angstoic.com Astrologer, Ang Stoic
After a two-month period of being routed back to the mid-degrees of Aries, Mars is now finally direct again, hedging his efforts into staging a ‘come-back’. That’s right, the impish god of action and punch-ons is picking up some pace again, but it won’t be until the end of this year (22-23 Dec) that he finally takes charge, urging us to do the things we probably should have done a while ago.
Will it be too late?
With Neptune squaring the Nodes, we cannot turn back the tides of change.
By Christmas, Jupiter and Saturn will have formed their epochal ‘Grand Conjunction’ at 00°♒29′ Aquarius. Seriously – any contrived action could become far more difficult, especially since Mars entering Taurus (Jan 2021) becomes severely debilitated. This year’s already been a little emasculating, to say the least. By next year Mars could well feel like he’s been completely neutered. This is why we can only expect the unexpected, the raging bullies and the mad cows when Mars finally connects with Uranus (Jan 20).
For now, we see Mars’ counterpart, Venus, being challenged herself in efforts to restore some balance and peace in her world. This week’s squares to Jupiter, Pluto and dignified Saturn in Capricorn, as well as an opposition to Eris only highlights where we might have compromised our personal interests – sold ourselves short either out of fear, duty or for the pleasure of her majesty or state – the higher powers that be. Nevertheless, if there’s a sense that we have sold out, then how the hell do you buy yourself back in?
These next few weeks will be like no other. The intensity increases in a world obviously cast into chaotic discord and mayhem as Jupiter sits squarely on the next instalment of an approaching Pluto-Eris square – a harsh, supernatural condition that presses us all into an “adapt or die” state of emergency. And whether our egos permit it or not, we are cracking slowly into little tiny pieces.
It’s hard to admit, but hey… we are undoubtedly locked into the final stages of civilisation decline – not merely for our extreme adherence to our cultural and sociopolitical divisions, not just under the grips of an unrelenting worldwide pandemic, but because of our fixations to an economic model powered on toxic, non-renewable, and irreplaceable energy sources – fossil fuels.
Whilst this uniquely rich energy supply has benefited our industrial complexes, made ‘gods’ of its clever proprietors and direct beneficiaries during this relatively short, meteoric rise of an unprecedented boom, the nasty downside is a drastic, unremitting bust. The Saturn/Pluto conjunction in Capricorn has exposed to us the grave dysfunctions of living in megacities, globalised production, industrial agriculture, and a human labour force that’s specialised to feed almost 8 billion people. Without the power of fossil fuels, this economic model is thoroughly unsustainable.
As the dignified Venus squares up against this Jupiter (growth, inflation)/ Pluto (wealth, power)/ Saturn (control, structure, limitation) we see an almost futile attempt to satisfy our most carnal desires and passions. We come to realise that no matter where we invest our interests, affections and tastes, we are certain to come up against the harsh and bitter forces of futility and destruction. Yes, this utter despair and social suffocation is a necessary prelude to a more felicitous reconstruction.
By the time he enters Sagittarius at the end of this week, the Scorpio Sun would have shown us that we are facing a full-scale deconstruction of our flimsy ego-attachments and obsessions. Here, we sense that there is no other way but to let go of trying to enrich or empower ourselves by trying to cling onto our toxic deadwood.
The once abundant, easily exploited oilfields and coal mines of the past are mostly all consumed, or consuming. While our scientists tell us that there are indeed other energy alternatives, these are by no means reliable replacements to supply the bountiful energy outputs that fossil fuels can provide. Modern humanity’s complex, expansive, high-speed improvements of the past 100 years owes its brief life expectancy to this one-time, rapidly dwindling energy bonanza.
Whilst we experienced an unprecedented boom in global population and wealth accumulation, these have grown exponentially since 1920s, and we are now headed for a raft of global economic crises which not only appear to be unmanageable but their damaging physical effects on the planet’s health and hope for future prosperity appear irreversible.
Venus and Mars’ squares to the Capricorn stellium hence show us that the relationships we valued and the way we asserted ourselves to protect and sustain them are in no way coherent to what we hoped to gain in our short visit here as spiritual beings.
