The Masses of Money: Jupiter Pluto Cycle 2007 - 2020

The Masses of Money: Jupiter Pluto Cycle 2007 - 2020

According to Mervyn King, the outgoing boss of the Bank of England, his last of 82 quarterly announcements (15 May 2013) that the economic outlook in the UK is upward comes with a warning not to be complacent. The growth of the economy still depends on recovery and to bring down unemployment. He was pleased to be able to offer some positive news since the start of the debt crisis in 2008.

The Barbault scale, however, is quite clear on the matter. What was caused through light touch regulation, hubris and risk taking beyond reason that led to the sub prime mortgage debacle and the subsequent fallout from toxic derivatives has further to run, despite political ‘uptalk’, confidence boosting political spin and economists clearly reticent to spell out the reality of our global situation. The Barbault scale predicted the debt crisis and it goes on to insist that the worst is yet to come and it will not be until after 2016 that the so-called green shoots of recovery can even begin to seed. I am saying this 3 years before the event and 10 years since I first suggested it. I was right about the crash of 2008 and the same prediction is still running true to its course. Our new beginning will not be feasible until nearer the 2020 Saturn / Pluto conjunction. Experts and politicians can spin all they like but the fact remains that structural reform is the only way to put our global house in order; and that means destroying old and outmoded structures that many in power are clinging to desperately to maintain what they perceive to be their vested interests.

We will know what it is that has to go by the time the Uranus / Pluto square moves on (The last pass is around May 2015, coinciding with Barbault’s 2016 rock bottom prediction). To make it perfectly clear, we will not know what has to go until Saturn’s transit through Scorpio has had the chance to drag up all the secret goings on that those whose company dealings are, shall we say, less than transparent are caught and brought to book. This is a time of reckoning for business, particularly anything to do with the movement of money and that must include the international unit of currency - oil. Some of the world’s biggest structures are old and corrupt - and they either have to change or go.

I have discussed Barbault and the Saturn / Pluto cycle at length. Of the latter, I believe there is strong enough evidence to infer that the closing of the cycle (particularly from the point that the last conjunction occurred) is where the action is (I believe that the Uranus / Pluto square has made this particular activity all the more radical and profoundly life changing for many). Now I would like to introduce, alongside Saturn, the other societal planet, Jupiter, and it’s cycle with Pluto; for without it there can be no balance of perspective. In particular, I want to examine what this cycle tells us about how we shall approach the new beginning of 2020.

Just a quick note to the uninitiated into mundane astrology, so that you can follow the discussion. Jupiter and Saturn are a pair. Jupiter expands and Saturn structures. Society decides which planet gets the upper hand or what the appropriate balance should be. Jupiter is known as the great benefic and Saturn the great malific. For this reason Jupiter is popularly known as friendly and Saturn as unfriendly - and so the Yin and Yang goes on. But contrary to popular belief, Jupiter is not as friendly as you might think. In the UK there are people who are perfectly happy to see their wages expand but not see an expansion in the immigrant population. Anything expanding, participating and gathering is Jupitarian. The expanding of knowledge demonstrates why Jupiter relates to higher education and also the collective agreement among a nation to live within laws; Jupiter is law - Saturn is order. Jupiter expands the waist line. Saturn restricts it. Jupiter is plentiful while Saturn is austere, hence the global austerity measures belong to Saturn and the mass demonstrations against it indicate the collective demand for less Saturn and a bit more Jupiter.

The combination of Jupiter and Pluto, as a cycle, is therefore without much structure (Saturn must play a role to restrict them). In mundane astrology this combination is known among other things as the ‘masses of money’ - Jupiter is the global preoccupation with collecting money and Pluto is the generational scope of it’s nature, relating to the global population as the masses. The UK lottery started in 1994 under a Jupiter / Pluto conjunction. On a more serious topic, the Jupiter / Pluto aspect can also relate to terrorism  (the expansion (Jupiter) of destruction (Pluto)) and also the Plutocratic hoarding of money by powerful people or large corporations wealthy enough to defy and, sadly, influence Governments.

Jupiter is the innermost of the outer planets, so it’s cycle of around 12 years is short compared to Saturn’s  (the next planet) 29 years. Likewise the Saturn / Pluto cycle takes 33 years to complete, whereas Jupiter / Pluto takes only 13. So as we are about to discuss the debt crisis and when it will end, you may be unsurprised to learn that the current Jupiter / Pluto cycle started in 2007 and will end in 2020.

But before launching into the present, it might be useful to gain some perspective from past cycles.

