As the Sun rose over Paris on 19 October, a group of thieves disguised as construction workers arrived outside the Louvre Palace. At 9:30 they climbed a truck-mounted ladder to a first-storey balcony on the south side of the building. From there, two of the thieves used a disc cutter to cut through a glass window to gain entry to the Gallery of Apollo. Once inside, they intimidated security guards with their power tools before swiftly bagging nine pieces of the French Crown Jewels—some €88 million worth of loot! They made their exit via the ladder and then escaped on motor scooters driven by two other members of the crew. On their way out, they dropped the Crown of Empress Eugénie in the street. Whoops!

The heist was over and done with in just under eight minutes, only four of which were spent inside the building itself. The execution was flawless and the thieves escaped without a hitch. As of the time of writing, French police have detained a number of suspects but none of the loot has so far been recovered.

This crime was stunning in its audacity and it captured the public’s attention in a way that few crimes do, but the thing that most amazed me was how perfectly this event correlated with the astrology of the moment in which it occurred. Each aspect in the event chart illuminates different elements of the heist in such a way that I can’t help but marvel at the cosmic artistry of it all.

Given the symbolic connection of this crime to the Olympian deity Apollo—who was viewed by the ancients as a personification of the Sun, and from whom the gallery takes its name—it makes sense for us to start there: we find this chart’s Libra Sun is at the center of the action, sitting at the apex of a T square with Jupiter and Pluto, bringing all three of these celestial bodies into creative enactment.

In symbolic-archetypal terms, the Sun is the hero of the chart: the one who takes bold and decisive actions that propel the story forward; the one we tend to identify with and who stands at the center of the unfolding drama. The Sun is high agency, mission-focused and self-possessed. The Sun has to do with goal-oriented behavior, out there in the world. It can also indicate a performative or attention seeking mode of expression.

You might be wondering who the Sun is correlated with in this story, in which the conventional hero-types are noticeably absent. Well, this is a story about thieves, and I would argue that they are its heroes. If you object to my use of the term hero in this instance then feel free to swap it out for a more neutral term like ‘protagonist,’ or ‘main character.’ My point remains that what they managed to pull off here—robbing the Louvre in broad daylight—is quite an achievement, however you wish to frame it.

The way the archetypal Sun expresses itself is always modified by the aspects that it makes to other planets, and this case is no different. The T square aspect connects the Sun with Pluto—the planetary symbol of the underworld—and Jupiter: the planet most often associated with royalty and high culture; in other words, everything that the Louvre symbolizes in the popular imagination.

The Sun-Pluto square tells us something about the nature of our protagonists: they emerged from the underworld, and to the underworld they returned. Pluto represents the underworld in all its forms, including the very real criminal underworld; that section of humanity who are deemed to be beyond the pale and unworthy of inclusion in polite society, and whose activities usually occur under the cover of darkness. Pluto signifies everything that happens in the shadows: sex and power, crime and coercion, the illicit and the taboo.

The fact that this crime occurred in broad daylight is consonant with the Sun-Pluto square. It’s as if Pluto emerged from the abyssal darkness of the underworld to briefly intrude on the day world of the Sun, stepping into the bright, solar spotlight for everyone to gawk at. We might even say that Pluto was showing off, performing before a rapt audience and reveling in all the attention; in a sense, merging with the archetypal Sun—the archetypal performer (Sun) and the archetypal criminal (Pluto), together as one.

If this event had a soundtrack it would undoubtedly be Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal,” which is itself an expression of Jackson’s natal Sun-Pluto conjunction,1 as well as the exact Sun-Pluto sextile that marked the release of the album Bad,2 on which “Smooth Criminal” features. Shamone!

Sun-Pluto transits signify encounters with the shadow self, with those parts of us that we feel the need to repress—typically involving envy, hatred or greed—lest we be cut loose from the herd and cast into the wilderness. As a world transit, this often correlates with high profile events in which a person or group acts out the repressed energies of the collective shadow in a such a way as to elicit responses of both condemnation and admiration. I suspect that many people were quietly rooting for the Louvre robbers and that they enjoyed hearing about their audacious feat; in fact, the daring and seemingly whimsical nature of the heist was celebrated on social media.

The three-way celestial standoff between Jupiter, Pluto and the Sun was reflected in the nature of this crime, which involved a profound violation of the Louvre: the Gallery of Apollo is a solar sanctum, a baroque tribute to Louis XIV—who identified himself as the “Sun King”—in which the radiant figure of Apollo (Sun) is understood to glorify the King’s reign (Jupiter). The desecration and violation (Pluto) of this Apollonian palace (Sun-Jupiter) makes for an eerily precise enactment of the T square transit.

The storied history of the gallery and its ostentatious rococo designs are clearly informed by the archetypal pairing of Jupiter and the Sun, which was present in the vision of Charles le Brun, the first painter to the king. Le Brun was born during a triple conjunction of the Sun with Venus and Jupiter,3 and his artistic vision (Venus) embodies the interplay between these archetypal powers. In 1661, he summoned the best sculptors, painters and gilders of the age to decorate the gallery, which includes a vaulted ceiling upon which Apollo can be seen to drive his chariot across the sky.

Almost two centuries later, in 1850, the romantic artist Eugène Delacroix (natal Sun conjunct Jupiter and sextile Pluto)4 was commissioned to produce a 12-metre wide painting at the center of the ceiling; the piece that resulted was Apollo Slays the Python, depicting a plutonic scene of storm and frenzy, in which the Sun-god appears as a towering beacon of goodness and light, bow drawn, ready to vanquish a monstrous serpent that leers up at him from the darkness beneath. The duality of light and darkness, good and evil, above and below, that this majestic painting evokes is an expression of the Sun-Jupiter-Pluto complex that informed both the artistic life of Delacroix—as indicated by his natal aspects—and the robbery of the Louvre during the October T square: the painting and the heist are connected on an archetypal level. Through this event, the cosmos is nudging us to take a closer look at the painting so that it might reveal its meaning to us.

But that’s enough art history, let’s return to the scene of the crime…

Our shadowy protagonists (Pluto-Sun) entered the gallery via a ladder, a move that reflects the elevating role of Jupiter in this event, as Jupiter governs all journeys of ascent and success—from climbing a mountain to getting a promotion. In this event, we can see that Jupiter has elevated our protagonists in both the literal-physical sense entailed by climbing a ladder, and in the cultural sense comprised by entering the Louvre.

We might also relate this event to the archetypal dynamism between Jupiter and Pluto, which suggests a meeting of the heights and the depths: think Parisian high culture meets criminal depravity; or, Pluto rising from the depths to snatch the royal treasure. As always, this relationship flows in two directions: Jupiter grants ascent and good fortune to Pluto, resulting in a triumphant heist—on a symbolic level, Pluto is crowned King—while Pluto pulls Jupiter downwards: the Louvre is desecrated and the crown jewels descend into the underworld.

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As the preceding passages have hopefully made clear, the archetypal core of this event is represented by the Sun-Jupiter-Pluto T square. This is not the only aspect in the chart, however, and there are other elements of the heist that are worth considering in an astrological context, take the fact that the thieves disguised themselves as construction workers to quash suspicion among passersby. I believe that this element of the crime is illuminated by the Saturn-Neptune conjunction, which stands in opposition to a Moon-Venus conjunction.

Deception is always related to Neptune. The planet has a well established correlation with dreams, fantasy, illusions and hallucinations. It’s in the nature of Neptune to confabulate, bedazzle and mislead. And the aspects that Neptune forms to other planets will invariably color the way that its illusory nature is expressed, as well as the type of illusions produced. As Neptune is currently in a conjunction with Saturn, it is to be expected that attempts to deceive will have a Saturnian inflection. In other words, Neptune might adopt a Saturn inspired disguise in order to pass by unnoticed.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

Among its many astrological associations, Saturn is recognized as the archetypal builder. It has to do with the material world, with law and order, work and industry, and the concrete foundation and structure of things. Certain professions—judges, police officers and, indeed, construction workers—are, by their very nature, Saturnian.

