Sonne
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Thank you housemouse for the chart about Hillary's swearing in. I haven't been able to find a time for the first swearing in.
I apologize for voicing my opinions of her.
******
I've been reading a lot of astrology sites about this very issue, and I came across this from Richard Noelle. Here are his predictions for last year. He is spot on and it kept me awake last night.
The big story for 2008, in a word, is money. It's much bigger than that, actually; but that's the headline. Money is an obvious and visible manifestation of the historic changes we're living through at the moment; it's also the foundation of our global civilization, and it's crumbling faster than most people might have imagined just a few years ago. This may sound at least politically incorrect, if not horribly crass and abysmally materialistic. But the simple fact is that money is a way of valuing what's important to humans, and without it there's no accountability, no responsibility - ultimately, only anarchy. And the money, in a word, is gone.
The headline for the year will be a global financial system in crisis, teetering at the precipice. It's a crisis that got going in a big way over the past two years, exactly as I predicted in my 2006 and 2007 forecasts. But the underlying story, the real deal, is that this is part of the ongoing and historic shift in civilization I've been writing about in my forecasts these past several years. It hit critical mass, as I have written, under the aegis of the 2006 Saturn-Jupiter-Neptune T-square configuration (the first of its kind since the year 536), and the subsequent 2006-2007 Saturn-Neptune opposition. These in turn are rooted in what the astrologers of old called the Trigonalis, the historic watershed we've all been living in since 1980-81 and which culminates in 2020. The Saturn-Uranus opposition and Neptune-lunar node conjunction of 2008 are the next steps along the way. These things need some explaining, and I'll get to that. But first . . .
Apocalyptic hysteria is spreading like wildfire, what with the "liquidity crisis" staring us in the face and the 2012 Mayan madness looming around the corner. I'm sure it sells books and glues eyeballs to the cable networks, but it's a lie. In the first place, the problem isn't a liquidity crisis per se. That's a euphemism, a way of avoiding the reality; which is that the global financial system is a charade, because what passes for money is in fact a sham. It's all very convenient to blame the liquidity crisis on those shiftless, sub-prime poor folks who conned unsuspecting lenders into issuing them mortgages for homes they couldn't afford. Or the crafty lenders who conned naïve borrowers into taking mortgages they couldn't afford. Or the greedy financiers who packaged up and unloaded those toxic mortgages onto banks and pension funds and hedge funds. The fact is that in a system of fiat money, where credit is created out of debt, the pursuit of ever-higher returns on investment is the only thing that keeps the whole system from crashing down. But there comes a time when that pursuit becomes unsustainable. We hit that wall in 2006-2007, as Saturn opposed Neptune in the heavens, just exactly as I predicted: "it's an alignment that points to a time when people, both individually and collectively, are experiencing a crisis of confidence. What was once apparently so solid and real that you could build a life, a financial system, a global trade network, even a civilization on it: that's just what has been dissolving under the aegis of Saturn's opposition to Neptune in combination with the T-square from Jupiter."
We're going to be dealing with the consequences of this turning point for some time to come . . . well past 2012 in fact, because the world wont end then. Why would anyone believe a bunch of wacky Mayans silly enough to mistake Spaniards for gods, anyway? In short, this is not a time to despair, but to prepare. What to prepare for? Not just a monetary meltdown, although that's certainly part of it. Practically speaking, this means a continuing dollar collapse of course, but also a collapse of the yen, the pound, the euro - all the major currencies, because they're all essentially counterfeit. They aren't real money, in other words; they're only bank notes. The dollar may be up or down against the euro or pound this month or next; but in the long run, they'll all be down against gold, silver and the like until such time as the currencies once again are backed by real money. And that time is coming . . .
Ever since shortly after the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction of 1940-41, the entire world financial system has been dollar-based - and the dollar is broke, people. Not just the US Federal Reserve, but central banks all over the world - all of which have substantial dollar reserves - will eventually be forced to do what for several years I've recommended individuals do: buy gold (and other precious metals, but primarily gold). And for the same reason: the longer they hold dollars (or yen or euros or what-have-you), the less they're worth. (With Jupiter in Capricorn all year, the products of lands and mines and wells - and the producers of the equipment and providers of the services essential to that production - are where the real money is.)
