Jupiter, Uranus and the Purple People from Planet Zog….

UPDATE in November 2023

As we advance towards the conjunction in April 2024 at 22 Taurus, Jupiter/Uranus is now preparing to settle into a new 14-year cycle, following on the ones I researched in 1997/8 and 2010/11, continuing with its ancient symbolic task of seeing no limits as it challenges old frontiers and reveals startling new vistas of experience and discovery. As a human community, we have begun a new voyage into the Unknown. Comfort and security are never key features of such voyages….

The print book referred to in the following interview is no longer available, but anyone wishing to acquire the updated e-version which includes all my research done not only on the 1997 conjunction but the 2010/11 one, can find it HERE.

You will find a selection of great reviews from fellow astrologers at the time I first published my Jupiter/Uranus research HERE – and HERE from Armand Diaz, PhD.)

The interview featured below covers a number of facets of the Jupiter/Uranus combination which remain relevant, as well as exploring the historical background to the conjunction and some fascinating examples from its impact on previous cultural phases. It also tells you something about the connections between the researcher ( ie me!) and the reasons for her continuing fascination with this unique planetary pair.

My facetious comments in 2009 about the Purple People from Planet Zog, as you will see, have contemporary 2023/4 relevance: some possibly credible evidence is emerging since Spring 2023 that tales from former NASA employees involving those Purple People may actually have some validity! (well, maybe…)

From the AFA interviewer:

In her new book published by the American Federation of Astrologers, (April 2009) Scottish astrologer Anne Whitaker reveals the results of her extensive research project conducted during the 1997 Jupiter-Uranus conjunction in Aquarius.

Her research includes mundane events and the conjunction’s effects in individual lives, as she explains in this interview, first published in May 2009 by the AFA Newsletter. Anne also offers insights into the upcoming Jupiter-Uranus conjunctions in Pisces and Aries.

AFA: How often does a Jupiter-Uranus conjunction occur?

AW: Every 14 years. There were eight during the 20th Century, with two in Aquarius–one on March 4, 1914 at 9 degrees, 32 minutes of Aquarius, and the other at 5 degrees, 55 minutes of Aquarius on February 16, 1997.

AFA: What is its essential meaning?

AW: In brief, it is a combination of energies regarded as dynamic, unusual, disruptive, expansive, unpredictable – breaking down the old order, stimulating breakthroughs to new levels of expression and understanding, individually and collectively. The Aquarian conjunction is the one most powerfully connected to radical and disruptive social, political and technological shifts, for reasons which are explored in the book.

AFA: Few astrologers are doing research, and you may be the first, at least in many years, to undertake such a massive project linking both mundane and personal astrology. Why did you decide to do this research project?

AW: It feels as if it decided to do me! Seriously though–I have long been fascinated by the link between micro and macro levels of existence. I began to practice as an astrologer under the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction in Sagittarius of 1983, around that time hearing my first ever lecture on mundane astrology given by the late Charles Harvey. He inspired an interest in exploring the links between individual and collective life via astrology. By I996, I was excited by the prospect of doing some original exploration of a planetary combination which had been present at the birth of my own astrological career.

AFA: Describe the project.

AW: It is a research study of the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction, set in its mythological and historical context, including a very broad tracking of the pulse beat of the conjunction through the four elements from 500 BC to 2500 AD, which identifies some interesting correlations with broad historical changes. It then narrows down to an exploration of mundane and personal life during the Aquarian conjunction of 1997-98, extending to 1999-2001 when Neptune transited the 5 Aquarius 55 Hot Spot where Jupiter and Uranus met on February 16, 1997.

AFA: What mundane events occurred?

AW: Lots! The major event–just 10 days after the conjunction occurred–was the announcement to the world of the existence of Dolly the Sheep, the first ever cloned animal, created by scientists based in Scotland. Over the weekend of the conjunction, February 15-16, the crew of USA’s shuttle Discovery effected repairs to the Hubble space telescope, completing five five space walks to do so. Chapter five in my book tells of many more happenings.

AFA: What are some examples of monumental recorded events that have occurred during previous Jupiter-Uranus conjunctions?