So the fact that the thieves chose to disguise (Neptune) themselves as construction workers (Saturn) reflects the merging of the Saturn and Neptune principles; Neptune—the archetypal deceiver—projected an illusion of professionalism and authority (Saturn) to facilitate the heist. Moreover, the opposing Moon-Venus conjunction indicates the role that personal attire played in this deception, given the association between Moon-Venus aspects and fashion choices.

I love it when a plan comes together. Don’t you?

Of course, no heist would be complete without a getaway driver in place, and this is where the exact conjunction between Mercury and Mars in Scorpio has a part to play. Mercury is the planetary archetype that governs all modes of transportation, or any journey from A to B for that matter, while Mars has to do with speed, courage and daredevil antics. Put these two together and you get an edge-of-seat getaway drive along the banks of the Seine as police sirens blare in the background.

In a case of life mirroring art, the classic crime caper The Italian Job was released under remarkably similar astrological conditions to the Louvre heist. The film’s opening week in 1969 coincided with a tight opposition between Mercury and Mars, in addition to a Jupiter-Pluto conjunction in square aspect to the Sun.5 The film is famed for its iconic Mini Cooper chase sequence that winds through Turin’s streets, tunnels and rooftops, exemplifying the hot-headed boy racer vibe of the Mercury-Mars aspect. The film also reflects the Sun-Jupiter-Pluto convergence of heroism (Sun), success (Jupiter) and corruption (Pluto): inviting us to identify with a criminal protagonist so that we can experience the vicarious thrill of a well executed heist.

Now, there are many other things that could be said about the astrology of the Louvre heist, about the numerous soft aspects—including a grand trine between Uranus, Pluto and the Moon-Venus conjunction—and sign placements, but I feel that to do so would risk diluting the significance of the dynamic aspects—the conjunctions, oppositions and squares—which in my view, tell a more-or-less complete story about the events.

My purpose in writing this has been to share something of the sense of awe and amusement that I felt upon contemplating this chart in relation to what happened on that day. In particular, I was struck by the way in which the three dynamic transits all converged with each other in a spontaneous, playful and rather artful manner; each transit describing a different element of the events: the heist, the disguise, the getaway. Moral judgments aside, there is something undeniably marvelous about all of this, and what it suggests about the creative intelligence of the cosmos.

I have felt this way on countless occasions over the years that I have been looking at the world through the lens of astrology and it is something that I wish more people could experience, free from the blinkers of a materialist worldview that reduces everything to a meaningless procession of arbitrary events.

Another surprising gift of astrology is the way that it seems to collapse the distinction between art and life. I have tried to illustrate this by highlighting the similarities between the charts of the Louvre heist and the premiere of The Italian Job. To my mind, these affinities suggests that all of life is a kind of performance, a creative display that operates at different levels of immersion. Of course, it’s easy to enjoy the Italian Job from the comfort of a cinema seat, it’s a little more difficult to relate to supposedly ‘real’ events in the world in the same way, but perhaps that’s the art of life.

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Postscript: no two heists are ever the same

In the process of researching this post it became clear to me that the term “heist of the century” is in quite liberal usage, and that such events tend to happen every decade or so—I suppose “heist of the decade” just doesn’t have the same ring to it!

The unique nature of each event means that there is no definitive astrological signature of a heist, although a few patterns do stand out. Here are my comments on a few of the more noteworthy “heists of the century.”

• Great Train Robbery (1963, Buckinghamshire)—A gang of fifteen ambushed a Royal Mail train and stole £2.6 million from mail packages. This heist occurred during a triple conjunction of Mercury, Uranus and Pluto, with all three planets in sextile to Mars,6 emphasizing the elements of speed, movement and transportation involved in the crime, as well as its targeting of the postal service.

• Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft (1990, Boston)—Thieves stole thirteen paintings worth up to $500 million, including works by Rembrandt and Vermeer. The thieves disguised themselves as police officers. Aspects included a Saturn-Neptune conjunction, a Sun-Jupiter square, a Jupiter-Pluto sesquiquadrate and a Venus-Pluto square.7 I found Venus-Pluto aspects to be a common factor in the theft of paintings.

• Theft of the Mona Lisa (1911, Paris)—Italian decorator and former Louvre employee Vincenzo Peruggia stole the painting by hiding in a closet overnight and then walking out the following morning with the artwork concealed under his smock. A triple alignment of the Moon with Uranus and Neptune speaks to the sudden disappearance (Uranus-Neptune) of da Vinci’s enigmatic portrait of femininity (Moon-Neptune); a Sun-Pluto sextile and a Venus-Pluto square were also factors in this event.8

• Kim Kardashian jewelry heist (2016, Paris)—Armed men disguised as police officers (a common theme with Saturn-Neptune aspects) robbed the reality TV star at gunpoint in her hotel room, they stole jewelry worth around $10 million. The aspects: Saturn square Neptune, Venus sextile Pluto, and a square aspect between conjunctions of Sun-Jupiter and Mars-Pluto.9 The crime was unusual for involving a high-profile celebrity. The public response to the crime was polarized, with some seeing the crime as a comeuppance for Kardashian who regularly flaunted her wealth and whereabouts on social media; this reflects the Sun-Pluto tendency to expose darker impulses within the collective psyche, particularly as they pertain to wealth (Jupiter).

• Hatton Garden heist (2015, London)—An elite group of elderly thieves broke into a safe deposit company during Easter weekend by drilling through a thick concrete wall. The heist was romanticized by the public as it was seen to mirror the “one last job” narrative that is common to so many crime capers. The Sun was square Pluto and conjunct Uranus10 during the heist, reinforcing the notion that Sun-Pluto aspects compel us to identify with crooks.

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Things seem to happen, often without any rhyme or reason, and the show goes on regardless.

Who are these people?

What do these events mean?

Are they symbolic expressions of a subtle but pervasive cosmic order that transcends surface level appearances?

These questions tend not to get asked too much.

This is because we live in a disenchanted cultural milieu that regards such questions as nonsense.

And it’s why I prefer to read the news with multiple tabs open, in which I can cast the astrological charts of all the personalities and events I read about, to get a handle on their cosmic significance, and in doing so experience a brief glimpse of the numinous archetypal powers that lie concealed behind seemingly random events.

This way of reading the news is simply better. Truer. More nourishing to the soul.

Let me demonstrate this via two recent examples:

The Death of the Actor

The sad and mysterious circumstances surrounding the deaths of Gene Hackman and Betsy Arakawa—who had been dead for some time before their bodies were discovered—reflect the ongoing Aries-Pisces stellium of Sun, Mercury, Venus, Saturn and Neptune.

This planetary convergence speaks to several interrelated themes and motifs:

• The death (Saturn) of the archetypal actor/performer (Sun) alongside his lover (Venus).

• The hidden, tragic dimension (Saturn) of Hollywood stardom (Sun-Neptune).

• Love that endures through time; lovers that are united in death (Venus-Saturn) — the couple were together for over thirty years.

• Morbid speculation and theorizing about the events that led to their deaths (Mercury-Saturn-Neptune).

• The confusion and cognitive disintegration that is entailed by advanced Alzheimer’s disease (Sun-Mercury-Saturn-Neptune) — it’s thought that Hackman, in his final days, was unable to comprehend his wife’s death.

• Profound loneliness and cosmic estrangement (Saturn-Neptune).

• An apparent phone call (Mercury) from Betsy Arakawa (Venus) to her doctor as a confounding element (Neptune) in the narrative of their deaths (Saturn).

I expect this story to continue to garner attention as Mercury and Venus continue in their retrograde motion amid the Saturn-Neptune conjunction.

The Astronauts’ Homecoming

In more uplifting news, the astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore were successfully returned to Earth on March 18, having been stranded aboard the International Space Station for nine months.

The SpaceX rescue mission splashed down off the coast of Florida as the Moon opposed Uranus, which was close to its zenith in the evening sky.