It’s evolution, and 2020 heralds the critical stop, take-stock-of-everything of-any-true-value and change-or-die moment. Whilst many may talk about a ‘total reset’, like there is somebody (some human or organisation) that is possibly behind it, the great reset is most likely imposed upon us by greater cosmic forces whose massive empire-building cycles have now run their course.
We can dream and delude ourselves into all kinds of cognitive dissonance and foolish fantasies of “making things great again”, but this is essentially half the problem in dealing with this collapse of complex empires. The other half of the problem is, of course, that many of us are inclined to spiral into panic, fear and complete terror, from which we are plagued in trying desperately to inflict some burden and blame upon one another, thanks to our dogma, our limited knowledge, half-baked beliefs and unremitting judgements.
This week, the Sun moves into Sagittarius, opening our eyes to the immutable laws of our supernatural existence. We also start to come to terms with those more exorbitant claims and insupportable ‘truths’ – the very fabric that so far has somehow managed to weave our flimsy understanding of reality into some ego-pacifying sense of ‘purpose’. This means that we are about to find out how ‘right’ we are, or not. As profitable industries start to dry up due to seismic breaks in our economic supply chains, surviving businesses will be compelled to turn a profit by consuming the social assets that they once created. Society will need to cannibalise itself in order to stay in business.
Similarly, our own personal investments and the effort we make to profit from these interests, be they the people we love, our jobs, real estate titles and other materialistic demands start to slide, as does their capacity to satisfy our socially-defined sense of self-worth and economic security.
Those who are prudent and wise enough to not depend on the biosphere for their sustenance and well-being may note that capitalist consumerism has depleted about half the planet’s wild animals in just the last 50 years. Scientists also estimate that half of all remaining species could be extinct by the end of this century (at this rate). What scientists do not tell us is how the human population will fare through dramatic shifts in the overall climate-change and continued rising temperatures.
Over the next month, we must face the awful truth: that intersecting challenges like climate chaos, rampant species extinction, food supply and freshwater scarcity, poverty, extreme social inequality, as well as the rise of frequency and severity of global pandemics add to the rapidly disintegrating foundations of our existing socioeconomic structures.
An aggrieved and heavily frustrated Mars wants to strike back in frantic, desperate ways. We sense a wave of anger and despair in how our fractious and fractured political systems have made any attempt to mount a cooperative fightback nearly impossible. The more desperate this dog-eat-dog system of economic interdependencies becomes, the greater the danger that hostile oligarchs and autocratic rulers manipulate us into low ideologies of isolationism and nationalism, and rally us to wage war over scarce natural resources.
Understanding the monumental challenges facing us all of us is critical here. This will seem exceedingly difficult but ever more pressing as we head into a South Node Total Solar Eclipse (Dec 14) and its preceding Lunar Eclipse (Nov 30).
As usual, under eclipses, we are forced to question and redefine our identities, our values, affiliations and loyalties to one another. Do we see ourselves as kind, compassionate human beings, struggling earnestly to raise our families, embolden our communities so we can somehow coexist without squabbling over things we don’t need? Or is our primary urge to defend our domestic and national boundaries at any cost to our neighbours. Are we still trying to preserve selfish and cultural identities, ideologies and religions without a clue as to what these mean to us any more?
Our future is posed with massive questions, not absolute answers. As we are seeing in many nations, as in the current post-election dissonance in the USA, we grimly stand to become hopelessly divided along national, cultural, racial, gender, religious, or party lines.
The final consequence of this great global implosion is still hard to predict. Pluto remains in Capricorn till 2024. We have, in all of this dramatic collapse, a range of choices in how we (as a species) overcome denial and despair, kick our addiction to fossil fuels and nature’s species and somehow pull ourselves together quickly enough to break the cycle of dependency of corporate power over our lives.
Can we introduce a system of genuine democracy, harness renewable energy, reintegrate our communities into something resembling respect and value of individual integrity, re-discover forgotten skills and sacred rites, heal wounds that we’ve inflicted on the Earth and its indigenous tribes? Or will our ignorance, fear and prejudice turn us into antagonistic savages, scrambling over the dwindling reserves of a degraded planet?
The stakes in the Pluto/Eris race could not be higher.
Blessings for now, and see you on the cosmic bus as we discuss the potency of messages augured by these two seminal lunations:
Thank you for your unending eloquence in such unprecedented times. Be blessed xoxo