AW: Let’s take the theme of exploration. Explorer Ponce de Leon stepped ashore near Cape Canaveral (thus named by the Spanish some years later) on the morning of April 3, 1513, when there was an exact Jupiter-Uranus conjunction in Aries, to claim the New World later to become the United States of America. Precisely 33 Jupiter-Uranus conjunctions later, on July 20, 1969, there was an exact Jupiter-Uranus conjunction in Libra when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon’s surface, the first human to do so. The spacecraft on which the astronauts traveled was launched from Cape Carnaveral. . . .

AFA: How many people did you track during the project? Who are they? How did you find them?

AW: Seventeen individuals took part in the first phase of the research from February 1997 to January 1998. I had a sudden inspiration while being interviewed for a magazine in late 1995, to ask readers whose birthdays fell between January 24 and 26 of any year (when the Sun would be transiting 5-6 degrees of Aquarius) to contact me before February 1997 so that I could follow developments in their lives that year. Out of the response came three serious volunteers, to whom I added three clients and 11 of my astrology students. Six participants knew no astrology. All 17 had extraordinary years.

AFA: Was the participant feedback surprising or was it what you expected?

AW: I set out with as open a mind as I could muster, bearing in mind Liz Greene’s wry comment in one of her seminars: “ If you can predict it, it isn’t Uranus! ” A big surprise was the male client, “Frank” (see chapter six in my book). He depressed me by answering all the questionnaires with monosyllabic negatives, then in his summing-up provided a vivid picture of his “amazing year.” The biggest surprise was the “Jupiter-Uranus effect” showing up so clearly in all their lives. I hadn’t expected that.

AFA: Were you able to validate any astrological precepts such as the influence of hard and soft aspects or orbs?

AW: Yes. All participants reported disruptive, unpredictable, expansive life changes. But those with a strong natal Jupiter-Uranus signature went through more radical disruptions and breakthroughs to new levels than those whose natal Jupiter-Uranus signature was absent–or weak, i.e., minor or soft aspects, wide orbs.

AFA: What differences did you observe between contacts from retrograde and direct planets? Were the stations outstanding in any way?

AW: Yes. Just one example: Questionnaire 2: Summer/Autumn 1997 asked if the period of October 13-15 was significant; Uranus turned direct on 5 Aquarius then. Almost everyone reported left-field Uranian happenings. The most markedly Jupiter-Uranus person in the study, Lucia, led a deprived group of inner city youngsters through a powerfully life-changing artistic event involving the spontaneous use of her astrological knowledge, October 13-15, 1997. The book also details striking collective effects involving retrograde and direct planetary motion.

AFA: Why did you continue the research beyond 1997-1998, the year that the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction was operational?

AW: From April 1999 until the end of 2001, the planet Neptune transited the observational band of 4-7 degrees Aquarius which I had set as the boundary for observing the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction’s impact. I was curious to discover whether Neptune’s crossing would reactivate the “Jupiter-Uranus effect” I had demonstrated in collective and personal life in the 1997-1998 part of the research.

To my great surprise, given the diffuse nature of Neptune, it did. This was an affirmation of the astrological precept that powerful planetary meetings on particular degrees of the zodiac “charge-up” those degrees thereafter with the flavor of their meeting.

AFA: Were there any striking observations regarding house rulerships?

AW: Yes. It was clear, for example, that the houses or angles ruled by Neptune as it traversed the observational band mentioned above, were the areas of life most up for disruptive, expansive, unpredictable changes for individuals during the stated time period.

AFA: Do you see Jupiter-Uranus as positive or negative change, or does it represent something else?

AW: Without the unimaginably destructive act of creation, the Big Bang, which as far as we can surmise began our universe, we would not be here to observe our world’s wonders as well as its terrors. Positive and negative energies are two sides of the same coin, wherever we look. I hope I have conveyed that unity adequately in ‘Jupiter Meets Uranus’.

AFA: What can we expect in general terms from the upcoming 2010 Jupiter-Uranus conjunctions in Aries and Pisces?

AW: in essence, the unexpected! And this question needs a whole article, not a few brief paragraphs. The Jupiter-Uranus conjunction in Pisces-Aries-Pisces comes into orb (10 degrees) at the end of March 2010, and separates (10 degree orb) in mid-March 2011. Fasten your seat belts! The human community and probably the natural world are in for a bumpy ride.