In the broader sense, what we're going through now are the death throes of one historical epoch, and the birth pangs of the next; the torch passing from one form of civilization to its successor. Is it any wonder that Saturn, whose Greek name (Chronos) is the root of chronology and all measures of time, is the celestial signal that marks off these shifts from one epoch to the next?
Speaking of the Ringed Planet, Saturn aligns in opposition to Uranus in 2008, for the first time in over forty years. The opposition of these two planets tends to come in sets of several, over a period of a couple years. The last set of Saturn-Uranus oppositions, for example, occurred in 1965-1967, and included five alignments in all. Two of these occurred with Saturn retrograde, and three with Uranus retrograde, all in the Virgo-Pisces polarity. The US Mint stopped producing silver coins around the time of this particular set of oppositions, and the US Treasury stopped redeeming Silver Certificates as well. Reality went out of monetary circulation because the US dollar had been sufficiently devalued that the silver in a silver dollar was worth more than a dollar. That's what Saturn-Uranus oppositions do: they replace a bankrupt regime with a new one, because the old fiction becomes too expensive to maintain.
The next set (2056-57) comprises only three Saturn-Uranus oppositions, and is relatively quick in passing. But this time around, the alignment of these two planets at opposite ends of the heavens stretches out from 2008 into 2010. The opposition is exact five times, from November 4, 2008 to July 26, 2010. Once again, this set includes two alignments with Saturn retrograde and Uranus direct, and three with Saturn direct and Uranus retrograde. The first four alignments are in the Virgo-Pisces polarity, like every other Saturn-Uranus opposition since August 13, 1919. And then things change: the July 26, 2010 alignment slides into the Aries-Libra polarity, where it will remain well into the next century. It's the first sign change for this opposition since the 1918-1920 set, which began in Leo-Aquarius in 1918 and slid into Virgo-Pisces in 1919. Saturn-Uranus oppositions won't change signs again until 2146.
With the first polarity change in the Saturn-Uranus opposition since 1919 coming into play in the current sequence of oppositions between these two planets, the World-War I era - the League of Nations, the IRS, the Federal Reserve Bank - is finally coming to an end. So is the era of the Industrial Revolution, which historians date to the late 18th and early 19th Centuries - coinciding with the beginning of the current earth sign series of Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions. These were the two outermost planets known to the ancients, the two slowest moving wandering celestial orbs visible to the naked eye. Their conjunctions, when they appear to come together in the night sky, were the longest and therefore most historic planetary alignment cycles dealt with in ancient astrology. They remain a foundation for the astrological study of history, although the discovery of other more distant planets since the invention of the telescope provides astrologers with a great many more and longer-term cycles; e.g. the Saturn-Uranus and Saturn-Neptune cycles.
The alignment of Jupiter and Saturn at twenty-year intervals was known from ancient times as the Great Chronocrator, because it was observed to time significant turning points in civilization - indeed, entire eras, when the alignment changed element. (The change of element is termed the Trigonalis.) Until 1802, the Great Chronocrator had taken place in an unbroken series in the fire signs of the zodiac (Aries, Leo and Cancer), dating back to 1663. The shift into signs of the earth element began with the Virgo conjunction on July 17, 1802. This ushered in a period of transition that was interrupted by one final fire sign conjunction (in Aries, on Jun 19, 1821), before an unbroken series in the earth element began with the Capricorn conjunction of 1842.
The 1802-1842 period neatly brackets the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, although the precise dating of this turning point in civilization remains a subject of debate among historians. Simultaneously, modern capitalism ("finance capitalism") supplanted mercantilism as the prevailing economic system during this period, a transition first formalized de jure in Great Britain in the 1840s by the repeal of the Corn Laws and the Navigation Acts (in 1846 and 1849 respectively). The two went hand in hand: you can't have industrialism without expanding markets, and you can't have expanding markets without credit. Factories require banks, in other words. The Industrial Revolution was a Capital Revolution.
