the US is confronted by its ‘shadow’, its darker episodes and failures. Slavery is the big issue here, as it was when England faced its own Pluto return in the late 1550s when the birth of the Elizabethan golden age also saw the first British slave ship sail in 1562 under captain Sir John Hawkins. England’s next Pluto return in 1801 saw both The Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in 1807 and the country’s formal Union with Scotland to become the United Kingdom in 1801.

Similar transformations await the US. Will the country become the multi-racial democracy promised in its constitution? Or ossify into a gerrymandered Republican fiefdom prepared to declare martial law, as almost happened in the 2021 attack on the Capitol? How about independence for California? The stakes are high, though the Aquarius Moon in the US horoscope suggests which side will prevail.

While Pluto and Aquarius hog the headlines, they are not the only omens in focus during the early 2020s. The two other ‘outer’ planets, Uranus and Neptune, likewise signify global change. Uranus is now halfway through its seven-year transit of Taurus, an earth sign much concerned with economics, and has lived up to its reputation as an inventive, disruptive force. Crypto currencies, a marginal phenomenon a few years back, have proliferated dizzily, as have online apps like Agru and the fintech banks including Revolut and Monzo that handle them. Conventional banks will surely follow suit. Gibraltar’s bourse has already become the first stock exchange to deal in crypto. Government versions of crypto – Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) – are also with us; October 2021 saw the launch of the e-Naira, Nigeria’s own CBDC.

Crypto’s sibling, non-fungible tokens, have likewise taken a vigorous hold. NFTs are computer-only art, images that can be reproduced though copyright remains with their owner – so far more likely to be a Silicon Valley slicker or pop star. NFTs now command big bucks; just last year Sotheby’s, that bastion of the art world, held its first NFT sale.

The other domain governed by Taurus is the natural world and its bounties: agriculture, food and produce. Here too revolution remains in the air, be it as plant-based vegan diets or as lab-grown meat that takes cells from living animals but requires no slaughter. Insect-based foods and menus are another facet of the new frontier.

Pisces is the other sign under emphasis this year and next. The meeting of expansive Jupiter and idealistic Neptune is not uncommon, arriving every 13 years, a cycle closely linked to humanitarian political initiatives, but their conjunction in Pisces in April 2022 was the first in the fishes since 1856. In the UK, the sign’s visionary spirit was reflected in the foundation of the National Portrait Gallery and the Science Museum, and in the heyday of the Pre-Raphaelites. Utopian ideals, currently conspicuous by their absence, may yet return to a fragmented, cynical UK.

In 2023 Saturn moves into Pisces, Jupiter into Aries and Pluto into Aquarius, followed in 2025 by Neptune and Uranus moving on to Aries and Gemini respectively. That all the solar system’s heavy-hitters should change sign in such a short period is a rarity that heralds profound change, with the ecological crisis its most obvious focal point. Generation Z, born between 1995 and 2011 with strong Aquarian placements in its horoscopes, will then be coming of age; a youthquake to save the most important planet of all: Earth.

This is an extract from the Walpole Book of British Luxury 22/23
Read here

 

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