This Jupiter-Uranus conjunction will arrive at a turbulent point: joining the last Saturn-Pluto square since its conjunction of the early 1980s, and amplifying the first Uranus-Pluto square from its conjunction which dominated the 1960s: that decade of the Vietnam war and its protesters, political assassinations, women’s liberation, musical revolution and the beginning of the micro-technology metamorphosis which has utterly changed our world in only a few decades.

In common with the 1997 conjunction that linked in an astonishing bowl shape with Mars, Saturn and Pluto (Jupiter Meets Uranus, p. 40), this will be no “ordinary” Jupiter-Uranus event: Jupiter conjunct Uranus at 0 Aries will form a T-cross with Saturn at 28 Virgo and Pluto at 4 Capricorn. Mars at 1 Virgo will trine Pluto, opposes Neptune and link back to quincunx the Aries Jupiter-Uranus conjunction.

The Jupiter-Uranus predilection for seeing no limits, leaping before it looks and challenging the established order expressed through the filter of the rash, angry impetuousness of Aries and locked with the harsh, power-driven determination not to budge of the Saturn-Pluto square, offers a difficult and dangerous picture in the realm of international politics, for instance. Misuse of technology by angry, militant fanatics convinced they have God on their side and that the old order must be overturned, is a picture which arises from this.

We can also await more disruption and turbulence on the economic front, but I leave further speculation on this issue to those much better qualified to comment than I!

Religion is not going to diminish in impact; the Piscean backdrop to much of the conjunction will see to that. We may well see an inspirational “messiah”-type figure emerge with challenging and disruptive effect socially and politically in the Aries phase.

(NOTE: 19.9.10: little did I think (it being Uranus of whom we speak) that we would have an ‘anti-messiah’, that self-styled High Priest of the Militant Atheism persuasion, Richard Dawkins, and his plan to arrest the Pope, during 2010….) ( ….and Autumn/Winter 2010….Julian Assange, anyone? The “messiah” of uncensored openness?)

Also suggested is fiery eruption disrupting the very fabric of the Earth itself. On a more positive note, the urgency of the accelerating environmental crisis may give birth to great leaps forward in the pioneering of new technologies, e.g., for harnessing solar power and reducing environmental damage.

The challenging pattern I have described, set against the cardinal backdrop of the natural zodiac (which I used for most of the Jupiter Uranus conjunction charts in the book) also links in with the Super Galactic Centre, currently at around 0 degrees Libra.

A picture arises from this of major scientific breakthroughs in our understanding of the Universe or Multiverse, of which our tiny solar system is a mere blip of ephemeral matter. Perhaps the CERN Large Hadron Collider will work this time, and we’ll find the Higgs Boson particle at last . . . or maybe it really will blow us all to bits! There is a most interesting article bringing the CERN particle accelerator and the Super Galactic Centre together, at http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/29853. Check it out!

AFA: Do you have a particular area of interest where you expect the 2010 conjunction to deliver, as it were?

AW: One of my own special interests is in genetics and cloning. The 1969 conjunction in Libra saw a Harvard medical school team identify the first gene (see p. 93 of Jupiter Meets Uranus). The year after the 1983 conjunction in Sagittarius, a British scientist developed genetic fingerprinting (p. 93). In 1997 with the Aquarian conjunction, we had the announcement of the first cloned animal, Dolly (p. 43).

The conjunction in Aries in 2010 suggests the next stage, which could well be human cloning, currently illegal where the creation of a complete human is concerned. Maybe a defiant, pioneering male doctor/scientist is prepared to pit himself against the established order and rule of law to do so? There are “maverick doctor” rumblings in the press about this already. . . .

AFA: Do you have a special wish for the human community for something uniquely helpful which could emerge from this powerful and disruptive energy field?

AW: Yes. I would love to see science fiction fantasies over many decades become fact with the arrival on Planet Earth of small but fabulously evolved purple people from Planet Zog to teach us how to mend our ways. Now THAT would be unexpected!!

AFA: As an astrologer, what did you learn from the project?

AW: I began to study astrology more than 25 years ago as part of my quest to try and prove to myself that we do not live in a random, meaningless universe. Time and again, on the large and small scale, astrology has offered that proof, enriching my life and I hope in some measure, the lives of my clients and students along the way. This research has affirmed very powerfully that the personal and collective lives of humankind respond in the same core way to the great music of the spheres, played throughout space and time by the planets in their cycles.