Fine points aside, it's clear that the transition from an economy (and more broadly, a civilization) based on manual labor to one based on mechanization (and the capitalist system required to fund it) roughly coincided with the beginning of the current earth sign series of the Great Chronocrator, which dates back to the period from 1802 (the earth sign alignment that broke the fire sign series) to 1842 (the beginning of an unbroken series of earth sign conjunctions). We may as well distinguish these Trigonalis periods as stretching from a dawn that coincides with the first out-of-element Chronocrator (the first one to break the old element series), to a dusk that coincides with the first in a long unbroken series in the new element. In that sense, we're now more than halfway from dawn to dusk in the current Trigonalis, the transition to a new order of the ages that will last for the better part of a couple centuries.
The earth sign Chronocrator series that ushered in industrialization and the civilization that embraced it is now itself in a period of transition into the next element series, which comprises the air signs (Gemini, Libra and Aquarius). The first air sign Chronocrator in centuries (since 1405, actually) happened in 1980-81, when a Libra triple conjunction broke into the earth sign run: the dawn of the new Trigonalis. However this was followed in 2000 by the last of the earth element series, the May 28 alignment at 22° 43' Taurus. The continuous air element Chronocrators begin in 2020, with the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in Aquarius: the dusk of the current Trigonalis. The air sign series is then unbroken until 2159, when these two planets align in the water sign Scorpio. This ushers in the dawn of a new Trigonalis, which includes a return to the air element for the conjunctions of 2179 and 2199, before the continuous water element series begins in 2219 (carrying through to 2318).
The last earth to air Trigonalis occurred in 1166-1226, initiating a period of less than a century during which "there were more inventions developed and applied usefully than in the previous thousand years of human history." (See Wikipedia, "Renaissance of the 12th Century".) In retrospect, 1980 is just far enough back to seem historic from the perspective of today's culture of immediacy. That first air sign conjunction in centuries brought the popularization of the personal computer, followed shortly afterwards by the first generation cell phones: two developments very much in tune with the intellectual and communicative nature of the air element. (Arguably, both technologies had their antecedents; but their current manifestations are clearly recognizable in the wake of the 1980 Chronocrator.)
Connectivity is certainly a keyword of the promise held out by the air sign series, if its 1980 harbinger is any real indication. It's a peculiarly impersonal kind of connectivity, a virtual rather than real connection - and yet, it passes for real. People are in touch, but not touching. They're aware of so much, yet they fully grasp very little; they're smart, but not wise. The network is the thing. In short, the Chronocrator element change in 1980 heralded a fundamental shift in civilization, from earth (industrialization and finance capitalism) to air (virtualization, and a new economic order). Virtualization means globalization, and that's the one key outline of the new world order that's undeniably well underway. The earth sign Chronocrator series saw the rise of the modern nation-state, while the air sign series launched what is now glibly called globalization - which amounts to a dissolving of nation-states. Look around you, see the things that have grown up since 1980: the European Union, NAFTA, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its emergence as an oligarchic capitalist entity, Red Capitalism in China, outsourcing, off-shoring, etc., etc.
Judging from past Trigonalis periods, I think the one we're in now will lead to a new currency regime. This time, it will be global, and it won't be based on one particular national currency. The last Trigonalis, from 1802 to 1842, set the stage for the Bank of England going on the gold standard (per the 1844 Bank Charter Act). The 1940-1941 Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in Taurus was followed in short order by the Atlantic Charter, which set in motion the process that led to the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement. In essence, Bretton Woods made the US dollar the money of the world. Which was all well in good as long as the dollar was backed by something real; namely gold. Unfortunately, the US stopped redeeming dollars in gold on August 15, 1971 - right in the middle of a triple Saturn-Neptune opposition, the last such alignment of these two planets prior to their 2006-2007 triple opposition. Since that time, the dollar is no longer real money, only bank notes, mere digits.