2 Nov 1981 - 1 Dec 1994

Jupiter is associated with belief systems and things associated with the state. Almost bang on the conjunction of 1981 the UK church synod voted to admit women as vicars. The conjunction occurred in the sign of Libra, where equal rights, fair play and the willingness to include all people is strong. Hence a few years later when Jupiter squared Pluto, the ‘Live Aid’ concert for those starving in Africa attempted to make the world aware that we had neighbours in need. Reports during the opposition of April 1988 appear muted, perhaps mitigated by reports relating more to the Saturn / Uranus / Neptune conjunction, like the PEPCON disaster.

But it may be that what was not in the press at the time but dominated the remainder of the cycle until 1993, was the work that went into the ending of apartheid in South Africa. In addition in 1993 was the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, which formerly established the European Union. There was also a leaked report that a channel of communication existed between the British Government and the Irish Republican Army (IRA), a strategy that undoubtedly played a key role in establishing the Good Friday Agreement in 2004. Finally there was the first terrorist attack on the World Trace Centre. All of these examples demonstrates the bringing of societies together, whether that be in harmony or in crisis.

In as much as the stock market collapse ran just in front of the Jupiter / Pluto opposition, and the returning square of 1991 likewise to the start of the gulf war and the resulting expansion of oil prices. The next few years saw the world in a state of recession, of which Japan has not recovered from to this day. So when Jupiter approached 24 degrees of Libra (the beginning degree area of the 1981 Jupiter / Pluto conjunction), it was also in a trine aspect with Saturn. Once Saturn was involved, people had to pull in their belts, limit spending, restructure to combat rising inflation. I lived through the sudden increases from 1988 to 1993 and recall the difficult times the UK experienced.

In January 1994, as the cycle closed from the 25 degrees of Libra that started the 1981 conjunction, a 15-year TV broadcasting ban for the IRA was lifted, thus starting the healing process that took most, if not all, of the next Jupiter / Pluto cycle. At the same time Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltzin singed the ‘Kremlin accords’ stopping pre programmed aiming of nuclear missiles towards each others country. China got connected to the Internet. And while South Africa held it’s first election, Rwanda violence escalated into mass genocide. The British leader of the opposition, Labour MP John Smith died, opening the way for the rise of Tony Blair (a major figure for the next Jupiter Pluto cycle). Russia and China agreed to stop aiming nuclear missiles at each other.

2 Dec 1994 - 10 Dec 2007

The new conjunction of December 1994 began, as the previous conjunction did with women clerics and equal rights, so the early beginnings of civil unions between same sex couples appeared. Perhaps more significant to our present topic of discussion, the World Trade Organisation was established in January 1995. Barings Bank collapsed when Nick Leeson lost $1.4 billion on bets in Tokyo.

By the Jupiter / Pluto square of 1998, Tony Blair was now Prime Minister in the UK and it was this party that introduced the UKs light touch financial regulation that proved to be so fatal by 2008. The Kyoto Protocol on global warming had just been adopted. Saddam Hussein was playing cat and mouse with the inspectors in search for weapons of mass destruction. A month after the square, the UK / Northern Ireland Good Friday Agreement was signed. A month further began the nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan.

The Jupiter / Pluto opposition of May 2001 included a continuation of countries allowing same sex marriages. And as money buys power, so the first ‘space tourist‘, Dennis Tito, takes a ride to the space station and back. A month later, G. W. Bush signed the ‘Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act‘, which may not have meant a great deal then but it became the catalyst for the ‘fiscal cliff‘ so named at the end of 2012 and the cost of the policy still has to be dealt with.

September 11, an act of terrorism when agents for Al Qaeda crashed two commercial planes into the World Trade Centre, was way out of range of the Jupiter / Pluto opposition, although Jupiter was in aspect, being inconjunct to Pluto. It has been argued in the past that when two planets are in aspect, it does not matter what the aspect is. Contrary to this opinion it might also be inferred that the opposition was the point of the confirmation that the attack would take place but there is no way to corroborate such an inference. In the past it has often been discovered that an event, that was not reported at the time, had been picked up by an astrologer long before it reached the media.

Much of the intervening time between the opposition and the closing square was taken up with war in Afghanistan and then the invasion of Iraq in 2003, possibly obscuring some of the financial media coverage. 

The International Criminal Court (ICC) was established in July 2002 but the treaty to make it happen (the Rome Stature of the International Criminal Court) was adopted in July 1998 under the opposition of the previous Jupiter / Pluto cycle.