AFA: Finally, a question on YOUR horoscope. Is Jupiter-Uranus prominent?

AW: Well, how did you guess?! My chart is an eastern bowl shape, with Uranus leading from the tenth house, bi-quintile Jupiter which closes the bowl from the third house. My Ascendant, on the Jupiter-Uranus midpoint, was squared by transiting Pluto during the whole research period. . . .

To read more about Jupiter meets Uranus 2023/4, check out https://jupitermeetsuranus.wordpress.com/

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2500 words copyright Anne Whitaker/American Federation of Astrologers 2009/Anne Whitaker 2023/4

Major and minor chords: The Moon’s Nodes in Action: Part 2

In this series of posts, I am confining myself to presenting conclusions based on my original research study as described in The Moon’s Nodes in Action: Part One.

I am thus assuming at least a beginner’s familiarity with the astronomical and symbolic significance of the Moon’s Nodal axis, and its 18.6 year retrograde cycle through the Zodiac with the accompanying twice-yearly eclipse seasons.

For readers who need to be brought up to speed regarding the basics, check out Wikipedia on The Lunar Nodes for the astronomy, and Cafe Astrology for a typical explanation of the Nodes’ symbolic meanings.

Before setting out my conclusions, it might be useful in context-setting to offer a brief description of the content of the 50,000 word research study upon which these findings are based:

1) Preface, in which I outlined my personal reasons for becoming fascinated by the Nodal axis and bringing it increasingly into my teaching. 2) Introduction, in which I set out my reasons for embarking on the research. 3) Chapter One: Astronomy and Symbolism of the Nodes. 4) Chapter Two: Case Study One: Mary Shelley, ‘Frankenstein’ and a sheep called Dolly. 5) Chapter Three: Case Study Two: ‘Marc’ (age 51) : a life through the Nodal Lens. 6) Chapter Four: Case Study Three: Four “Nodal Moments” – key turning points analysed in the lives of two men and two women, two famous (Princess Diana and astronaut John Glenn) and two unknown, Anna (age 44) and Andrew (age 34). 7) Conclusions. Finally…. Bibliography, References and Notes, Charts used and their provenance.

http://www.astro.com/mtp/mtpt5_e.htm

My main research questions were these: How significant is the Nodal axis? Are astrologers missing something really important by not delineating it in their readings, both natally and in terms of its transiting cycle? Does it say something specific? Or does it act as a reinforcer for information about a person’s life pattern which can be derived from other chart factors?

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The Conclusions

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1. ‘ Major’ and ‘ minor ‘ Nodal activity

Transits and progressions weave in and out of life – there may be years for example which are dominated by Pluto, others by Neptune, or very heavily Saturnian years. There are the few occasions eg where a planet changes sign by progression, or the MC progresses over Uranus, or the Moon.

But there is Nodal activity of some kind going on all the time, as the Nodal axis regresses through the horoscope, transits come to the Natal or progressed Nodes, and progressions touch off the natal Nodal pattern. The Nodes appear to me to function both as witnesses (the Sun) and midwives (the Moon), symbolic translators of the archetypal energies of the planets into the medium of Life as it is lived in the Sun/Moon/Earth system.

Where, then, does this leave the contention that Nodal times have a particularily powerful, fateful “charge” to them? That can’t be true of every year in life, surely? If it were, the intensity of it would pretty quickly reduce people to cinders! What, therefore, distinguishes those special moments or turning points in life where either at the time, or later, we realise we have crossed an important threshold?

From the research done on Marc’s life in particular, I have concluded that there are two kinds of Nodal activity : major and minor, as it were. As already discussed, there is always some “minor” Nodal activity going on.

The really powerful “major” times on the other hand, which are few in any lifetime, are characterised by not just one or two, but a cluster of transits and/or progressions involving the natal, and/or progressed, and/or transitting Nodes. The outer planets, especially Pluto with its strong “fated” feel, stand out. This was an impression I had already formed after 15 years of chart reading – but I’d never tested it out in formal research before.

Pre-natal eclipses are very much part of the weave, as can be seen from the case study material. The most striking example is seen in Mary Shelley’s horoscope where the pre-natal solar and lunar eclipse degrees appear as the actual Ascendant and South Node degrees in her horoscope, and the charts of all the key people and events in her life with reference to her authorship of ‘Frankenstein’. (Mary will be getting a post all to herself, complete with horoscope, as part of this series! Maybe my obsession isn’t quite burnt out, after all these years….)

