Numerology: The Year 2020

It is the end of the second decade at the beginning of a new millennium. The calendar has been dominated by the number 1 for almost 2000 years, meaning that the world’s population has been preoccupied with establishing the attainment of the self. We have been an inward looking people, reaching out only to conquer and acquire. In the grand scheme of things it has only been recently that we have begun to consider what kind of relationship we should have with our neighbours.

In 1957 (a 22 year) the beginning of what is now known as the European Union took it’s first baby steps. Now at the end of 2020 it looks like the UK is set to leave (commonly known as Brexit). Pundits suggest that other countries in the EU may yet follow, especially if there is an economic issue and more nationalist governments gain in popularity.

Strangely enough, the year 1957 is linked to the slogan ‘Make America Great Again’, used extensively by Donald Trump as he became the 45th President of the United States to the amazement of many (When asked the question, ‘When was America great?’ the most popular date given was 1957).

Another common link between the UK and the US, albeit for different reasons, is the division between political left and right vision of the future. For now the right has the advantage because the ‘I attain’ of number 1 has not yet learned how the ‘share successfully’ of number 2.

Understanding the value of sharing is going to take some time but for now there will be some bickering and arguments as we start to define clearly how one person’s notion of sharing differs from another. There are many organisations that will come under the spotlight. The United Nations, N.A.T.O, World Trade Organisation, OPEC, Amnesty International (and other such organisations), Red Cross / Crescent, Religious organisations, charities, prisons, corporations, banks and stock markets.

The reason this is such a big list is because the era we arrive at now includes the beginnings of some big astrological cycles: Saturn starts a new 33-year cycle with Pluto at the same time that Jupiter and Saturn start their own 20-year business cycle in addition to Jupiter’s new cycle with Pluto. All three of these events occur in 2020 and one cannot ignore the compatibilities of one esoteric discipline to another.

Fundamentally we need to learn to ‘play nicely’. In a world where 1% of the people hold 90% of the wealth, it is a clear indication that something is not working well for many. As the number 2 pertains to relationships, so it is that we must learn that any mutual relationship has to be equitable. But learning this will take possibly decades before we start to see something even remotely resembling positive progress. For now we have to lay out our stall to see not only what we have but what we have to offer.

The year 2020 is made up of two lots of 20. This should give you a clue as to how the beginning of this negotiation is going to begin. Let’s use Brexit as an example. The UK will say to the EU, ‘We want every benefit we had while in the EU but none of the ties’. Europe will say, We want you to have none of the benefits but all of the ties’. Both will be willing to share their version of what the future relationship should look like but will reject the vision of the other. The UK Prime Minister wants us to leave ‘with a trade deal’ at the end of 2020 with no further extensions. The EU want an extension beyond 2020. This is a typical example of what 20 - 20 looks like. The zero is the important giveaway here. It can be nothing or everything but tied together with a number 2 it indicates that I can see my vision of what a relationship should look like but not your vision. And you should agree with my vision as I will not entertain yours.

I predicted years ago that the UK would leave the EU without a deal. With the year 2020 taken into consideration, I maintain my prediction.

In astrological terms the number 2 is linked to the second house of values and hence Taurus and it’s ruling planet Venus. One should therefore look closely at issues to do with land and where are it’s standing armies? Europe has already indicated that it wishes to form a European army and the US has indicated that it wishes to withdraw it’s bases from many places in the world. Uranus is currently traveling through Taurus, so it may not be so surprising that questions of the value of standing armies is considered against new technology and aerial capability.

Number 2 is the number of diplomacy, so it is also duplicity. This is a world where one does not lie but is economical with the truth. It is also the path to understanding that your truth or my truth is not necessarily the truth. To demonstrate this we need to establish what a relationship actually is.

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The individual has to be able to share something with something else in order for there to be a relationship. It does not have to be a relationship with another person; it could be a job or some form of contract or even an unwritten agreement. Anything that ties the ‘self’ to something which is ‘not self’ can form a relationship.

These relationships can either work well or fall apart. Sometimes it is easy to understand, like if I don’t pay a monthly payment according to a contract, there will be consequences for me to suffer as the person who broke the agreement. The relationship will most likely change or even terminate as a consequence.