As with the previous item, this story offers a compelling glimpse into the current astrological weather, with each aspect of the splashdown chart pointing towards the archetypal significance of this event, as well as revealing different facets of the ever evolving collective zeitgeist in which we live:

• Saturn conjunct Neptune: a long period of cosmic loneliness and spiritual abandonment; a dark night of the soul.

• Uranus sextile Saturn-Neptune: the sudden liberation (Uranus) from this state of cosmic alienation/exile (Saturn-Neptune).

• Moon opposite Uranus: the homecoming (Moon) of the archetypal astronaut (Uranus); feelings of freedom and deep emotional relief.

• The Sun-Venus-Saturn-Neptune stellium: the archetypal hero (Sun), or heroine (Sun-Venus), stranded or imprisoned (Saturn) in a strange and otherworldly locale (Neptune) by a feminine divinity (Venus-Neptune); the Boeing starliner that transported Sunita and Barry to the ISS was named Calypso — in Greek mythology, Calypso is a nymph who falls in love with the hero Odysseus and imprisons him on the island of Ogygia for seven years, while Odysseus pines for his wife and family back home — talk about tempting fate!

  • In addition to the above: it’s within the realm of possibility that Sunita and Barry developed a considerable bond while they were trapped in space together, looking out at the stars. This stellium suggests something akin to a Platonic ideal of friendship (Sun-Venus-Neptune) that emerged from the crucible of their ordeal (Saturn).

• Uranus trine Pluto: profound technological empowerment; living in the new space age.

• Saturn sextile Uranus: impressive feats of mechanical engineering, rocket science and technical know-how; a genius for problem solving. Conversely, the obstacles, setbacks and delays (Saturn) that postpone an eventual liberation (Uranus).

• Sun sextile Uranus: the heroic dimension (Sun) of space travel and aviation (Uranus); Buzz Lightyear swoops in to save the day!

• Uranus sextile Neptune: the archetypal astronaut (Uranus) splashes down in the boundless ocean (Neptune); Prometheus merges with the divine.

We might consider this event as a powerful symbol of the emerging archetypal zeitgeist that will prevail over the next few years, in which the Saturn-Neptune conjunction will remain in sextile aspects to both Uranus and Pluto, as the planets migrate into new signs. This alignment will carry us into the early months of 2027.

During this time, we are likely to sense a growing mood of disillusionment, skepticism, hopelessness and alienation (Saturn conjunct Neptune) within the collective psyche, that is inextricably intertwined with our radically disruptive techno-political zeitgeist (Uranus trine Pluto). In fact, this is already in evidence. The demoralizing and alienating effects of living in a tech oligarchy at the tail end of the neoliberal experiment are already being felt by countless millions. In the coming months and years, I expect we will continue to hear a lot about the loneliness epidemic, as well as the isolating and addictive tendencies of social media and digital technology.

Despite this, the possibility of an unexpected—and potentially liberating—twist in the tale remains. With Uranus forming sustained, harmonious aspects to Saturn, Neptune and Pluto, the next three years do not represent a foregone conclusion, or the inevitability of a lonely techno-authoritarian dystopia, as much as that seems likely.

The tech broligarchs, with their “move fast and break things” approach, don’t have a monopoly on the trickster energy of Uranus—as much as they’d like you to think otherwise—we can, and will, find ways to resist; to reclaim the mantle of disruption and ingenuity from these Silicon Valley swindlers; to disrupt the disruptors, so to speak. If in doubt, just look at the collapse of Tesla sales in Europe, the exodus from X or the rising popularity of ‘dumbphones.’ There are levers that we can pull, although we might not know what they are yet.

Beyond the political sphere, the next few years may present opportunities to break out of the meaning crisis that has plagued much of the world in recent decades. Historically, the Saturn-Neptune cycle is related to periodic crises of faith; think here of Nietzsche’s famous proclamation “God is dead”, (The Gay Science, 1882) during a Saturn-Neptune conjunction, or of the skepticism that prevailed during the rise of the New Atheist movement, epitomized by the publication of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion in 2006, during the most recent opposition of these planets.

We are clearly at an inflection point with regards to the scientific and cultural narrative around the topic of consciousness. The mainstream view of scientific materialism, that sees consciousness as a mere byproduct of material processes, is increasingly being called into question by scientists and philosophers alike. There is now an increased willingness to consider other viewpoints, such as panpsychism or analytic idealism, that view consciousness as being fundamental to reality in some way.

I predict that this ongoing debate about the nature of consciousness will become increasingly prominent during the next few years, and that many people will abandon their belief in materialism as a result. The materialist worldview underpins the pervasive sense of meaninglessness, alienation and disenchantment that characterizes modern life. Breaking free from this outdated worldview is likely to be a significant theme of the Uranus-Neptune sextile, given the association of that planetary cycle with sudden shifts in consciousness and perception, metaphysical reorientation and awakening to transcendent spiritual realities.1

In other news, my good friend has created an oracle deck of 55 cards, with an accompanying guidebook, that beautifully evokes the planetary archetypes and their various combinations.

The book provides succinct and compelling overviews of each planetary pair, with suggestions as to how to skillfully navigate the archetypal energies and transits related to each. The book makes for an excellent, and rather concise, introduction to the overarching perspective of archetypal astrology (as formulated by Richard Tarnas) and I would recommend it to anyone seeking to deepen their understanding in this regard.

The Saturn-Neptune card (pictured above) evokes the sense of cosmic solitude that I spoke of in relation to the stranded astronauts. These visualizations, with their accompanying descriptions, are useful for intuitive and introspective purposes, as well as being tactile and aesthetically pleasing.

I will leave you with an excerpt from the Saturn-Neptune section of the book that speaks to the themes mentioned throughout this post:

Though recurring experiences of this pair certainly are challenging, understanding them from this archetypal perspective does help to illuminate one path through them; remember that your personal experiences of lost connection and abandonment are specific expressions of a universal spiritual process. Personal loneliness points at something greater; the soul’s deep desire to remember its true nature.

The 55 card deck and guidebook are available to purchase here.

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On the face of it, absolutely nothing. These events appear to be disjointed episodes from the tumultuous news cycle of the past several months. Only a demented conspiracy theorist—or an astrologer—would attempt to connect them in any meaningful way.

Well, as someone in the latter category: hold my beer…

**This post marks the first entry in a series that will, hopefully, reveal the archetypal context that unites these seemingly disconnected events, so make sure to subscribe if you’d like to follow along**

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Among all the astrological aspects that have captured people's attention in recent months, the opening square of the Jupiter-Saturn cycle ranks fairly low on the agenda. It simply can't compete with the epoch-making drama of Pluto's ingress into Aquarius or the disturbing spectacle of America’s Pluto return. However, this aspect is—in my opinion—key to understanding the events of the past several months, as I will attempt to demonstrate in what follows.

The Jupiter-Saturn Square

This transit began in the summer of last year when Jupiter moved into the middle degrees of Gemini, forming a square with the slower-moving Saturn—currently traversing the sign of Pisces. I won’t dwell on the meaning of the signs here, my focus will instead be on the broader through line of the Jupiter-Saturn cycle.

The last dynamic aspect of these planets—the conjunction—occurred during the COVID pandemic of 2020, which offers a clue as to what we might expect when Jupiter—the planet of growth, expansion and leadership—squares off with Saturn—the planet of contraction, limitation and crisis.

If you're new to astrology and unclear about the meaning of these planets, bear with me—their significance will, hopefully, become apparent over the course of this exploration.

The Return of Trump

Trump is back in the White House, and it would be remiss not to mention this upfront as his policy agenda is shaping the Jupiter-Saturn zeitgeist in significant ways.

What unites Trump’s major policy initiatives—mass deportations, the rolling back of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) measures, and the imposition of tariffs on foreign goods—is that they are decisive moves against many of the things that Jupiter archetypically represents.

We can think of Jupiter as representing matters that are international in scope; international relations, tourism and immigration, imports and exports, etc. It also signifies economic matters more generally. The Jupiterian impulse is typically geared towards growth, commercialization, expansion and diversification. Its liberal and magnanimous in nature, but also prone to inflation, hubris and elitism.

