Pholus
was next at perihelion at the start of the twentieth century, on 4
February 1901. The period he was in Saturn's realm – and the lid
was on the jar – stretched from 1897 to early 1904. I'd found this
part of his previous cycle very quiet, as if the lid were not just
on, but firmly screwed down. The situation this time round couldn't
be more different. You would need someone with the strength of
Heracles to keep the contents in the jar, at least in the period
following the perihelion. The reason for this – and the keynote
for the whole of this Pholus cycle – was that on this occasion
Pholus was dancing not with Neptune but with Uranus and Pluto. The result is a much darker experience of Pholus. It is not an exaggeration to say that, by
the time he had passed from Neptune's and into Pluto's realm, Pholus
was staring into the Abyss.
(Click to enlarge) |
This
perihelion occurred shortly before the first of several exact
oppositions between Uranus and Pluto during 1901-2 which formed
the backdrop to the scientific revolution that shaped the twentieth
century. There were notable births and significant events in the
years following Pholus' perihelion. The first was Werner Heisenberg,
a theoretical physicist who contributed to early work on quantum
mechanics and is best known for the Uncertainty Principle – a term
which, though it refers to the behaviour of sub-atomic particles,
could well sum up the entire century. Heisenberg was born on 5
December 1901, and exactly a week later (12 December) the first radio
signal was sent across the Atlantic. Two years later, on 17 December
1903, aviation pioneers Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first
powered, controlled and sustained flight and, shortly after Pholus
left Saturn's realm, Albert Einstein published his Special Theory of
Relativity (1905). We were not so much sailing into uncharted waters
as cutting the ties that bound us to the planet.
Culturally,
there was one interesting birth during this period, namely that of Eric
Blair, better known as George Orwell, who was born in 1903. Gone
were the fantasy worlds of Middle Earth and Narnia. They were replaced by a
gritty realism in which Orwell described experiences like being
down and out in Paris and London, and fighting in the Spanish Civil War. He also wrote perhaps the most famous of dystopias, 1984, the
background of which is loosely based on wartime Britain. It's
interesting to compare this with the other famous dystopia that was
circulating round my class clandestinely in the mid-60s – Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. (Both were much
more interesting than our set books and ever so slightly subversive).
Huxley was born in 1894,
during the decade of the Neptune-Pluto conjunction. Many astrologers
point to this conjunction as the start of a new era because it's such
a long cycle – nearly 500 years. Huxley's story is about a
hedonistic, consumer-oriented society in which anything old is
despised, whereas Orwell's is of a grim society in a perpetual state
of war where your every move is monitored and even your thoughts
aren't private. We used to speculate about which of these was the
more likely to happen. Nearly fifty years on, we seem to have
achieved the impossible and manifested both.
Moving
on to the period when Pholus travels beyond Neptune, between 1934 and
1957 with aphelion on 9 July 1946, the first thing that struck me was
that Pluto was discovered shortly before (in 1930) and as we know
very quickly made his presence felt through the Great Depression and,
in Europe, the rise of National Socialism. This has such a different
feel to it from the previous period in the mid-1800s when Neptune was
discovered, the utopian Communist Manifesto was published and the Fox
Sisters were table-rapping – although once put into practice,
Communism didn't remain utopian for very long (Orwell's Animal
Farm is relevant here).
The
early part of this period was one of rising tension as the war
machine started to crank into action, embarking on a six-year
period of wholesale slaughter which was finally ended by the dropping
of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. The
technology that made these bombs possible had, of course, arisen as from scientific discoveries such as Einstein's earlier in the century. In my
book, they have 'Pluto' stamped all over them, as does the
Holocaust. Interestingly, the word itself means 'burnt offerings,'
which again is very Plutonian, whereas in fact the many people who
went to their death in Nazi concentration camps were gassed, which is
very Neptunian.
While
the image imprinted on the mind for the first part of this cycle is
that of conflagration, that for the second is of cold and iron. As
the world emerged from its period of temporary insanity, the Iron
Curtain came down and the Cold War started. In fact, they continued
for the remaining part of Pholus' cycle, as the world divided into
two camps on one side of the Curtain or the other until the Soviet
Union disintegrated in 1991. The threat of nuclear war dominated
this period, with many countries building up their nuclear arsenal
and testing nuclear weapons, especially in the 1950s.
As
Pholus once again returned to Saturn's realm in 1988, things began to
change. It was as if the immense forces that were unleashed in the
1940s were finally settling down. It marked the end of the
Reagan-Thatcher era, during which the Market Economy became established.
A year later, the Berlin Wall fell and over the next few years the
Communist bloc fell apart. By the end of 1991, only a few months
after the Pholus perihelion, the Soviet Union no longer existed.
(Click to enlarge) |
Neptune
had not been a major player throughout this Pholus cycle, but it once
again came to the fore as Pholus reached perihelion on 24 September
1991. Take a look at the chart, which is set for London. Two things
stand out: the Pholus-Saturn opposition and the beginnings of a
Uranus-Neptune conjunction, which is exact during 1993. Pholus left Saturn's realm again in 1994.
The major manifestations of
the Uranus-Neptune conjunction to date are the Hubble telescope and its opening up of outer
space, virtually back to the Big Bang, and the internet, which has
made it possible to link up people all around the world. Wonderful
though they both are, they're technological (hardly surprising with
Uranus involved), superficial and deceptive (Neptune). What
I mean is that the wonderful images we see from deep space are just
that: images. They're not real. Even if we could travel that far
out, we'd never see those abstract shapes and beautiful colours because they're not there, they're
just computer-enhanced images. Likewise, though the internet might have
spawned the beginnings of a global consciousness, it could also be
likened to the experience of swimming in shark-infested waters.
People on the net aren't necessarily who they say they are and there's a dark
underbelly of very nasty stuff lurking not very far beneath the
surface.
It's also striking that, though we can now travel to the
farthest reaches of the universe and link hands with our brothers and
sisters around the globe, there's as much reluctance as ever to plumb
the depths, both our own and those of the planet. People seem to be
more obsessed than ever with surface stuff like looks, status and
celebrities (the glamour of Neptune) to the detriment of
values such as honour and integrity. And the disappearance of Flight
MH370 has brought home only too well how little we know about the deep
ocean depths.
A word
about the Pholus-Saturn opposition: Juan Revilla, an astrologer and
one of the pioneers of Centaur research, has pointed out that Pholus and
Saturn remained in opposition (on and off) from perihelion until
February 1999, when the last opposition occurred on the final degree
of Aries (http://www.expreso.co.cr/centaurs/essays/winged1.html). He suggests that Saturn clipped Pholus' wings during this
period but once the oppositions were over it left him free to fly. We're still in the early
days of the 171 year long Uranus-Neptune cycle, so it remains to be seen how the
rest of these cycles play out. Those born at the start of them are barely into adulthood, for one thing.
Pholus, however, is now working with Neptune again, which suits his nature and has the potential to yield many rich gifts when he moves into the Unknown Region once again, a period which begins in 2023.
Pholus, however, is now working with Neptune again, which suits his nature and has the potential to yield many rich gifts when he moves into the Unknown Region once again, a period which begins in 2023.