Individual relationships are more complex. The most successful relationships are ones where both parties value the partnership highly enough to ensure that the other person is happy within it. But if only one person benefits from the relationship, it will lead to unhappiness of the one who experiences a detriment and the relationship once again either changes for the worse or ends.

Relationships between countries is much more difficult. It is often said that there is a special relationship between the UK and the US. They share more in common than just the English language but where they disagree at times, the value of that relationship determines to what lengths both will go in order to maintain the closeness that allows benefits beyond just a common tongue.

Juxtapose this to the relationship between the US and Iran. The vision of a good working relationship between the two could not be more different because the vision and values of each country as to what would make a relationship work is markedly different.

In recent times there has been a push towards globalism; an ideal which could possibly lead to a world government and an end to war among nations. The European Union was in part an experiment of this coming together but it started to become a bit of an exclusive club that simply created a new divide. Most of this was economic and the globalist agenda was effectively hijacked by profiteers: corporations and banks whose goal is ever to enrich themselves and their shareholders rather than profit the world.

Consequently we face a global destruction by corporate greed: the deforestation of rainforests, the explosion of plastic ruining ecosystems, contamination of the sea through nuclear accident and the reluctance to enhance renewable energy sources because of a loss in profit. It behoves the world to reject the insanity of sacrificing the planet on the alter of share holder profit. Of course others may not agree, especially if it benefits them less.

The heavenly body most closely associated with number 2 is the Moon, whose light is merely a reflection of the light of the Sun. The Moon has no light to speak of and the light is therefore an illusion. But we perceive that the Moon has light, which many a song has utilised and it is perception that also defines how we respond as individuals to relationships with others. And in this case we sometimes get it wrong, especially if the only evidence we have to go by is what we alone perceive as the truth of it.

The number 2 is also the first female number (1 is male). Not surprisingly the world leadership has been male dominated for the whole of the time the number 1 has sat at the front of the calendar year. Now the 2 takes it’s place (and for 1000 years) there will be an ever increasing establishment of female influences that one hopes will temper the impulse of men to act with guns instead of trying with tongues first. Women are much better at  playing nicely.

The most important part of any relationship is to discover if our understanding of this perception is mutual. If it is not then we delude ourselves. What we want out of a relationship is not necessarily what is on offer; negotiators will tell you this. It is therefore imperative to listen carefully to what is being offered without adding the bias of what we perceive that we want to hear.

The Brexit referendum was conducted in 2016, a year that adds up to 9. What a stupid year to consider a new beginning. 2015 would have made more sense (8 the number of direction) or 2017 (the beginning of a new cycle). So going through years of rancour and pulling in different directions was bound to happen.

2020 adds up to 4, the number of system and organisation. This ties in with the Saturn Pluto cycle that also talks about lasting organisational structures upon which we build the foundations of societal advancement. People may know what they want but not necessarily how to achieve them in a way that is agreeable to those whom which we wish to share.

Number 4 is a foundation stone, designed to be the rock upon which all else is built. Solid relationships matter and one cannot sit on the fence unless the desired effect is to create discord and chaos. There has never been a better time to converse, which means talking and listening, with a view to finding a way forward that is not only sharing to the benefit of all but also to playing nicely. What will happen to begin with will be arguments and disagreement. It is both inevitable and necessary in order to clear the air and understand the feelings each have for the other. But dialogue, however fractious to begin with, is a positive step towards better relations.

Fifteen Years Left To Live

Fifteen years left to live.

No one really knows how long they have to live on this planet. There is always the danger of life coming to an abrupt end by catastrophe, an accident or foul play. We simply do not know but the notion of living each day as if it were your last is quite unsustainable. People make plans and have goals for tomorrow, next week, next year that means today cannot be the sole focus of life.

And yet people can forget to live in the moment, acknowledging that if the past is gone and tomorrow has yet to come, the only time we have to do anything is today. But for many, the content of ‘today’ is usurped by anything and everything other than what we want to do with our lives.

Life is filled with mundane responsibilities like taking the kids to school, maintaining a home, going to work and paying bills, etc. And if you were to live today as if it were your last, would you want to spend it doing any of the above?