When Saturn forms an aspect with Jupiter it tends to inhibit or negate the Jupiterian impulse in one way or another. The nature of Saturn is to impose limits on the other planetary archetypes, to curb their excesses and stifle their full expression. At its best, Saturn forces the other planetary archetypes to undergo a crisis or maturation so that they might emerge from the process with greater fortitude and resilience.

During the previous conjunction of these planets in 2020—which was intensified by the involvement of Pluto—a global pandemic brought the world economy to a near standstill and led to a total collapse of the travel and tourism industries. This period was also characterized by rampant Sinophobia—inflamed by Trump’s use of the term “China virus”—and a hardening of relations between many countries.

What we are seeing now is a resumption of this more frigid mood on the international scene. Trump is, of course, setting the tone for this with his bellicose statements about annexing Greenland and Canada, in addition to his ramping up of economic hostilities with US trading partners; but other countries are following suit, as nationalist parties continue to gain a foothold throughout Europe via populist platforms that are strongly opposed to immigration and globalization.

In the UK, for instance, the Nigel Farage led Reform party is now leading with voters, having overtaken both Labour and the Conservatives, according to some polls. While in Germany, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland became the second largest party after the recent election.

It’s worth noting that many of the leaders of this growing populist-nationalist movement have significant Jupiter-Saturn aspects in their natal charts. This list includes:

• Trump (square)

• Farage (sextile)

• JD Vance (sextile)

• Elon Musk (opposition)

• Giorgia Meloni of Italy (square)

• Marine Le Pen of France (sesqui-quadrate)

• Geert Wilders of the Netherlands (sextile)

• and Javier Milei of Argentina (opposition)

A key feature of this movement is the scapegoating of immigrants for a wide range of social and economic ills. It seems to be very easy to channel popular discontent in the direction of foreigners—whether immigrants who are seeking a better life, or refugees displaced by war—who often originate from cultures that can seem strange or threatening to the native populace.

These foreign nationals are often cast as subversive influences, who are seeking to undermine the host nation’s integrity by the importation of values and behaviors that are fundamentally at odds with those of the host nation.

"In Springfield, they are eating the dogs. The people that came in, they are eating the cats. They’re eating – they are eating the pets of the people that live there."

- Donald Trump

We saw this scapegoating in action during the initial months of the Jupiter-Saturn square—just as Mars activated the transit via hard aspect—when far right, anti-immigration riots erupted in cities throughout the UK,1 stoked by online agitators.

This phenomenon of othering foreigners, and seeking to ban, deport or otherwise exile them from society, is a phenomenon of the Jupiter-Saturn cycle. As a collective, we are unconsciously acting out the drama of Jupiter-in-exile. We are estranged from, and wary of, that universal principle that seeks to expand our horizons, and which is easily personified in the form of the Traveler or the Migrant.

Recall, Saturn is the very principle of distance and alienation, its tendency is to isolate and harden, to create solid boundaries between things, to “build walls.” At least this is what it tends to do when it’s not channeled into more conscious and constructive directions.

We saw similar outpourings of xenophobia and anti-immigration sentiment during previous alignments of the Jupiter-Saturn cycle: the previous square aspect of these planets coincided with the European migrant crisis, as well as “Brexit”—the decision of UK voters to leave the European Union, following a referendum in June 2016.2

The sextile that followed that alignment coincided with Trump’s move to restrict the travel of certain groups into the US—otherwise known as the “Muslim ban”—during his first presidency.3

There is nothing new here, although we do seem to have reached a distinct inflection point with regards to the consolidation of these forces as an international movement.

At its best, the Jupiter-Saturn combination represents a healthy conservative impulse—an affirmation (Jupiter) of history, hierarchy and tradition (Saturn) that can play a stabilizing role in society through the cultivation of bonds of loyalty and respect between a nation’s people.

In ideal circumstances, this impulse can act as a bulwark against some of the more fickle and ill-conceived notions that spring forth in the name of openness or pluralism, for instance, while not dogmatically closing a society off to the potentials of progressive change.

Returning now to Trump’s domestic agenda, the rolling back of DEI measures similarly reflects the curtailment of the Jupiter archetype; if we understand Jupiter as the very principle of broadness and diversity—for example, the broadness of mind that can arise from being exposed to diverse cultures and perspectives, as a result of long distance travel or educational attainment—then Jupiter-Saturn transits suggest efforts to hamper this diversity in favor of a more narrow, exclusive and homogenized type of experience.

A parallel expression of this theme is playing out in the UK, where the higher education sector is facing a severe financial crisis, driven in part by a decline in international student enrollment.

In the time since I began writing this article, international tensions have escalated even further, with the breakdown of relations between the US and Ukraine. This is sending shock waves throughout Europe, where nations are bracing themselves for a new world order in which the US can no longer be regarded as an ally. This fracturing of the international order reflects a Saturnian contraction of the Jupiterian sphere.

In response to these developments, the UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced a massive increase to the UK’s defense budget, in a move that reveals another facet of the Jupiter-Saturn dynamic: the amplification and expansion of the Saturnian impulse.

Remember, Saturn is the principle of defense and fortification. So when Jupiter forms an aspect with Saturn, we should expect this principle to be affirmed and enriched in a way that reflects the amplifying influence of the Jupiter archetype upon it (Jupiter→Saturn).

We saw this impulse at work during the pandemic, when social distancing and lockdown restrictions were implemented across the world in an attempt to curtail the spread of the virus. Those measures were Saturnian in nature, in that they entailed efforts to fortify and defend ourselves against a significant threat. Whether it is prudent to do so or not, the ramping up of defense spending (at the expense of foreign aid) is likewise Saturnian in nature.

As I mentioned up top, I will have more to say about the Jupiter-Saturn square in the weeks to come, so please subscribe if you’d like to see how this aspect has played out in many other realms of experience.

Thanks for reading.

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A more astrologically attuned culture would have taken notice of the fact that the painting—official title: His Majesty King Charles III—was revealed to the world under the auspice of a rare quadruple conjunction between four planets: Jupiter, Venus, Uranus and the Sun.

A conjunction of Jupiter with any one of these celestial bodies would represent a noteworthy—and potentially regal—occasion, but to have all four lined up in a row is truly remarkable and speaks to the archetypal significance of the painting.

Such a conjunction signifies a grand synthesis of all the planetary energies involved:

The core of this alignment is, of course, Jupiter, the archetypal monarch—long associated with wealth, royalty and high society. Jupiter brings a sense of grandeur and ceremony to this conjunction, which is further inflected by Venus—the artistic muse, who infuses the alignment with her natural impulse towards vibrancy and color.

On top of this, Uranus zaps the conjunction with its unmistakable shock factor. These are some bold artistic choices, enough to provoke an audible gasp, and the painting represents a clear break with royal tradition that is commensurate to the rarity of a Jupiter-Uranus conjunction—a cosmic exclamation mark that rolls around once every fourteen years!

We can even discern the presence of Pluto, which modulated this alignment via a trine aspect, in the dark intensity of the piece, as well as the butterfly—ever the symbol of beauty (Venus) and metamorphosis (Pluto)—that's perched on Charles’ shoulder.

The long tradition of royal portraiture is correlated with the Venus-Jupiter cycle, and paintings of royalty (such as the one pictured below) tend to be unveiled when these planets are in aspect to each other.

In line with this, Jonathan Yeo—the acclaimed artist behind His Majesty King Charles III—was born during a conjunction of Venus and Jupiter, and was also experiencing the transit of Jupiter in opposition to his natal conjunction throughout the production of the piece!1 A noteworthy convergence of personal, natal and world transits.

What I wish to draw attention to here, is the way that Venus inflects the Jupiter archetype; the way that she beautifies the archetypal monarch. When Venus aligns with Jupiter, the worlds of art and royalty come together. The artist gets the royal treatment (Jupiter→Venus), and in return, the royals get to look good (Venus→Jupiter), or at least intimidating.