Neptune alignments have had a curious connection with historic financial developments, from the closing of the gold window in 1971 to the liquidity crisis of 2006-2007. There's another such Neptune alignment this year, to the Moon's north node. The lunar nodes are the points at which the plane of the Moon's orbit intersects the plane of Earth's orbit around the Sun (the ecliptic). Eclipses of the Sun and Moon occur because these two orbital planes cross, and when they do happen they always take place near the lunar nodes - within about 18° at most. There are two nodes, one for each point of intersection between the orbits of Earth and Moon. The north node is the point at which the Moon rises from below (south of) to above (north of) the ecliptic: it's the northward crossing, hence the name. Likewise, the south node is the Moon's southward crossing of the ecliptic. The Moon makes each crossing once a month in the course of its orbit around the Earth. When one of these crossings takes place at a time when Earth and Sun are aligned near enough the nodal degrees, an eclipse occurs: a lunar eclipse if there's a full moon, a solar eclipse if there's a new moon.
Eclipses are always important telltales of the cosmos in their own right, and I'll have more to say about the four eclipses of 2008 a little later. For now, those nodes where the eclipses happen are the focus, because they're involved in an unusual alignment this year. It's a factor that gives the year's eclipses a special importance and significance. This year, for the first time in 17 years, the Moon's north node will align in the same degree of the zodiac as the planet Neptune, at 24° Aquarius. It's the first conjunction in that sign since 1841 - the year of the first in a continuous series of earth sign Chronocrators, remember? - and the first in that very spot in the heavens (to the nearest degree) since 1189 (during the last earth-to-air Trigonalis, remember?).
Any planet that's on or fairly near the nodal axis - as Neptune is in 2008 - is bound to be aligned with an eclipse. That makes planetary conjunctions and oppositions to the lunar nodes a signal that eclipses taking place around the time of these planetary-nodal alignments will be colored by the nature of the planet in the alignment. Any eclipse represents an emphasis on things signified by the Sun, Earth and Moon - the three bodies in the eclipse. Of course this means geophysical phenomena, such as storms and seismic disturbances. But these three are the substrata of all human experience, from gender to food to territory and power. Last year, the eclipses took place in Virgo-Pisces, with Saturn in Virgo opposing the Moon's north node. (The lunar eclipse of August 28 was directly opposite Saturn.) It was, generally speaking, a year - and it really hit home in August - that was all about Saturn: debts coming due, people coming up short, money and security vanishing, hard times particularly with regard to health care and foodstuffs, etc.
...
(continue on next post)
I apologize for voicing my opinions of her.
******
I've been reading a lot of astrology sites about this very issue, and I came across this from Richard Noelle. Here are his predictions for last year. He is spot on and it kept me awake last night.
The big story for 2008, in a word, is money. It's much bigger than that, actually; but that's the headline. Money is an obvious and visible manifestation of the historic changes we're living through at the moment; it's also the foundation of our global civilization, and it's crumbling faster than most people might have imagined just a few years ago. This may sound at least politically incorrect, if not horribly crass and abysmally materialistic. But the simple fact is that money is a way of valuing what's important to humans, and without it there's no accountability, no responsibility - ultimately, only anarchy. And the money, in a word, is gone.
The headline for the year will be a global financial system in crisis, teetering at the precipice. It's a crisis that got going in a big way over the past two years, exactly as I predicted in my 2006 and 2007 forecasts. But the underlying story, the real deal, is that this is part of the ongoing and historic shift in civilization I've been writing about in my forecasts these past several years. It hit critical mass, as I have written, under the aegis of the 2006 Saturn-Jupiter-Neptune T-square configuration (the first of its kind since the year 536), and the subsequent 2006-2007 Saturn-Neptune opposition. These in turn are rooted in what the astrologers of old called the Trigonalis, the historic watershed we've all been living in since 1980-81 and which culminates in 2020. The Saturn-Uranus opposition and Neptune-lunar node conjunction of 2008 are the next steps along the way. These things need some explaining, and I'll get to that. But first . . .