What if we knew that tomorrow would be the end of the world? What kind of things would people do with that time? Obviously making plans for next week is suddenly pointless and any goals for next year an absurdity. So we make plans for the future based on the tentative notion that we have time to fulfil them.

Which brings me to the title of my article. A week after my 59th birthday, I started looking seriously at plans to retire from work; that is to say I plan to stop working for other people so that I have the time to do the things I want to do with my life. The reason for making these plans arose from the evidence of the males in my family tree having the inconvenient habit of dying at the age of 74. My father died at 74, as did my grandfather and great grandfather. As I am the next in line it would be foolish not to recognise the pattern, no matter how much I have the intention of living well beyond that age. My mother died at 66, due to ill health, so while this might be a stand-alone event, it is a factor I must consider even if the ancestors on my father’s side offered more incentive to think longer term.

So barring any major catastrophe, accident or foul play, there is a possibility that - given the evidence of mortality on my father’s side - that I may have only 15 years to live.

At the time of writing this article, I have taken a week’s leave from the job that pays the bills. I started full time work at age 17, denied the opportunity for university as my parents could not afford for me to spend more time in education. Having spent 42 years working for other people, just to pay bills and have a roof over my head, has left only moments of time to do the things I would rather be doing. But this is not to say that I don’t appreciate that working to get money, within the system we are all forced to follow, has earned the opportunity to build a secure foundation for myself and my family.

My parents were unashamedly working class but still my father bought his house with a mortgage that took two and a half times his salary alone (1955). My mortgage was made up of three times the salary of my wife and myself (1988). The same house prices today (2019) would take a mortgage value of ten times a couple’s combined salary. This suggests that young couples today would have to commit to more than 30 - 35 years of mortgage payments to do what my wife and I managed in 25 years.

So we spend half a lifetime paying for the security of a home with home comforts if we are lucky. The rental market is a more brutal option because you never stop paying rent until the day you die; and it never gets cheaper.

I know I am in a fortunate position and I am grateful for that, although I also know I worked for every privilege I now possess and made certain sacrifices along the way to ensure security for myself, my wife and the possibility of retiring with some comfort but also to enjoy retiring while we were both young enough to do so.

The State retirement pension entitlement in the UK rose from age 65 to 67, meaning if I followed my mother’s lifespan, I would die a year before eligibility. Advances in medicine meant that the baby boomer generation of the 1960s expanded the population at the point of an increase in the mortality rate. People are living longer instead of dying at an affordable age. The Government only really wants people as ‘working units’. Pensioners are a drain on the economy, so we either had to work longer or die earlier.

For me personally, it means if I had not considered investment into a pension, I could not even consider retiring for another 8 years; half of my life span that I have left if I am destined to live only to 74. I suppose I could work another 8 years and enjoy the benefit of additional money but when I get to the end of my life, what would I have to show for it? Would I be happy knowing that the only reason I lived at all was to work for other people and pass my inheritance to the next generation (only for them to do the same perhaps or to squander it without purpose)?

I have no idea who was the first person to stick this notion in my head but someone instilled in me the sensibility to leave somewhere looking better than when I first went in. Clearly this directive was designed for when one spent time in someone else’s property, promoting the respect for people’s possessions and sharing in the value of hard work and care that they represented. But living a life should also be more than maintenance and the value of acquisitions and security. Should we not also leave this life leaving the world in a better state than it was when we were born?

Making the world a better place takes time, time no one has because they are too busy working to earn a living and all the other stuff mentioned above. A number of very rich people have made the world a better place for themselves, which is not the same as making the world a better place for everyone else. When I was a much younger and idealistic person, I had the fanciful notion that somehow I could change the world. With age and experience I now realise that this was a bit more than ambitious and settled for changing my immediate world.

Changing anything takes time and energy. Both become precious commodities as one gets older. Young people may not look at health in the same way as they look at money but as one gets older, good health starts to outweigh money. It doesn’t matter how much money you have if you are too old or too unwell to benefit from it.