I’m quite clear now, as the Nodal axis regresses through the chart, identifying via the highlighted houses the overall territory up for change, that the transiting eclipses function as “battery chargers”, gradually building up the energies of the person’s life in preparation to receive major change.

An image comes to mind here from the female menstrual cycle, of the egg gradually being primed and prepared until it is at its maximum point of readiness to receive the male sperm, conceive and begin new life. I think the eclipses begin their work of charging-up as soon as the relevant eclipse season begins, which may be as long as eighteen months before the turning point in the person’s life appears. (i)

References and Notes

(i) A very clear example comes to mind from my own life, linked to the Virgo/Pisces eclipse season of Spring 1997-Autumn 1998. In the Spring of 1997 I decided to hire an office out of my home to create space, mainly to write this thesis. My Asc/Desc axis is 9 degrees Virgo/Pisces.

The Virgo/Pisces eclipse season started on 9 March 1997 with a total solar eclipse at 18.5 Pisces, opposite the asteroid Urania at 19 Pisces in my First House, clsely linking in Mary Shelley’s and Marc’s North Nodes at 19 and 21 Gemini respectively. It was at this time that I chose Marc as a main case study subject along with Mary Shelley.

On Friday 7 March I saw the office I decided on 10 March to rent, paying for it for a year from an insurance policy I had taken out 18 years previously. At that time, I had a feeling I might need money for a future adventure of some kind – long before I knew anything about either astrology or the 18- year Nodal cycle. My bank manager, of course, thought I was mad….

The middle period of that eclipse season saw me well settled into the writing as the 9 Virgo eclipse fell exactly on my Ascendant in the Autumn of 1997. The following year, the day before the total solar eclipse (7 deg 55 min Pisces) of February 26 1998 fell on the Sixth House side of my Descendant, I had a call from my landlords saying they needed to know by the next day whether I was going to renew my lease, which ran out on 9 May 1998, since the building was being sold. I decided to renew for 6 months and sent my rent cheque off just before the lunar eclipse on 13 March 1998 at 22 Virgo.

The lease ran out on 7 November 1998: the day I graduated with my Diploma from the Centre for Psychological Astrology!

Follow the series by reading

This ground is holy: The Moon’s Nodes in Action: Part 3

Nodal Axis

TO BE CONTINUED

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1100 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2011
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page

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The Moon’s Nodes in Action: Part One

For many years I had a Moon’s Nodes obsession: perhaps not unconnected with the North Node exactly conjunct my Midheaven at 29 degrees Taurus, square a Twelfth House Sun/Moon conjunction……I read somewhere in my very early years of studying astrology that the South Node conjunct a Scorpio IC indicated having been burned as a witch in a previous life. This piece of conjecture gave my MC/IC axis a kind of dark, scary glamour.

However, I burned out that obsession during 1997-8 whilst completing the third and final year of my Diploma in Psychological Astrology at the Centre for Psychological Astrology in London, where I had the good fortune to study with Dr Liz Greene and the late, great mundane astrologer, Charles Harvey. How did I do this? By writing a 50,000 word research study called “The Moon’s Nodes in Action”. After that, I’d had enough of the Moon’s Nodes.

A big part of my obsession that year concerned the links I found between the horoscopes of Mary Shelley, author of ‘Frankenstein’, and that of Dolly the Sheep, the first cloned mammal, created in their research laboratory by Dr Ian Wilmut and his team in the Roslyn Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland and announced to the world in February 1997.

I take strange pride in being probably the first person to have written a detailed synastry between a dead human and a live sheep! Never a class went by for that whole year without Dolly and Mary Shelley being mentioned. By the end of the year, and the completion of the research study, my students had taken either to giving me presents of pens, etc, with pictures of sheep on them, or to crossing the street when they saw me approaching! ( I exaggerate, but only slightly….)

That was twelve years ago and I moved on to other things. However, in the last week, like everyone else with any interest in world affairs, I have been watching with fascination, horror and a certain excited anticipation of possible positive change as a wave of protest – mainly from the young – has swept the Middle East. The iron grip of dictatorial rulers has been snapping in a domino chain of nations rising in revolt.