Apocalyptic hysteria is spreading like wildfire, what with the "liquidity crisis" staring us in the face and the 2012 Mayan madness looming around the corner. I'm sure it sells books and glues eyeballs to the cable networks, but it's a lie. In the first place, the problem isn't a liquidity crisis per se. That's a euphemism, a way of avoiding the reality; which is that the global financial system is a charade, because what passes for money is in fact a sham. It's all very convenient to blame the liquidity crisis on those shiftless, sub-prime poor folks who conned unsuspecting lenders into issuing them mortgages for homes they couldn't afford. Or the crafty lenders who conned naïve borrowers into taking mortgages they couldn't afford. Or the greedy financiers who packaged up and unloaded those toxic mortgages onto banks and pension funds and hedge funds. The fact is that in a system of fiat money, where credit is created out of debt, the pursuit of ever-higher returns on investment is the only thing that keeps the whole system from crashing down. But there comes a time when that pursuit becomes unsustainable. We hit that wall in 2006-2007, as Saturn opposed Neptune in the heavens, just exactly as I predicted: "it's an alignment that points to a time when people, both individually and collectively, are experiencing a crisis of confidence. What was once apparently so solid and real that you could build a life, a financial system, a global trade network, even a civilization on it: that's just what has been dissolving under the aegis of Saturn's opposition to Neptune in combination with the T-square from Jupiter."
We're going to be dealing with the consequences of this turning point for some time to come . . . well past 2012 in fact, because the world wont end then. Why would anyone believe a bunch of wacky Mayans silly enough to mistake Spaniards for gods, anyway? In short, this is not a time to despair, but to prepare. What to prepare for? Not just a monetary meltdown, although that's certainly part of it. Practically speaking, this means a continuing dollar collapse of course, but also a collapse of the yen, the pound, the euro - all the major currencies, because they're all essentially counterfeit. They aren't real money, in other words; they're only bank notes. The dollar may be up or down against the euro or pound this month or next; but in the long run, they'll all be down against gold, silver and the like until such time as the currencies once again are backed by real money. And that time is coming . . .
Ever since shortly after the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction of 1940-41, the entire world financial system has been dollar-based - and the dollar is broke, people. Not just the US Federal Reserve, but central banks all over the world - all of which have substantial dollar reserves - will eventually be forced to do what for several years I've recommended individuals do: buy gold (and other precious metals, but primarily gold). And for the same reason: the longer they hold dollars (or yen or euros or what-have-you), the less they're worth. (With Jupiter in Capricorn all year, the products of lands and mines and wells - and the producers of the equipment and providers of the services essential to that production - are where the real money is.)
In the broader sense, what we're going through now are the death throes of one historical epoch, and the birth pangs of the next; the torch passing from one form of civilization to its successor. Is it any wonder that Saturn, whose Greek name (Chronos) is the root of chronology and all measures of time, is the celestial signal that marks off these shifts from one epoch to the next?
Speaking of the Ringed Planet, Saturn aligns in opposition to Uranus in 2008, for the first time in over forty years. The opposition of these two planets tends to come in sets of several, over a period of a couple years. The last set of Saturn-Uranus oppositions, for example, occurred in 1965-1967, and included five alignments in all. Two of these occurred with Saturn retrograde, and three with Uranus retrograde, all in the Virgo-Pisces polarity. The US Mint stopped producing silver coins around the time of this particular set of oppositions, and the US Treasury stopped redeeming Silver Certificates as well. Reality went out of monetary circulation because the US dollar had been sufficiently devalued that the silver in a silver dollar was worth more than a dollar. That's what Saturn-Uranus oppositions do: they replace a bankrupt regime with a new one, because the old fiction becomes too expensive to maintain.
The next set (2056-57) comprises only three Saturn-Uranus oppositions, and is relatively quick in passing. But this time around, the alignment of these two planets at opposite ends of the heavens stretches out from 2008 into 2010. The opposition is exact five times, from November 4, 2008 to July 26, 2010. Once again, this set includes two alignments with Saturn retrograde and Uranus direct, and three with Saturn direct and Uranus retrograde. The first four alignments are in the Virgo-Pisces polarity, like every other Saturn-Uranus opposition since August 13, 1919. And then things change: the July 26, 2010 alignment slides into the Aries-Libra polarity, where it will remain well into the next century. It's the first sign change for this opposition since the 1918-1920 set, which began in Leo-Aquarius in 1918 and slid into Virgo-Pisces in 1919. Saturn-Uranus oppositions won't change signs again until 2146.