In the run up to the closing square of 2004, ten more countries join the European Union. Oil prices reached, what was then, a record high. Not much appears to be reported for the closing square in August, possibly due to the UK Parliament being on recession and financial activities poodling along until October. With this in mind it is interesting to note that the European Constitution was a treaty that failed to be ratified by all 25 EU member states and the idea had to wait until the new conjunction of 2007 (28 degrees Sagittarius) before the Treaty of Lisbon managed to pass through.

But the point in November 2006 where Jupiter reaches the same degree as the beginning of the 1994 Jupiter / Pluto conjunction (28 degrees Scorpio) has some interesting events to reveal that figures in our present cycle and therefore we should not exclude. North Korea claim that it conducted it’s first nuclear test. Bulgaria and Romania join the EU. IN February 2007 China corrects its stock market, plunging the world into a bit of a wobble. In July ‘Live Earth’ concerts held in 9 cities around the world.

11 Dec 2007 - 4 April 2020

The beginning of the present Jupiter / Pluto conjunction saw the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Cyprus and Malta adopt the Euro. Petroleum hit $100 a barrel for the first time. Stock markets plunged due to fears of a recession over the sub prime mortgage crisis. Here we can see a strong link between the start of the Jupiter / Pluto conjunction and the debt crisis we are presently living through.

The first square at the beginning of 2011, was the start of the Arab Spring in Tunisia, followed by Egypt and then many other Arab countries. Then an earthquake / tsunami hit Japan causing massive damage to four nuclear reactors at Fukushima, which appears now to be measuring up to be a disaster equal to Bhopal (Bhopal was December 1984. Jupiter / Pluto approached a square in February 1985 suggesting no connection. It was chemical rather than nuclear, so the Neptune ingress into Capricorn was significant. The unaspected Jupiter mid point between Mars Uranus square is a better symbolic description for Bhopal).

The Jupiter Pluto opposition of August 2013 lies ahead of this article and moves us towards the realms of speculation. However, the beginning of the cycle demonstrates the themes that must dominate the remainder of the cycle until 2020 or until those themes are resolved. 

The culmination of this Jupiter / Pluto opposition, however, is what really swipes away the notion of Mervyn King at the top of this article, that things are getting better.

The Jupiter / Pluto opposition occurs at 9 degrees of Cancer / Capricorn on 7 August 2013 (9 degrees of Capricorn is incredibly sensitive to any country whose natal chart started on the 1st of January). Jupiter goes stationary retrograde on 6 November 2013 and comes back to opposition on January 31st 2014. Jupiter stations direct at 10 degrees of Cancer on 5 March 2014 before making it’s final opposition. We should make note of events on 11 August 2013 when Jupiter passes 10 degrees of Cancer for the first time (there is a fleeting mini grand cross (half a day at most) involving the Moon where Mars will be later).

But the final opposition on 20 April 2014 involves a cardinal grand cross with Mars now opposite Uranus and squaring Jupiter opposite Pluto. In astrological circles this 2014 event is big and believed by many to be dangerous; it is a ‘doing’ square because cardinal signs initiate. There is not enough scope in this article to do the grand cross justice but suffice it to say that Jupiter in Cancer is in the sign of protectionism, Uranus in the impetuous sign of Aries, Pluto in the bureaucratic sign of Capricorn and Mars very unhappy in the fickle sign of Libra. The amount of frustration the chart exudes leaves little room for doubt that someone could do something very stupid at this time, maybe for the best of reasons but not helpful at all. Leaders please note.

There is, in total, 8 months of the Jupiter / Pluto opposition, ebbing and flowing around the issues of the day, which are pretty much in your face already: The mess in Syria and the possibility that it could spread, the unhelpful gesturing of North Korea, which hopefully the Western World will take with them a calm measured perspective. The debt crisis, corrupt and risky practices among banks, ever increasing utility prices, oil, GM crops with the frightening prospect that corporations could end up owning our food. Anything to do with money and our ability to afford wages, insurance, pension, credit, housing etc.

Jupiter in opposition to Pluto, for so long, will allow everyone to reflect on wether our laws, education, belief systems and participation have been sufficient to remove all the things that do not work. As I write this today, I believe that the worst is yet to come. Yes, there have been tremendous shifts in the Arab world but at a heavy price and terribly slow. This is ultimately what the world will become impatient about.

Likewise with reforms for banking. There is far too much tinkering at the edges where the powers that be attempt to window dress the outside of a system that they want to stay the same, failing to realise that it is just not going to happen. The Universe demands change and that means a totally new way of doing business.