As the Nodal axis crosses Pluto, approaching the final stage of the August 2009 – July 2011 season of eclipses in Capricorn(North Node point) and Cancer (South Node point) and Colonel Gaddafi loses his grip on Libya amidst scenes of bloodshed and mayhem, I have been prompted to dig that almost-forgotten research study out of its dusty drawer.

Why?

Because I remembered my overall research finding:

times of most profound and radical change come in collective and individual life when the combination of the Nodal Axis and Pluto is triggered.

Having re-read that 1997/8 study, I have decided to publish the final chapter here as a series of posts over the next week or so. I know that many astrologers share my fascination with the Moon’s Nodes: I hope what I have to say will be both interesting and illuminating in its own right. It may also be supportive of what many other astrologers have concluded from their own practice.

(note: I have illustrated this post with a chart for the time of the Aries Ingress of 2011, set on the Natural Zodiac which refers to our whole world community. The high focus of Pluto, and the Moon’s Nodes, by then having just slipped into Sagittarius/Gemini but with one more solar eclipse in Cancer due to occur in July 2011, shows clearly in this chart.)

TO BE CONTINUED

To read Part Two, click HERE

To read Part Three, click HERE

To read Part Four, click HERE

To read Part Five, click HERE

PLUS

Mary Shelley, Modern Myth-Maker

(a study of her Nodes in relation to her authorship of ‘Frankenstein’)

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600 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2011
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page

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An Astrologer at Work: Part Three

(This is an edited version of a longer interview, published in Connections magazine,
Scotland, UK in February 1996. It appears on the website in three parts – click An Astrologer at Workto read the first two installments.)

extract from Part One….” The purpose of the “Not the Astrology Column” theme on this website is to introduce open-minded readers to the in-depth astrology which lies behind the entertainment facade offered by the Sun Sign columns. We are living in a time where awareness of the ‘interconnectedness of all things’ is fast returning to the forefront of public consciousness across the world. The evidence is piling up increasingly starkly: what happens in one part of our biosphere impacts everywhere.

The ancient maxim ‘As above, so below‘ has thus never seemed more relevant. The art and practice of astrology has been based on that maxim for at least six thousand years. Astrology links what happens in the individual and collective lives of human beings to the movement of the planets through the solar system of which we are part….”

Now read on!

The Principles and Practice of Astrology

“Connections” Editor Ian Holland interviews Anne Whitaker

Part Three:

AW: One of the many fascinations of astrology is how it shows the ever-changing patterns of the planets symbolically reflecting different kinds of energies in our collective life. If you as an individual are strongly plugged into collective patterns – which you can assess through comparing the natal horoscope with prevailing planetary positions in the here-and-now – it seems as if you are given a wee chip of the current pattern to work with in your individual life. Let me give a specific example. From the end of 1992 until the beginning of 1995 there was a particularly difficult combination of planets, which when it shows up tends to symbolise warring, destructive energies at work in our world. I’m talking about the Saturn/Pluto combination.

Every time these planets have connected this century the collective context has been war – they were linked at the start of World War 1, then at the end of the Second World War when we were confronted with the horrors of the two holocausts, Nazi and nuclear. This combination formed a key part of the planetary backdrop to the Arab/Israeli war (the State of Israel was born under the Saturn/Pluto conjunction of 1947/48) in the Sixties; the Falklands war in the Eighties; and 1992 saw the upsurge of the Balkan War. Over the following two years we saw in Europe a fierce and brutal period of terrible carnage – as well as genocide in Ruanda and various other horrors at different locations.

(2008 update: the atrocity of 9/11 took place during the subsequent major Saturn/Pluto combination in the autumn of 2001)

From 1992 to early 1995, I observed individuals, whose horoscopes showed them to be strongly plugged into this pattern, going through deeper and darker traumas in their personal lives, much of it involving family fate issues, than I had ever seen before. Because my own horoscope involved this pattern, I had to go through some very painful and difficult times regarding my own family of origin. It seems to me that I drew to me, as a practitioner, clients plugged into the same overall pattern as myself.

Thus I was aware of having to struggle hard to keep a balance between compassionate feeling and dispassionate judgement during this period – the danger of projecting my own experience was high. But at least I was aware of that fact. This is an illustration of how astrologers need both professional supervision and, when appropriate, personal therapy to ensure that they are fully aware of their own issues and avoid as far as possible projecting them into their astrological work.