With the first polarity change in the Saturn-Uranus opposition since 1919 coming into play in the current sequence of oppositions between these two planets, the World-War I era - the League of Nations, the IRS, the Federal Reserve Bank - is finally coming to an end. So is the era of the Industrial Revolution, which historians date to the late 18th and early 19th Centuries - coinciding with the beginning of the current earth sign series of Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions. These were the two outermost planets known to the ancients, the two slowest moving wandering celestial orbs visible to the naked eye. Their conjunctions, when they appear to come together in the night sky, were the longest and therefore most historic planetary alignment cycles dealt with in ancient astrology. They remain a foundation for the astrological study of history, although the discovery of other more distant planets since the invention of the telescope provides astrologers with a great many more and longer-term cycles; e.g. the Saturn-Uranus and Saturn-Neptune cycles.
The alignment of Jupiter and Saturn at twenty-year intervals was known from ancient times as the Great Chronocrator, because it was observed to time significant turning points in civilization - indeed, entire eras, when the alignment changed element. (The change of element is termed the Trigonalis.) Until 1802, the Great Chronocrator had taken place in an unbroken series in the fire signs of the zodiac (Aries, Leo and Cancer), dating back to 1663. The shift into signs of the earth element began with the Virgo conjunction on July 17, 1802. This ushered in a period of transition that was interrupted by one final fire sign conjunction (in Aries, on Jun 19, 1821), before an unbroken series in the earth element began with the Capricorn conjunction of 1842.
The 1802-1842 period neatly brackets the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, although the precise dating of this turning point in civilization remains a subject of debate among historians. Simultaneously, modern capitalism ("finance capitalism") supplanted mercantilism as the prevailing economic system during this period, a transition first formalized de jure in Great Britain in the 1840s by the repeal of the Corn Laws and the Navigation Acts (in 1846 and 1849 respectively). The two went hand in hand: you can't have industrialism without expanding markets, and you can't have expanding markets without credit. Factories require banks, in other words. The Industrial Revolution was a Capital Revolution.
Fine points aside, it's clear that the transition from an economy (and more broadly, a civilization) based on manual labor to one based on mechanization (and the capitalist system required to fund it) roughly coincided with the beginning of the current earth sign series of the Great Chronocrator, which dates back to the period from 1802 (the earth sign alignment that broke the fire sign series) to 1842 (the beginning of an unbroken series of earth sign conjunctions). We may as well distinguish these Trigonalis periods as stretching from a dawn that coincides with the first out-of-element Chronocrator (the first one to break the old element series), to a dusk that coincides with the first in a long unbroken series in the new element. In that sense, we're now more than halfway from dawn to dusk in the current Trigonalis, the transition to a new order of the ages that will last for the better part of a couple centuries.
The earth sign Chronocrator series that ushered in industrialization and the civilization that embraced it is now itself in a period of transition into the next element series, which comprises the air signs (Gemini, Libra and Aquarius). The first air sign Chronocrator in centuries (since 1405, actually) happened in 1980-81, when a Libra triple conjunction broke into the earth sign run: the dawn of the new Trigonalis. However this was followed in 2000 by the last of the earth element series, the May 28 alignment at 22° 43' Taurus. The continuous air element Chronocrators begin in 2020, with the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in Aquarius: the dusk of the current Trigonalis. The air sign series is then unbroken until 2159, when these two planets align in the water sign Scorpio. This ushers in the dawn of a new Trigonalis, which includes a return to the air element for the conjunctions of 2179 and 2199, before the continuous water element series begins in 2219 (carrying through to 2318).
The last earth to air Trigonalis occurred in 1166-1226, initiating a period of less than a century during which "there were more inventions developed and applied usefully than in the previous thousand years of human history." (See Wikipedia, "Renaissance of the 12th Century".) In retrospect, 1980 is just far enough back to seem historic from the perspective of today's culture of immediacy. That first air sign conjunction in centuries brought the popularization of the personal computer, followed shortly afterwards by the first generation cell phones: two developments very much in tune with the intellectual and communicative nature of the air element. (Arguably, both technologies had their antecedents; but their current manifestations are clearly recognizable in the wake of the 1980 Chronocrator.)