Taking all this into account, I decided that I wanted to retire at 60, or close to it. The pension I paid into sounded great when I started it but it is astounding how the devaluation of currency and inflation has effectively halved the value before I even get to draw on it. But in many ways I am still more fortunate than the generation that comes after me. The UK government has introduced a compulsory ‘workplace pension’. It is a real basic pension scheme that will not pay out masses of money if one is lucky enough to be able to retire. What people are not aware of, and as I spent many years working for the Department for Work and Pensions I have some insight into what is being set up, the UK government are in the process of phasing out the State pension entirely. So where I may yet benefit from a personal pension and also a State pension, those who come after me will have only one source of income, with little chance of earning enough to do more than that.

I conclude that I have a choice between the potential of further earnings or a pontoon-style ‘stick’ with a fixed income that has to sustain the expenditure demands for 8 years until I qualify for my State pension. However, it is also a choice between working for someone else for another 8 years or doing something that I want to do while I still have health, energy and enthusiasm to do it. The fact that I am even considering retiring means that I have instinctively chosen my goal, selecting to accept a loss in income over a gain in a more productive use of my time.

So what would I do with my time, bought at the expense of further fiscal reward? What possible attraction could life have to offer me that is better than working for money to pay bills and keep a roof over my head? Would it surprise you to know that when I left school at 16, my main ambition was not to spend 40 hours a week doing what other people wanted me to do and in return earn enough money to reach the next pay day? I did a few different jobs in my time. My first job was manufacturing spectacle lenses. I then worked in bingo (yes I did spend some time as a bingo caller), I did some stock control in a warehouse, spent a short stint as a petrol station cashier and a betting office manager, interviewed people in an employment agency, worked in a job centre and end my career as an advocate supporting people detained under the Mental Health Act (the most rewarding job of them all).

All of the jobs that paid money do not define me in the slightest. I was never going to be known (neither would I want to be) for my vocations. My avocations are far more interesting and yet they have had to take a back seat for most of my life. I want to spend my time on something that I find meaningful

When I first sang on stage at the age of 5 (see my autobiography ‘Walking The Path’ (part 1)), it was my first taste of music and sharing my joy of it with the outside world. Then, when the voice of an angel turned into the voice of an angle grinder, my musical talent turned to composition. I learned to play violin and piano. Making music became a passion but when you don’t get the breaks in life, it doesn’t matter how good you are. Over the years I have composed many songs from pop to classical. I have five musicals and a symphony among other things. I still have four more symphonies in my head that need my time. I would also like to spend more time playing the piano; for no other reason than it gives me joy and teaches me discipline.

Of the 5 non fiction books I have published, there are two that demonstrate my interest in the esoteric. When I saw my careers officer at age 14, his first question to me was, ‘So what do you want to work at when you leave school?’ to which I shrugged my shoulders and declared I did not have a clue. Most vocational questionnaires pointed me in the direction of becoming a psychologist but as mentioned, the opportunity of university was sacrificed on the altar of expense. Never the less, this inherent trait in me expressed itself by way of learning about esoteric principles, which the more I delved into it the more it became obvious that psychology had been discovered long before the appellation existed. While I felt confident enough to write on and be published on two of the methods, I have continued to learn others. I count myself fortunate to have been introduced to mundane astrology, as it has helped me reach a position in the real world where my choices were better informed about global trends and has informed me of the best pathway to even consider retiring from paid employment.

There are, at the very least, two novels I would wish to write and have published. Both books are started but time to work on them properly is just not there. The article I am writing now would not be written but for the fact that I took some time off work to take stock of where I am now and plan a direction for the future.

And if the above were not enough to keep me occupied, I have also discovered the delights of gardening. My first house had an average sized garden that one could swing a cat in but not grow an orchard. I have a much bigger garden now and the physical work involved promotes my continued good health; in contrast to sedentary pursuits. Aside from the health benefits, I also get to grow my own fruit and vegetables in addition to some floral displays. The uninitiated would be amazed at how much esoteric doctrine can be explained within the processes of gardening, so it was inevitable that not only would my garden give me some much needed exercise but would also give me pause to stop and think about the nature of all living things and be able to appreciate the way we absorb ourselves into systems that sustain us, for better or worse.

