What Could be More Unusual?

In my last post, I mentioned longer term planetary cycles at work in the economic crisis. One of these is the Saturn-Uranus opposition. This is a planetary contact that builds over months to a peak on the day when it becomes exact, then dissipates slowly over months. However, since both these planets retrograde (apparently turn backward), they interact five times through July 2010. From now until then, we’ll feel the swinging pendulum of tension and release, tension and release as it changes structures in the world around us.

This is a planetary event that occurs about every 42 years; the last time was in a period that should stand out in the memory of anyone who was over the age of 10 at that time — 1965-67. This signifies a period of rapid and often startling change in the structures of government and society. At this point in the cycle, structures that have not changed through gentler means have become so entrenched that they are stretched like a rubber band. At the opposition the rubber band breaks as society makes a sudden adjustment to a reality that has (often forcibly) revealed itself. In the mid-sixties, we saw such a time of rapid change in society (made more intense then by Pluto’s involvement). This is not a bad thing — it is a necessary thing.

This makes September-October “more than your average __________”, which can be filled with the words “Mercury retrograde”, “election”,“economic crisis”, or “social revolution”. The first culmination comes on Election Day, when I at first thought that we would not be likely to come up with a definitive winner of the US presidential election (or many other races). However, now I’m having second thoughts. (We astrologers learn too.) One of my colleagues, Claire-France Perez, is predicting a landslide election, which she defines as a 22 point spread between the two candidates. This occurred at the last Saturn-Uranus opposition in the election of the incumbent Lyndon Johnson in 1964. While I’m less sure that this will occur with an exact contact between Saturn and Uranus on Election Day, such a landslide will make it possible to give a result more quickly. The word ‘landslide’ was first used by a pundit last week to describe a possible outcome in this election.

The key words here are unusual, sudden, and significant. So that leads me to what I’m pondering. On the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC yesterday, she interviewed New York Times columnist and Princeton Professor of Economics Paul Krugman in her “Talk Me Down” segment. He was worried and suggested boldly that "as soon as the election is over we're going to have to have - we can't wait until January 20th - we may have to have in effect the incoming Obama team move into the Treasury and start coordinating the rescue, because this is going to be a very, very bad transition period if we don't do anything until we actually have a new administration." The implication was, I hasten to add, that this would not be a takeover but an effort to support the country through a hard time with new energy and perspectives.

As an astrologer and observer of planetary cycles, I can assess the likelihood of this. With the dominant energies of the time being “unusual”, “sudden”, and “significant”, I would not rule this out as a beneficial possibility. Unusual steps for unusual times.