A classic figure in this regard is Anthony Van Dyck, the Flemish baroque artist who, following success in Europe, became the leading court painter in 17th century England, while also being something of a trend setter (the Van Dyck style of beard is named after him).

Van Dyck was born in 1599 during a T square of Venus, Jupiter and Saturn,2 and this configuration marked his life and work, most notably through his relationship with King Charles I.

As the principle court painter to the king, Van Dyck produced many portraits of Charles and played a central role in shaping and idealizing the monarch’s image. This was no mean feat for the artist, as Charles was, by all accounts, a short and physically unimposing man.

In order to project the image that Charles’ desired, Van Dyck had to finesse his flaws and shortcomings (Saturn) into something that conveyed a sense of regal majesty and dignified leadership (Jupiter).

He accomplished this through skillful posing and staging techniques, such as depicting the king on horseback, that created an impression of size and dominance. Through his painterly skill (Venus), Van Dyck was able to transmute his Saturnian subject into a vision of Jupiterian grandeur.

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Another figure who can tell us about the Venus-Jupiter pairing is Franz Xaver Winterhalter, who was born during an exact sesquisquare of these planets (this is a ‘minor aspect’ but I have found it to be very potent when it’s within one degree). Winterhalter achieved considerable renown for his highly flattering portraits of 19th century royals and aristocrats.

The above portrait of a young Queen Victoria, was produced by Winterhalter on commission by the queen as a surprise gift to her husband Prince Albert. It was presented to him on the occasion of his 24th birthday, which occurred during an exact Venus-Jupiter opposition in 1843.3

Today, she would have just sent him a selfie. How times have changed.

Winterhalter’s best known work—Empress Eugénie Surrounded by her Ladies in Waiting—is an oil on canvas depiction of Eugénie de Montijo, the Empress of France, surrounded by eight of her court attendants. The painting was first exhibited at the Exposition Universelle, which began in May 1855 on the Champs-Élysées in Paris, during an exact trine between Venus and Jupiter.4

This rather sumptuous piece is enriched by a luminous color palette and a luxurious depiction of fabric; it reflects the Venus-Jupiter proclivity for elegance and haute couture, as well as obsequiousness and vanity.

Winterhalter’s flattery of the European aristocracy made him very rich, and an international celebrity to boot, but it didn’t win him many plaudits from his peers in the art world; while his extraordinary skill for portraiture was widely celebrated, his critics viewed his work as overly glamorous, and lacking in the realism and depth that was prized by the art scene of the time.

I enjoy these paintings for what they are, particularly Empress Eugénie, but they strike me as ridiculous at the same time, like a preening peacock. The inflated self regard of the ruling elite has always been ridiculous, but their vanity can sometimes provide opportunities for the goddess to body forth in new ways.

As for the rest of us, we will have to content ourselves with more humble pleasures. And while Venus may enjoy Jupiter’s royal patronage, she is no less present in the simple beauty of autumn leaves, the colorful exuberance of a fireworks display, or the pleasant taste of a morning coffee. The goddess will meet you wherever you are.

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As an enthusiast of both archetypal astrology and the cinematic arts, I am often struck by how mutually enriching these interests are to each other. Film theory and criticism, as they currently stand, are impoverished by the lack of an astrological perspective that would help to illuminate, and give validation to, the mythic-archetypal dimensions that pervade cinema as an art form.

When we watch a film with knowledge of the world transits that accompanied its release, as well as the personal transits that were in play for its cast and crew during production, we stand to glean invaluable insights into those transits as they are expressed in the film’s major themes, performances and stylistic choices; the same is true of television, or any form of artistic expression for that matter. As students of astrology, our understanding of the archetypes can be enriched through a deep engagement with popular culture. By the same token, astrologers could benefit from integrating classic films and television shows into their repertoire of archetypal reference points, as a way of making astrology more accessible and vivid to pop culture enthusiasts.

It is in this spirit that I present the following: an exploration of Moon-Pluto alignments as they have been expressed in iconic film and television performances over the past few decades. I hope that you will be familiar with at least a few of these examples, which will each reveal a different facet of the Moon-Pluto drama, and that reading about them in sequence will help in understanding the subtle but potent interplay between these planetary archetypes.

Aliens (1986)

Sigourney Weaver's performance of the character Ellen Ripley in the science fiction sequel Aliens provides a useful point of entry towards thinking about the Moon-Pluto complex. Throughout the film's production, Weaver was experiencing the once-in-a-lifetime transit of Pluto in opposition to her natal Moon,1 and this archetypal complex is clearly rendered in the film's major themes, particularly in Weaver's performance of Ripley. A further indication of the film’s archetypal signature can be discerned from the night sky of its theatrical premiere on July 14, 1986, where the transiting Moon made its monthly conjunction with Pluto.

The film is set 57 years after the original Alien, following Ripley’s awakening from a prolonged stasis. At the film's outset, Ripley is tasked with returning to the exomoon mining colony, where the aliens were first encountered, as part of a mission to destroy the remaining creatures. Upon their arrival at the colony, the crew encounters a traumatized young girl called Newt who seems to be the sole survivor of an alien incursion into the colony, her family apparently slaughtered.

Ripley's maternal instincts are activated through her relationship with Newt, and she naturally finds herself falling into the role of Newt’s guardian. In astrology, the Moon is understood to represent the emotional side of life, it is connected with moods and feelings, as well as notions of femininity, domesticity and comfort. The Moon finds its quintessential embodiment in the mother-child relationship. The gentleness and care that Ripley conveys in her interactions with Newt are core expressions of the lunar archetype, and Newt responds to these qualities by slowly opening up to Ripley, overcoming her muteness, and allowing herself to be vulnerable.

As the story progresses, Newt and Ripley once again find themselves in the path of danger as the aliens close in on their location. These nightmarish creatures, based on the designs of artist H.R. Giger, are unmistakably plutonic in nature: driven by blind instinct, Geiger's beastly creations embody the plutonic cycle of creation and destruction, as well as the sense of power and menace that Pluto can conjure.

Pluto is the archetype of evolution and transformation, it signifies the messy biological realities of birth, sex, and death. The alien lifecycle, from ovulation to sexual maturity, represents these processes with grotesque and ruthless efficiency. The strange metamorphosis of this creature—with all of its face-hugging, chest-bursting gore—stands as a grim caricature of nature’s most violent and disturbing processes, replete with dark sexual innuendo.

In this sense, the alien is a symbol for life itself, in both its destructive and regenerative aspects; the alien’s will to survive and reproduce is entirely natural; it appears demonic because these processes are unconstrained by any moral or rational considerations—there is nonetheless a ruthless Darwinian logic to these monsters.

In response to these threatening external forces, Ripley's maternal instincts are further intensified, and she increasingly finds herself willing to risk her life to defend Newt. Pluto is associated with situations of life and death intensity, and with the struggle to survive at all costs. This struggle for existence is part of the evolutionary dynamism that underlies the Pluto archetype, and is the driving force of all transformation.

Pluto is always inclined towards extremes. When Pluto forms an aspect to another planet, it tends to intensify the archetypal impulse connected with that planet to an extreme form. In Weaver’s performance, and in the film more generally, we can see that the maternal impulse connected with the archetypal Moon is intensified to a violent and vengeful extreme in response to a life-threatening situation. 

Despite Ripley's best efforts, the crew is eventually ambushed by aliens, and Newt is abducted amidst the carnage. The film’s final act sees a heavily armed Ripley descend into the subterranean alien hive in single-minded pursuit of her surrogate child—this brings another plutonic motif into the mix, that of descent into the underworld. The successful resolution of any Pluto transit invariably requires that we journey downwards, either literally or figuratively, into the murky abyss that lies below the threshold of ordinary life, so that we might confront the darker forces that reside therein, including those repressed elements of the psyche that demand further integration.