Large corporations are getting too big. Powerful Plutocrats control Government policies. This cannot continue. The masses of money, mostly in the hands of 1% of the world. With our capitalist system suffering the circulatory effects similar to angina, it may not be far off from a fatal heart attack. It strikes me as curious that governments believe the way to get the economy of the world going again is to throw quantitative easing at the minority who have most of the money already. This also has to change and it is interesting to note that in the UK, what was previously underpinned as the minimum wage has been found not fit for purpose, hence a new call now for a ‘living wage’.

By the time the opposition has had its way, I believe we shall see the demise of the Euro. The masses of money ripped from the European Union as confidence evaporates on the monetary project to survive. You can imagine the chaos this will cause, the loss of fortunes, the collapse of ‘too-big-to-fail’ companies and the growing realisation that those in denial of change will have it thrust upon them. It has to be something of this size to live up to the grand cross. The debt crisis can’t just carry on for years on end while the people live in abject poverty. But likewise austerity is not the answer - and maybe there is no answer in the current system.

When the Jupiter / Pluto cycle reaches it’s closing square, Pluto will be moving far enough away from the world axis (9 degrees of Capricorn, which is the 1st January Solar position for many countries natal charts) to allow the room for the changes made to become established. With Jupiter in Libra during this closing square there will be strong influences on expanding equality and fairness for everyone, be it in law or economy. It will be the time for strong leadership but only those who can look beyond political ideology will be successful. There is every reason to believe that this is not going to be the case right away.

2020 and beyond

The 25th November 2019 will be like a starting gun, with Jupiter reaching the degree are that the 2007 Jupiter / Pluto conjunction began and Saturn is with 4 degrees of it’s own conjunction with Pluto. There will be much work to do to establish the new world model.

But it will not end there. I discovered a strange change of pattern, that when Jupiter has reached the degree area that was the beginning of the conjunction there has been between 341 and 411 days for the new conjunction to be made. In January 2020, the new Jupiter / Pluto conjunction, only 132 days will have past. This is mitigated however, because Jupiter will make three passes over the conjunction, with Pluto going retrograde on 16 May 2020, conjunction 30 June 2020, stationary direct 13 September 2020 and making it’s final conjunction on 12 November 2020.

This implies an awful lot off messing about, false starts, clarifications in law and changes beyond simple niggles. Perhaps this will be a good thing, where people otherwise removed from political policy making are more willing to get involved in the shape of the new future.  The conjunction starts in the bureaucratic sign of Capricorn (an indication of where all the bickering will start) but Jupiter makes it’s retrograde station in Aquarius, the sign of groups. In old astrological rulership, Saturn is comfortable in both Capricorn and Aquarius, so structural changes can be made in both but Aquarius may fair better in encouraging forward thinking, new working practices and technological advances. Jupiter is not so happy in either sign (preferring either Sagittarius or Pisces) and remember that Jupiter entered Capricorn when the global crash kicked off.

So Jupiter in Aquarius will be where the forward thinking begins. It may offer a different opportunity, to counter the blinkers of the old school, and help to promote how one expands the use of renewable energy, sustainability in agriculture and commerce and how much of this could be achieved better if we, as a world, worked to harmonise our practices.  As Aquarius is a fixed sign, it may also indicate the desire to legislate for regulations that mean the same egregious practices by banks cannot happen again. It may mean repealing laws that support profit over people, like some aspects of privatisation in the National Health Service.

It will be in the 2019 - 2020 period that Jupiter’s change program will be set for the decade to come. It is therefore important that we remember the experiences we have recently had, and will have within the next three years, and be motivated to do the Jupitarian thing and participate in the shape we would like our future world to be. However, we must learn patience. Long gone is the instant gratification - must-have-now culture. What will happen between 2016 and 2020 will be like stopping a supertanker bent on disaster and turning it around. It will take years to right the wrongs wreaked by decades of foolish and one-sided economics. As we experience what it is like to have the circulation of the masses of money trickle to a halt, it will help us to formulate a better system to help the many rather than the few. When the new Jupiter / Saturn conjunction occurs at 1 degree of Aquarius, we should be able to put all the bad stuff behind us and look forward to that brighter future, Mervyn King tacitly implied.

The Barbault scale promises a period of a decade or more of confidence in the shape of the world from the year 2020. Until then there is nothing to be confident about other than things will deteriorate while real change is denied. In previous articles I have warned about paying off debts and getting out of risky ventures. I will now go a step further and say watch out for your savings and spread them around. There are plans made for governments to have the option of taking your money, just as the Cyprus government did. Banks crash and assurances can go out the window. For the next three years nothing is safe.

Without doubt I shall be writing more about the 2010s as current themes develop.