The avocational self expression has until now been snatched and stolen in between large chunks of compulsory depletion of my valuable time. Because of it, time has become my most precious resource, usurping money only because I have worked myself to a position where I have the luxury of making that choice. Had the world’s capitalist system been more equitous, then maybe my time could have been shared more evenly between the work I had to do versus the work I wanted to do. But this was not the case for me and I long ago accepted the pragmatic perspective that life is not fair. So I did what I could while I was younger and planned to spend more quality time to devout to my personal pursuits at the earliest opportunity.

Reaching the age of 75 is not my greatest ambition but I do hope I get the opportunity to break the pattern of my male forebears. The retirement age for them was 65, so they had 9 years before they died. So, if I hedge my bets, I get at least 15 years if my fate is to follow their precedent. And if I live longer, I will be blessed for knowing that I have made the world richer with a legacy that lasts a lot longer than the next wage packet.

Chiron, the 2019 EU election and Brexit.

The EU election that the UK was never meant to vote in.

The planet of Chiron, ‘the wounded healer’ sits on the descendant of the UK 1801 chart. It will stay in orb until at least April 2021. However, Chiron remains in the UKs 7th house of relationships until 2029. What better symbolism of the way Chiron can open a deep and lasting wound than the UK’s bid to leave the European Union; more commonly known as ‘Brexit’.

Let me nail my colours to the mast before going further. I voted to leave the EU because I did not like the way the project was heading. I love the idea of a one-world government and everyone getting along but expecting the best of an ideal world to manifest with central banks and the influence of large corporations over a large government is, to me, a naive hope. In the same way that there was a good reason to separate church and state in the past, there is also now a dire need to separate corporation and state. Otherwise we will sleepwalk into a dystopian condition that George Orwell predicted in his book ‘1984’.

Other people may well have voted for Brexit for entirely different reasons but the reason I wince when those who wish to ‘Remain’ in the EU argue that ‘we did not know what we were voting for’ is that I did not listen to the lies politicians put forward on both sides. But let’s take a look at the 2019 EU election result for the UK to see if not knowing what we voted for resulted in a landslide turnaround in favour of remaining in the EU. After all, if we did not know what we were voting for in 2016 and suddenly the light of understanding dawns at the EU election, there should be a mass departure from the Leave campaign in favour of Remain.

The overall turnout for the 2014 EU election was 31%, which is quite low compared to mainland Europe, which is nearer 50%. Engagement in the European elections has been low traditionally because the electorate in the UK are not terribly engaged in EU politics.

In the 2019 EU election, the turnout in the UK was reported by the BBC to be around 37%. The curious thing is that the electorate was well aware of the Leave / Remain battle and like it or not, the EU election was always going to be seen as the second referendum that the Remain campaigners had fought for on the basis that we did not know what we were voting for on the original referendum.

So 63% of the voting public either could not be bothered to vote. They were either not interested in Brexit one way or the other, were fed up with the whole sorry business or chose not to express an opinion. Whatever the reason it would be fair to say that politicians of all colours will use the EU result as ‘the will of the people’, demonstrating why it is important to vote in elections if you have a preference to the outcome.

The ‘Brexit Party’ formed (so history will declare) just six weeks prior to the EU election, stormed into first place in every region of the UK other than Scotland and London (Northern Ireland result unknown at the time of this article), taking an average of 32% of the vote.

The Liberal Democrats, who campaigned on a ‘Stop Brexit’ message came second with 20% of the vote.

The other predominant Pro EU party, the Green Party did very well with 12% of the vote.

The Labour and Conservative vote I’ll leave to one side for the moment.

The Leave campaign argue that they smashed the vote with just one party standing on a single issue to leave the UK without a deal - on World Trade Organisation (WTO) terms. Parliament had previously voted, by one vote, to rule out a no-deal Brexit. The people voted differently.

Conversely, the Remain campaign argue that they had a ‘surge’ of support demanding that the vote be put back to the people in a second referendum.

The BBC’s political scientist, Sir John Kevin Curtice, explained that they were both wrong. By adding up the definite Leave votes, including UKIP, the Leave campaign had 35% of the vote. By adding up the definite Remain votes, including Liberal Democrats, Greens and Change UK, the Remain campaign also had 35% of the vote.