To rescue Newt, Ripley must come face to face with the alien queen, the demonic mother who represents the darkest potentials of the Moon-Pluto complex, in an appropriately hideous form. Maternal and terrifying, she is equally as capable of nurturance as she is of violence, guarding her vulnerable eggs with vicious teeth and claws. This vengeful and protective “mama bear” is the dark mirror to Ripley’s own maternal instincts, the image of her repressed shadow, with all its destructive potential. This titanic ‘clash of the mothers’ made for an unforgettable climax to Aliens, providing cinema-goers with an iconic representation of the Moon-Pluto complex on screen.

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The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)

Another example of a Hollywood blockbuster that emerged from the same archetypal template is the film The Lost World: Jurassic Park, the first of many sequels to Spielberg's visually groundbreaking dinosaur thriller, set on a remote island where genetically engineered dinosaurs run wild. The film’s opening weekend in May 1997 coincided with a conjunction between Pluto and the full Moon; this extremely potent conjunction, which connected the full Moon to the primal energies of the Pluto archetype, was unmistakably expressed in the film’s major themes, which strongly echo those of Aliens.

As titans of the primordial past, the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park are deeply resonant with the meanings ascribed to the Pluto archetype; they are creatures of elemental power and destruction, driven by carnal appetites and blind instinct. Their dramatic extinction at the hands of an asteroid, approximately 66 million years ago, is akin to an Armageddon myth for the scientific age. For children, dinosaurs are one of the primary images that can evoke the Pluto archetype in their symbolic imagination. The prominent role that dinosaurs occupy in childhood fantasy and imaginative play suggests that we intuitively relate to this archetype from an early age, and that our attempts to integrate, reconcile with and contain the plutonic impulse are part of a lifelong process.

Just like Aliens, The Lost World: Jurassic Park is concerned with the instinctual desire of animals, and humans, to protect their young from harm. The film has its equivalent to the alien queen in the form of a breeding pair of tyrannosaurs who seek to reclaim their infant from captivity by a marauding group of paleontologists and big-game hunters. 

This paternal impulse is mirrored in the characters of Ian Malcolm and Sarah Harding, who must protect Ian’s stowaway daughter from becoming dinosaur food. In both films, the lunar principles of childhood and motherhood are inflected by the plutonic impulse toward power struggle and survival. The film’s final act sees an escaped tyrannosaurus, in frenzied pursuit of her hatchling, disrupt a tranquil family scene at a house in suburban San Diego.

This eruption of terror and destruction (Pluto) into the lunar realm of comforting domesticity reflects the Moon-Pluto conjunction that was in the sky upon the release of the film. I hope you are now getting a sense for how these archetypes can merge with and mutually activate one another. If not, the remaining examples should help to further illustrate the point.

Game of Thrones (2011-2019)

Emilia Clarke’s portrayal of Daenerys Targaryen in the HBO series Game of Thrones stands as a paradigmatic expression of the Moon-Pluto complex on screen. The character is known to many as The Mother of Dragons, and this title is a succinct evocation of the two planetary archetypes in unison: the lunar archetype of motherhood combined with chthonic Pluto, the archetype of elemental power and destruction—the fearsome dragon of the planetary pantheon. This archetypal fusion is reflected in Clarke’s natal Moon-Pluto trine, as well as the fact that transiting Pluto was in tight opposition to her natal Moon when she was cast in the role.2

In Daenerys, the principle of motherhood (Moon) is intimately entwined with the overwhelming power and the ever-present threat (Pluto) that is represented by her dragons. Daenerys cares for her dragons as if they were her own children, and as her children, they elicit the dragon-like qualities that lay dormant within her, nurturing her own lust for power and domination; correspondingly, their monstrous natures are softened by her maternal presence and care. 

Moreover, Daenerys’ entrance into motherhood is initiated by a ritual of death and resurrection, another trope that is strongly connected with Pluto. Having been consumed by purifying fire, Daenerys rises from the ashes, with her newly hatched dragons, and a deeper sense of her own power.

The connection between motherhood and power is also a central theme for one of Daenerys' primary antagonists, Cersei Lannister, portrayed by actress Lena Headey, who was born with her natal Moon in square aspect to Pluto. Cersei shares Daenerys’ lust for power, and while she does not have her own dragons, she compensates for this with sociopathic ruthlessness and a knack for intimidation and emotional manipulation. 

Cersei is a thoroughly dionysian character; her emotional life is defined by the extremes of love and hatred, with no room for middle ground. Her passionate and incestuous affair with brother Jaime resulted in their three children, while her relationship with her brother Tyrion is defined more by her repeated attempts to kill him than by any kind of kinship. The Lannister family dynamics—riven by power struggle, betrayal, incest, and murder—are plutonic to the core.

Cersei's only redeeming features are the intense maternal feelings she has towards her children, doing everything within her power to protect them. When these attempts fail, she is prone to acting in vengeful and profoundly destructive ways. Cersei's involvement in the power politics of Westeros is mediated through her role as mother to the royal line, the eldest of whom is the child tyrant Joffrey; her attempts to exert control over him are somewhat analogous to Daenerys’ attempts to control her dragons and the latent power that resides in them. 

The link between power and vulnerability is central to the Moon-Pluto complex, and Cersei, more than anyone in Westeros, understands the emotional compromises that are necessary to maintain power.

Game of Thrones provided audiences with larger-than-life representations of the Moon-Pluto complex, more closely resembling myth than real life. The next example, while still highly dramatized, is more grounded in psychological realism and will hopefully shed further light on this primal and mysterious pairing.

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Breaking Bad (2008-2013)

Actress Anna Gunn was born during a Moon-Pluto opposition, and her performance as Skyler White in the show Breaking Bad provided a prime example of how this archetypal complex can define a character’s story. Like Ripley and Daenerys, Skyler is characterized by a powerful maternal instinct that comes to the fore in moments of urgency.

It is through her role as wife and mother that Skyler is drawn into the criminal underworld, as the victim of—and eventual accomplice to—her husband Walt's criminal enterprise. Skyler's maternal instincts are activated in response to the endangerment of her children, brought about by her husband’s participation in the illegal meth trade. Skyler considers running away from Walt but is ultimately unable to do so because of her devotion to their son Walt Jr. For Skyler, motherhood is a journey of descent in which she is drawn into increasing peril through her attachment to her children.

Skyler's relationship with Walt is characterized by an intense clash of wills, emotional manipulation, and betrayal—interpersonal dynamics that emerge at the intersection of power (Pluto) and intimacy (Moon). Skyler reacts to the powerlessness that she feels by attempting to hurt Walt emotionally, by sleeping with her boss, and telling Walt that she hopes his cancer will return. In this way, she asserts a form of power that is inflected by the lunar impulse; a power that is rooted in familiarity and emotional vulnerability.

The poisonous (but entirely justified) well of emotions that builds up in Skyler—viciousness, hatred, resentment—is periodically unleashed through actions that are intended to hurt Walt, as well as taking radical steps to safeguard her children. This kind of emotional catharsis is a core expression of the Moon-Pluto complex.

Volcanic metaphors are often used to evoke the Pluto archetype in the symbolic imagination and it seems appropriate to do so here, as volcanoes can help us to understand the close relationship between power and depth—the two essential qualities of the Pluto archetype. The emotional power that is correlated with Moon-Pluto aspects has its source in the depths of the psyche, in the unreformed instincts—the drives toward power, sex, status and care-giving—that helped our ancestors to survive in a dangerous prehistoric environment.

The residual power of these instincts continues to inform modern human relationships, albeit at a subliminal level that is often denied. As moderns, we are conditioned to repress the more unpalatable of these instincts to ensure the harmonious functioning of society, although they are never far from the surface. For as long as they remain repressed and are not integrated with the rest of the psyche, then they are liable to erupt, from time to time, in a highly destructive fashion.

For the actresses I have been discussing, their ability to tap into this primal well of emotions and thus draw their audience into the intensity of the Moon-Pluto drama is a talent that is reflected in their natal charts, as well as the transits that they were undergoing when they performed these roles. Indeed, the capacity to sense and intuit the darkest recesses of the human psyche, and to work through the shadowy contents that reside there, is one of the gifts that Moon-Pluto natives can tap into in whatever field of activity they find themselves in; from fostering and midwifery to psychotherapy and acting.