Connectivity is certainly a keyword of the promise held out by the air sign series, if its 1980 harbinger is any real indication. It's a peculiarly impersonal kind of connectivity, a virtual rather than real connection - and yet, it passes for real. People are in touch, but not touching. They're aware of so much, yet they fully grasp very little; they're smart, but not wise. The network is the thing. In short, the Chronocrator element change in 1980 heralded a fundamental shift in civilization, from earth (industrialization and finance capitalism) to air (virtualization, and a new economic order). Virtualization means globalization, and that's the one key outline of the new world order that's undeniably well underway. The earth sign Chronocrator series saw the rise of the modern nation-state, while the air sign series launched what is now glibly called globalization - which amounts to a dissolving of nation-states. Look around you, see the things that have grown up since 1980: the European Union, NAFTA, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its emergence as an oligarchic capitalist entity, Red Capitalism in China, outsourcing, off-shoring, etc., etc.
Judging from past Trigonalis periods, I think the one we're in now will lead to a new currency regime. This time, it will be global, and it won't be based on one particular national currency. The last Trigonalis, from 1802 to 1842, set the stage for the Bank of England going on the gold standard (per the 1844 Bank Charter Act). The 1940-1941 Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in Taurus was followed in short order by the Atlantic Charter, which set in motion the process that led to the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement. In essence, Bretton Woods made the US dollar the money of the world. Which was all well in good as long as the dollar was backed by something real; namely gold. Unfortunately, the US stopped redeeming dollars in gold on August 15, 1971 - right in the middle of a triple Saturn-Neptune opposition, the last such alignment of these two planets prior to their 2006-2007 triple opposition. Since that time, the dollar is no longer real money, only bank notes, mere digits.
Neptune alignments have had a curious connection with historic financial developments, from the closing of the gold window in 1971 to the liquidity crisis of 2006-2007. There's another such Neptune alignment this year, to the Moon's north node. The lunar nodes are the points at which the plane of the Moon's orbit intersects the plane of Earth's orbit around the Sun (the ecliptic). Eclipses of the Sun and Moon occur because these two orbital planes cross, and when they do happen they always take place near the lunar nodes - within about 18° at most. There are two nodes, one for each point of intersection between the orbits of Earth and Moon. The north node is the point at which the Moon rises from below (south of) to above (north of) the ecliptic: it's the northward crossing, hence the name. Likewise, the south node is the Moon's southward crossing of the ecliptic. The Moon makes each crossing once a month in the course of its orbit around the Earth. When one of these crossings takes place at a time when Earth and Sun are aligned near enough the nodal degrees, an eclipse occurs: a lunar eclipse if there's a full moon, a solar eclipse if there's a new moon.
Eclipses are always important telltales of the cosmos in their own right, and I'll have more to say about the four eclipses of 2008 a little later. For now, those nodes where the eclipses happen are the focus, because they're involved in an unusual alignment this year. It's a factor that gives the year's eclipses a special importance and significance. This year, for the first time in 17 years, the Moon's north node will align in the same degree of the zodiac as the planet Neptune, at 24° Aquarius. It's the first conjunction in that sign since 1841 - the year of the first in a continuous series of earth sign Chronocrators, remember? - and the first in that very spot in the heavens (to the nearest degree) since 1189 (during the last earth-to-air Trigonalis, remember?).
Any planet that's on or fairly near the nodal axis - as Neptune is in 2008 - is bound to be aligned with an eclipse. That makes planetary conjunctions and oppositions to the lunar nodes a signal that eclipses taking place around the time of these planetary-nodal alignments will be colored by the nature of the planet in the alignment. Any eclipse represents an emphasis on things signified by the Sun, Earth and Moon - the three bodies in the eclipse. Of course this means geophysical phenomena, such as storms and seismic disturbances. But these three are the substrata of all human experience, from gender to food to territory and power. Last year, the eclipses took place in Virgo-Pisces, with Saturn in Virgo opposing the Moon's north node. (The lunar eclipse of August 28 was directly opposite Saturn.) It was, generally speaking, a year - and it really hit home in August - that was all about Saturn: debts coming due, people coming up short, money and security vanishing, hard times particularly with regard to health care and foodstuffs, etc.
...
(continue on next post)
and upon the invasion of the white man, a Native warrior stood atop that mound and proclaimed that "The Great Spirit whispered in my ear, no pale-face shall take deep roots here.'"