No one can really claim to know if Labour, the official Parliamentary opposition party are in favour of leave or remain because there are divisions in their constituencies as well as their MPs. Many constituencies in the North of the country were strong Leave areas, which is what has caused the confusion in policy for them because they fear that staking a claim to a second referendum would lose them significant votes in traditional Labour heartlands. They hold 14% of the EU vote.

No one can really claim to know if the Conservative Party are in favour of leave or remain, even though the whole Theresa May debacle set them on a course to leave. This Party is where it all started, of course, with David Cameron trying to placate a section of his party whose ideology attracted them in part to the UK Independence Party, led by Nigel Farage. Having made a dogs breakfast of the whole thing, giving away our whole negotiating stance by agreeing to separate the divorce deal from the trade deal, they were punished in this EU election by getting only 9% of the vote.

Scotland’s SNP wiped the opposition off the map in a strong showing with 38% of the Scottish vote (but only accounting for 3% of the UK vote, thereby strengthening their inclination towards going for a second referendum on Independence from the UK.

The only other region that was not claimed by the Brexit Party was London; the Liberal Democrats winning this on their solid Remain campaign.

Political pundit ‘Sarah Kuenssberg’ observed that clarity won over the fudge that both the Conservatives and Labour had talked themselves into.

Had the UK political voting system been one of proportional representation rather then the first past the post system, I am left wondering how much different it would be, with the sudden disappearance of ‘safe seats’ and there being no need for career politicians to cling like limpets to their constituent majorities.

In as much as career politicians cling doggedly to their safe seats, so opinion between Leavers and Remainers are further entrenched by this result. What is clear, in my opinion, is that if those who voted to leave did not know what they were voting for in the original referendum, why is the vote between the opposing factions shifted barely at all? As we cannot know how to apportion Labour and Conservative votes, and we have to assume that those who did not vote are not really interested anymore, we can only return to the 52% Leave / 48% Remain result. The EU result indicates that even if the votes shifted slightly to go 52/48 in favour of remain, there were still be half the UK population unhappy with the result.

This leaves an obvious dilemma. If the EU result indicates both an entrenched Leave and Remain contingent, the leave campaign will argue that the original referendum must stand. And if there were to be a second referendum favouring the remain campaign by a margin similar to the original referendum, why would that be any more legitimate than the original?

The Remain campaign argue that ‘people have changed their minds’. According to the EU result this is merely wishful thinking.

If the voting public had voted overwhelmingly to remain in the UK via the EU election, I would be the first to acknowledge that a second referendum might indeed be a good use of democracy. That the result has proved to be anything but decisive in that direction, means I am inclined to insist that the original referendum is a true indication of the ‘People’s vote’.

So the UK is split in parliament and split in the major parties. The whole political system is broken and a new one has to be devised. This will take time and those inclined to lose out will resist as much as remain campaigners rail against the leave referendum result. The electorate is also split with no indication that there will be a magic sticking plaster to heal the open wound that Chiron symbolises so well. And if you accept that Chiron is indeed indicative of the dichotomy of opinion demonstrated within the UK political landscape, it is going to take many years to bring the country together.

But further than that, if we leave or remain within the EU, Chiron is going to influence our relationship with other countries for at least a decade.

The Astrological Cyclic Index: Some Conclusions

As the old year begins to pass from 2018 to 2019, the world economy looks unsettled. I had expected this to be much earlier; three years earlier to be precise.

I started a journey back in 2003, discovering the astrological cyclic index, I discovered this through Andre Barbault (although he was not the originator of the idea), rarely written about and seemingly not that often used. The cyclic index is a mundane astrology method that tracks the unfolding and closing cycles of the outer planets: societal Jupiter and Saturn alongside generational planets Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.

My initial conclusions were that something of great significance would happen in 2009 and then again in 2016. What actually happened is that the first event was concluded as the credit crisis of 2008 and we still await the next crisis that I predicted.

...or do we?