By watching these performances, and reflecting on the archetypal themes that they evoke, we may find that we are better equipped to navigate the pitfalls and potentials of a Moon-Pluto transit. At the very least, we will have deepened our understanding of these powerful transits and the spectrum of experience that is correlated with them, as well as their mythic expressions in art and culture. What I have presented here is only a narrow slice of this archetypal complex, and I hope to expand on this thesis in the months to come, so stay tuned for more articles that will delve even deeper into the Moon-Pluto abyss, as well as other planetary pairings.

The peculiar symbolism of this event speaks to the triple conjunction of Venus, Saturn, and Neptune that was in the sky at the moment of the collapse. This short-lived elegy from the goddess of art and music (Venus) seems to have inaugurated the long-anticipated outer planet conjunction of Saturn and Neptune that will preside over the next three years (if we grant the wider orb of 15° for conjunctions suggested by Richard Tarnas).

This meeting of Saturn and Neptune points to the emergence of a new archetypal zeitgeist that will bring together the Saturnian reality principle of concreteness and limitation with the more transcendent and otherworldly Neptune archetype. These three-year periods typically coincide with a more somber and reflective mood taking root in the collective psyche and a heightened concern with how we might best realize our highest ideals.

Saturn, as it were, compels us to concretize our dreams and ideals, to ground them in material reality; it can also make us painfully aware of all the ways in which our reality (Saturn) falls short of our dreams (Neptune), as well as imparting a darker tone to our imagination. By the same token, the Neptune archetype acts to dissolve prior certainties and to undermine the seemingly fixed nature of things. Neptune weakens and dissipates the hard edges and boundaries that keep things separate; this boundary dissolving influence can render us more sensitive to the suffering of the world and induce a thirst for spiritual transcendence of some kind.

The collapse of the Key Bridge into the icy waters below and the accompanying loss of life reflects Saturn’s entrance into Neptune's oceanic realm, which entails both the literal ocean and everything that the ocean evokes in the mythopoetic imagination: states of mystical absorption and cosmic unity, the secret wellspring of symbolism and dream imagery, the inspiration to Surrealist artists past and present.

The Key Bridge seemed to melt into the sea like a figure in one of Dali's paintings, its once-solid structure appearing to ripple and contort in a way that reflects the liquid motifs of the Neptune archetype. Dali, who was born during a sesqui-quadrate of these planets, expresses the Saturn-Neptune complex in his depiction of melting clocks, with their suggestion that Saturn’s fixed chronological regime is less stable and concrete than is normally assumed; Dali’s clocks are liquid, illusory, dreamlike—qualities that correlate with the Neptune archetype.

The conspicuously symbolic resonances of this event, with its invocation of both Dali, the great 20th-century Surrealist, and Key, the lyricist behind the ‘Star-Spangled Banner,’ further emphasize the Neptune archetype’s connection to symbolism more generally. As the archetype that governs the unseen and the ineffable, Neptune speaks to us through such indirect means as myth, metaphor and allusion. Through its invocation of these famous names, the collapse of the Key Bridge invites us to interpret its meaning in the context of American decline and a now pervasive disillusionment with the ideals that Key once championed.

No longer the “land of the free and the home of the brave”, the United States is an increasingly divided nation, riven by gun violence, economic disparity and mass incarceration. Moreover, faith in this once vaunted democracy has been critically undermined by the growing concentration of wealth and power into the hands of an increasingly narrow segment of society, made up of billionaires and corporations who wield an outsize influence on policy-making.  

More recently, any claim to moral authority on the world stage has disintegrated in the face of ongoing US support for Israel in its devastating occupation and assault of Gaza, where more than 30,000 people, mostly women and children, have been killed and the population pushed into famine. The continued supply of US arms to Israel, alongside its refusal to condemn such atrocities as the use of hunger as a weapon of war, have exposed the emptiness of its moral stance on other fronts, such as the Russia-Ukraine war. 

There is now a glaring credibility gap between the image that America projects to the world—with its stated commitments to democracy, human rights and a rules-based international order—and the ugly realities of militarism, war profiteering and callous geostrategic interest that undergird its relationship to Israel. The growing awareness of this credibility gap—which was deftly skewered by Jon Stewart (who has a natal Saturn-Neptune square) in a recent Daily Show segment—reflects an emerging undercurrent of disillusionment and skepticism that is typical of Saturn-Neptune alignments. During these periods, the Neptunian tendencies towards escapism, myth-making and spin tend to be sternly challenged by the Saturn archetype, with its preference for realism and clear-eyed critique.

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So, it is in this context of widespread disenchantment and cynicism that the Key Bridge has crumbled. The timing of the outward event seeming to mirror the inner shift that has occurred with respect to the ideals that the bridge represented and the general mood of the nation.

Are we to interpret this event as a final death knell for the American dream, or might we see this event as an invitation to make good on the original promise of the American nation? It was this second possibility that inspired Martin Luther King when he spoke the immortal words “I have a dream…” during the Saturn-Neptune square alignment of 1963, as part of a speech decrying the gap between America’s proclaimed ideals of freedom and equality and the realities of racism and injustice. This gap was no less apparent in Key’s own time, as evidenced by the fact that he was a slave owner who patently failed to live up to his own ideals.

The presence of Venus in this alignment suggests that the goddess of love and beauty—the archetypal musician and songstress—is implicated in this symbolic death process, in the death of dreams and ideals that is signified by the Saturn-Neptune conjunction. The Venus archetype, as it were, subjected to the diminishment and decline that Saturn tends to impart with its passing transits. The Key Bridge collapsed at a moment when the anthem it represents seems to have lost its luster for many people.

The symbolic nature of the bridge speaks to the convergence of all three planetary archetypes—Venus, Saturn and Neptune—in a rich synthesis of qualities that reflects this archetypal trio: beauty, structure and symbolism; music, history and the sea. Amazingly, it appears that the bridge was first opened to the public in March 1977 during a grand trine of the same three planets (further sustained by a Venus retrograde), emphasizing the diachronic, cyclical nature of these archetypal patterns. 

In addition, consider that Venus was also in a sextile aspect to Jupiter on the day of the collapse, reflecting the prestigious quality that is associated with Key’s legacy as the author of America’s national anthem. Indeed, the very notion of a national anthem—a musical expression of pride and patriotism—is itself reflective of the Venus-Jupiter pairing.

In the aftermath of World War I, Surrealists infused the European art scene with illogical and dreamlike imagery that arose from their deliberate attempts to liberate the unconscious and to collapse the distinction between the states of waking and dreaming; insofar as Surrealism represents an archetypal union of the Artist and the Dreamer, it can be situated within the Venus-Neptune complex. This reading of Surrealism finds some confirmation in the fact that the Surrealist Manifesto was first published during a Venus-Neptune conjunction in October 1924, and that Dali, the ostensible figurehead of the movement, was born during an exact sextile of these planets. 

That Dali should continue to haunt the present via his synchronistic connection to this event, during a Venus-Saturn-Neptune conjunction, is an indication that the Surrealist tendency to perceive reality through a dream-like web of association has some validity to it. Moreover, the image of the collapsed Key Bridge invites comparisons to a piece that Dali painted during the Saturn-Neptune square of 1945 titled The Broken Bridge and the Dream. In the piece, a broken bridge doubles up as a staircase upon which elegant and ethereal figures ascend before seeming to pass out of the physical plane, presumably to enter a more subtle realm in the beyond.

The image of this stairway to heaven1 connotes a deep longing to transcend this earthly realm of brokenness and imperfection that is very typical of the Saturn-Neptune cycle. The bridge, by virtue of its absence, becomes a portal into the unseen world. The suggestion here is that tragedy and loss provide opportunities for spiritual redemption and remembrance. The direction of travel seems to be away from the manifested world and towards the immaterial realm of formless perfection, but perhaps the bridge can be traversed in both directions, perhaps Saturn-Neptune alignments are doorways through which the transcendent can more fully enter this world.