You know the Shakespearean quote – ‘there is a tide in the affairs of men’…..if you practice astrology often enough, and for long enough, you can see the tides of history, the changing patterns of the times, running through the lives of individuals whose charts you read. It’s fascinating…and awesome.

IH : you were telling me earlier that on the 16 Feb 1997 there’s something pretty spectacular coming up for us all ?

AW : (laughs) Yes! There is no doubt in my mind that astrologers can look at the unfolding pattern of energies through spacetime, cut a section through any point or moment of the past, present or future, look at what the essence of that moment is, and speculate regarding what some of the branches manifesting in the wider world, or in individuals lives, may be.

What they can’t do is see how they’re going to manifest exactly. Our track record on hindsight is much better than it is on foresight, historically!

There have been some spectacularly accurate predictions made by astrologers in the public realm over the centuries; a famous one was made by Luc Gauricus in 1555 to the effect that King Henri the Second of France ( then aged 37) was in danger of death in his 42nd year, by a head injury incurred in single combat in an enclosed space. And five years later Henri duly died of a lance splinter which entered his eyes and pierced his brain.

There have also been some spectacular failures, eg to predict that the Munich agreement of 1938 would lead to World War Two.

We do much better at describing the essence of a pattern – identifying the exact branches is much more hit and miss. Personally this cheers me, since it appears to suggest a creative balance between fate and free will in the universe – chaos theory in contemporary physics also has strong parallels with the astrological paradigm. Not everything is pinned down – both the language of astrology and the language of contemporary physics tells us that!

So you can perhaps see that I am very hesitant about both the accuracy of prediction and the wisdom of doing it at all, especially for individuals, in any more than a “describing the core and speculating about the branches” kind of way. Predicting that a specific branch WILL manifest, in my opinion closes down options rather than opening them up, also taking us into the realm of self-fulfilling prophecy….

But there are some very interesting patterns coming up, including the one you referred to a moment ago. So perhaps we can have some fun as we move to the close of this interview by playing with some possibilities !

In Feb 1997 the planet Jupiter, which concerns expansion, growth, development and opportunity, meets Uranus which symbolises the urge to break through to new levels of experience. Of the 360 degrees of the zodiac, the exact conjunction takes place at 6 degrees of Aquarius from 15 to 17 of February.

What that should mean collectively is some kind of major step forward being announced in human development and awareness at that time. Jupiter/Uranus in Aquarius is a combination which has a strong feeling of technological & scientific breakthrough about it. Here are some examples:

The first powered aeroplane flight on 17 Dec 1903 took place in Carolina, USA. There was a significant link between those two planets then. On the day of the moon landing in July 1969, there was an exact conjunction between those two planets. What we might expect is something which takes us boldly where humanity has not gone before. ……

What I’d urge your readers to do is keep an eye on the news around that time. And to further tantalise and tease everybody, I want to give a special message to people who were born when the sun was at 6 degrees of Aquarius in any year – ie those of you whose birthday is 25, 26, or 27 January – this applies to every year. All those people should experience, in a variety of different ways, the same essential unusual, unexpected opening-out and development in their life’s path. Something quite out of the ordinary !

I would like people born on those days, whatever their age, to get in touch with me with their DATE, PLACE and TIME of birth, which I will then log into my computer. They could then contact me after the 15-17 February 1997 and let me know how it was for them! If I get sufficient feedback I will write it up, anonymously, as a research project.

IH : Great! I’m sure our readers will be only too glad to oblige.

(2008 update: The major event occurring a few days after the exact conjunction was the announcement to the world of a truly boldly-going scientific achievement – the creation of Dolly the Sheep, the world’s first cloned animal, by a team of Scottish scientists led by Dr Ian Wilmut. Read all about this, and other exciting developments around the same time, in Anne Whitaker’s book on the Jupiter Uranus conjunction of 1997.

The book, including the researched experiences of 17 people who participated in the project, is now published (April 2009) as “ Jupiter meets Uranus : from erotic bathing to star gazing” by theAmerican Federation of Astrologers. If you would like to read a brief summary of its content in the meantime, click on BOOKS where the back page blurb is displayed.)

1500 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2008
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page

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The Conclusions

This ground is holy: The Moon’s Nodes in Action: Part 3

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The Principles and Practice of Astrology

Part Three:

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