Alongside the cyclic index is also the actual cyclic paths of the outer planets. While I noted 2016 as pretty negative for the world, we were also approaching a cluster of big conjunctions in 2020. Saturn and Pluto would start a new 33 year structural cycle. Jupiter would also conjunct with Pluto, meaning that Jupiter and Saturn would also begin a new 20-year societal cycle. The conclusion is that both structural and societal changes would occur almost simultaneously. For this to happen there would have to be some significant changes globally.

The central banks decided after 2008 to introduce ‘quantitative easing’, which was designed to allow banks to borrow money to lend to business in order to kick start the economy. What actually happened was that banks borrowed the cheap money and bought their own stocks in order to inflate it’s value; corporations did the same. The more money that was pumped in, the more banks and corporations bought their own stocks. The result was that the DOW, for example, increased from around 12,000 to 26,000. Small businesses could not get a loan and first time house buyers struggled to get a mortgage. The rental market expanded and the cost of renting became much more expensive.

By 2017 the Federal Bank started to introduce ‘quantitative tightening’, taking back all the money it had given out. What should have been a stimulus to the consumer economy had failed due to the greed of banks and corporations; nothing new there then.

The result is inevitable; the global economy must correct itself. Bond markets are under pressure, stocks and shares are also under pressure. An economy cannot survive without consumers and consumers cannot consume without disposable income.

Now given that the Saturn Pluto cycle heralds a new structure - one that is sustainable - the global crash has only one short period left to occur and that is from the beginning of 2019 until the beginning of the Saturn Pluto conjunction. So the event I thought would happen in 2016 is still alive and well, albeit that the central banks interfered to make it look like everything was ok.

In fact the central banks have been working towards a global financial reset since the 2008 crash - possibly even before that but they weren’t ready then, hence kicking the financial can down the road for ten years until they had grabbed as many hard assets as possible to protect themselves.

The lesson learned for me is that the position of specific cycles may well supersede the timing of the cyclic index; in this case the Saturn Pluto cycle. Or to put it another way, the problem may well exist but somehow it will get strung out until the appropriate time. Had the central banks not created their ‘extend and pretend' (courtesy William Stickevers) liquidity injections there is every chance the global economic crash would have happened as forecast. But that didn’t happen and it is worth examining why.

The battle we face now, as Pluto conjuncts with Saturn in bureaucratic Capricorn and will very soon begin the journey through technological Aquarius (with Uranus only just ingressed into value-assertive Taurus) is who will command the income direction for the next 30 years or so. Central banks fight to dominate and control the world order with everything they have while crypto currency (creating platforms for global trade without the use of the American dollar) threatens to snatch the power of fiduciary currency away from them.

Anyone who has followed my blogs or those of other leading predictive mundane astrologers, will know that we have all been saying to get ready for this and to diversify any savings while eliminating debt. Even with foresight I have to confess that staying out of debt has been difficult (it happens when your family spend money for you) but I have diversified in case of collapse in one of the big banks (deutsche bank has been singled out on more than one occasion) and a sudden plunge in currency values.

A quick glance at the Aries ingress of 2019 (the new astrological year) revealed the Moon at 27º Virgo and void of course. A void of course Moon suggests that ‘nothing is going to happen’ meaning that it indicates no sudden global changes within this time. However, the 2019 Aries ingress is late 20 March and for the UK there is one very big change happening on 29 March... Brexit. At the end of 2018 there is no agreed deal for leaving Brexit, which means that as Mars enters Aries, it is unlikely that nothing will happen between now and the Aries ingress, which in turn means that whatever is decided for the UK has to be hammered out in less than three months.

I believe the same will go for Donald Trump and any attempts to impeach him; unless they can achieve this before the Aries ingress, nothing will come of it.

But this is not necessarily meaning that there is a whole year of nothing happening. It is more accurate to say that not a lot will be changing, which makes any changes before then quite significant. If a global economic crash occurs in January 2019 and no solutions are found before the Aries ingress, nothing significant will happen. The recession turns to depression.

Whatever transpires, 2019 may be the year where we look seriously about the direction we wish to move forward, so that by late 2020, when Saturn meets once again with Pluto, we will know what power leads the masses and if that be for better or worse.