OUR COVID UNDERWORLD

 Here is an astrological piece I have just written:

When people come to me for readings, there is usually some major transit going on, and that is why they have come, though they usually don't know that. And an important part of my job is talking about how to BE during that time of transit, and that is related to whether it is Uranus, Neptune or Pluto that is at work.

Whichever it is, the outer planets operate from outside of ordinary waking consciousness. They are not part of the conscious endowment that the inner planets represent and which we can get to know and use effectively. If you want to learn effectively, look at your Mercury to understand your particular way of learning. And so on.

However, our daily life with the inner planets can give us the illusion that we are in control of our lives. We are indeed in control, but only of the small daily picture. There are greater forces of the Spirit that sweep through us and sweep through humanity, and that is when people come to us for readings. These are times when the old no longer works, because it has had the life withdrawn from it by Pluto, or Neptune is showing us that what seemed so real is illusory, or trickster Uranus is upsetting those certainties to which we had anchored ourselves.

The only way forward is to tune into these greater forces for change and surrender to them, sense the alembic in which we are being slowly reduced to what is essential, the chrysalis in which we are being magically transformed, and to dwell in the not-knowingness of that. The not-knowing place, 'negative capability' as Keats put it, is difficult for us, for we like our certainties, but they are illusory. The outer planets show us this, they initiate us into what is real. And when we are tuned in to these deeper processes, sense and meaning can return to our lives, but not in a way that is obviously graspable. Being open is of itself meaningful.

And what is true of the individual can also be true of a collective, though whether the outcome has greater value than what came before is a moot point. And since the Saturn-Pluto conjunction of this January, the world has been plunged by the coronavirus into Pluto's Underworld. And there we remain. As is usual, Pluto leaves enough for the processes of daily life to continue in a limited way, but not much more than that. All else is in the alembic, the crucible, the chrysalis, being re-shaped. And as is also usual, this Underworld experience seems to drag on and on. It is not a time for most of us for moving forward and being outwardly creative. It is a time for sitting with what is, surrendering to what is, and feeling the possibilities of the new brewing slowly beneath the surface.

I can only speak for the UK, but we have been in this Underworld for a long time, ever since the Brexit referendum in 2016, whose outcome destroyed a major part of the identity of so many people – that of EU citizen – which is why the backlash was so strong. At that time Pluto was coming up to oppose the UK Moon, having hard -aspected our Sun, Angles and Node in the preceding years. Pluto doesn’t care about human values. He is not on the left or on the right. He is on the side of renewal, and that renewal and rebirth may not be something we find ourselves in agreement with!

So we have had the Underworlds of both Brexit and Covid. And our Charon the ferryman is Boris Johnson, who has Moon in Scorpio and was himself dunked into the river Styx by Covid, but who managed to clamber back on board. A guy who many of us cannot stand and do not trust. Maybe that is why Pluto chose Johnson. So maybe we need to look again.

I am writing this piece because ever since Saturn then Pluto started moving forward a few weeks ago, I have been feeling out of sorts. I was thinking maybe I need to see more actual people. Or maybe I need to do more. But I was OK a few weeks ago. And I am also thinking that Saturn and Pluto are now starting to move us out of this double Underworld, and I am feeling that. But we are also still in it. And when I remind myself of that, all seems OK again. I have learnt about being in the Underworld over the last 28 years.

So the Covid Underworld was catalysed by the Saturn-Pluto conjunction in Capricorn on Jan 12 this year. Saturn will move finally into Aquarius in mid-December, definitively away from Pluto, and I think we will look back and see that as the beginning of the end of the Covid crisis. Already the cracks in the lockdown are appearing, as not just Wales and Scotland, but the north of England start to go their own way. And this ties in nicely with a theme of Brexit, which is the fragmentation of the UK into its constituent parts. And the reunification of Ireland (which is strongly suggested in the 1922 UK chart relocated to Belfast.)

So for now, the astrological message seems to be that we will remain in the Covid Underworld for the next couple of months, so be patient, watch the horizon for those glimmers of the future, but do not strain towards them just yet. In December, not just Saturn but Jupiter too, which played its part at the start of Covid, will enter Aquarius and begin a new cycle for the world. It won’t be all at once, but we will be on our way out, at last. And for the UK, we will definitively be leaving the Brexit Underworld too.