To my mind, this strangely evocative event outside Baltimore harbor suggests that death is not as final or absolute as we tend to believe. The uncanny connection to Dali and this painting makes it seem as if Dali himself had a hand in the event, and that the legendary Surrealist lives on in some sense, his compositions no longer bound by the limits of a canvas.

Here, the Sun shines its light of attention on the Mercury-Saturn theme of dying languages, inflected by the cosmopolitanism of the Jupiter archetype.

The article emphasizes the diversity (Jupiter) of endangered languages that are spoken in New York City, including more then 100 West African languages that are spoken in Harlem and the Bronx.

All told, there are more endangered languages in and around New York City than have ever existed anywhere else ( . . . ) And because most of the world’s languages are on a path to disappear within the next century, there will likely never be this many in any single place again.

This poignant recognition reflects the interplay between Mercury, Jupiter and Saturn, which contrasts the abundance of languages (Jupiter-Mercury) spoken in New York City with the paucity (Saturn) of speakers of those languages. Of the estimated 700 speakers of Seke—most of whom live in a cluster of villages in Nepal—150 have lived in the vicinity of two apartment buildings in Brooklyn.

The article goes on to highlight the unprecedented scale of language loss in recent decades:

Language loss has been a natural part of human history for centuries, but it was typically small in scale and relatively confined. The lost language could sometimes leave traces in the language that overtook it, what linguists have called a “grammatical merger” of intersecting societies.

About 30 years ago, though, the linguists Ken Hale and Michael Krauss warned of a new, more dire form of loss in which a dominant language would “simply overwhelm Indigenous, local languages and cultures.” Hundreds of languages were essentially gone, Krauss noted, and others were quickly fading. Several were spoken by as few as one or two people.

This lamentable state of affairs is aptly symbolized by the Mercury-Saturn conjunction, which connects the Saturn principle of contraction and death with the domain of languages (typically associated with Mercury).

The massive scale of this decline reflects the presence of Jupiter in this alignment; aspects to this planet tend to correlate with wide-ranging matters, often of an international scope. In addition, aspects between Jupiter and Saturn frequently coincide with moments of crisis and contraction on the world stage, wherein the the affairs governed by Jupiter (travel, economics, cultural exchange) are subjected to losses and setbacks of various kinds.

Nevertheless, the cosmic symphony continues, and the archetypal linguist (Mercury) will no doubt be resurrected in new forms, even if many of these languages will sadly pass away.

These wild and transformative energies will color the month ahead, which contains a heightened potential for both healing catharsis and immense destruction. Indeed, the last time these planets conjoined coincided with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in the spring of 2022. 

At the time of writing, Mercury—the archetypal thinker and translator—is also in conjunction with these bodies, bestowing a cerebral edge to this stellium of fire and granting a voice to the dark passions of Venus, Mars and Pluto. In exchange for this, the Mercury principle of analysis and understanding has been radically empowered and intensified for the duration of the transit.

Reflecting this convergence of archetypal energies, a breakthrough has occurred in the decryption of the Herculaneum scrolls (Mercury) that were buried over 2000 years ago by the devastating eruption (Pluto) of Mount Vesuvius that destroyed the cities of Pompei and Herculaneum. 

The breakthrough was spurred by the Vesuvius Challenge, an international competition (Mars) to decipher the ancient papyrus scrolls using machine-learning algorithms. The scrolls—which are rolled-up and charred—cannot be opened directly but X-ray scanning has been able to reveal some of their contents. The competition’s winning entry, announced on 5 February, unveiled hundreds of words across more than 15 columns of text, corresponding to around 5% of an entire scroll.

The revealed text is a philosophical exposition on the nature of pleasure and sensuality (Venus) that mentions music, capers and the color purple. This discovery hints at the radical potential of AI to deepen our understanding of the ancient world. 

Everything about this discovery is profoundly resonant with the aforementioned stellium of planets and particularly with the conjunction of Mercury and Pluto; the radical empowerment of the human intellect, unleashed by recent developments in AI, reflects a Plutonic intensification of the faculties of mind that are signified by Mercury. 

Our newly enhanced powers of analysis and discernment will enable us to probe ever more deeply into the mysteries of nature. This evolving capacity to see beneath the surface of things, and to penetrate to the very core of whatever it is we wish to understand, reflects a deepening of the Mercury archetype that is commensurate with the unfathomable depth that is associated with Pluto. This depth dimension is the golden thread that connects all Plutonic phenomena, from the hidden motivations of the human unconscious to the volcanic processes that destroyed Herculaneum. 

The Herculaneum Papyri—the ancient library that was buried and destroyed by the eruption—can likewise be read as a symbol of Mercury’s destruction and descent into the underworld (carbonized ash is all that remains of the scrolls); its subsequent excavation a symbol of Mercury’s rebirth and resurrection. Remember that Pluto is the archetype that governs the death-rebirth process, as well as all journeys of descent and transformation. That this research took place under the metaphorical shadow of Vesuvius and was directed towards understanding the primitive origins of the human intellectual project is a further indication of an activated Mercury-Pluto complex. 

The subject of the scroll—the nature of sensuality and pleasure—brings a Venusian dimension into this extraordinary discovery, as if the Venus-Pluto impulse towards sensual and libidinal gratification were being explicated and reasoned over by the archetypal thinker (Mercury). In addition to pleasurable tastes and sights, the text refers to a person called Xenophantus, thought to be a flute-player whose evocative music caused Alexander the Great to take up arms (Mars). 

According to Nat Friedman, one of the creators of the challenge, the contest’s success came down to its “blend of competition and cooperation.” Smaller prizes were awarded along the way to incentivize progress, with the winning machine-learning code released at each stage to “level up” the community so contestants could build on each other’s advances. This fruitful interplay between competition and collaboration reflects the role of the Mars-Venus aspect in this event—the cosmic dance between the warrior and the lover, between harmony and friction. 

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In other news that is similarly reflective of this bold stellium. Newsman-provocateur Tucker Carlson has announced that he will be airing an interview with Vladimir Putin before the day is over. As someone who talks for a living and claims to be a journalist, Tucker is an avatar of the Mercury archetype, and his encounter with Putin represents the meeting between Mercury and Pluto. As I mentioned earlier, Mercury-Pluto aspects give voice to the Pluto archetype, and Pluto will most surely speak during this interview. Insofar as Tucker is an avatar of Mercury, then Putin is avatar of Pluto; a symbol of absolute power and corruption. For western liberals, Putin is the big bad, the demonic force that threatens to overwhelm all that is holy, and to give him a voice is tantamount to treason.

It’s fair to say that Tucker is walking a fine line here, and his journey into Russia is in many respects a descent into the underworld. Will he emerge transformed by the experience, or will he be buried like the Herculaneum Papyri?

The Sun, by contrast, is symbolic of centrality, illumination and conscious selfhood. It is the light to Pluto’s darkness. As the bringer of daylight and wakefulness, the Sun represents the primary locus of our attention, those aspects of the psyche and the world with which we are most keenly engaged and from which we tend to derive our identity. When other planets move into alignment with the Sun, their corresponding archetypes tend to be expressed with greater clarity and explicitness and they tend to impress themselves on the global zeitgeist in a way that is difficult to ignore. They take center stage, so to speak, in a way that reflects our Sun’s central position in the solar system. So, over the past month, Pluto—the mysterious archetype of transformation and elemental power—has found itself in the limelight of attention, and while this has likely had many implications for our personal lives, my focus in this article will be on the collective experience of this transit as it has unfolded on the world stage.

In my opinion, the primary way that this archetypal field has impressed itself upon us is through a heightening of focus on the natural world, and our tentative place within it, in the context of the extreme heatwave that has impacted parts of Europe, Asia, and North America. Across the globe, July was the hottest month ever recorded and many scientists speculate that this is the hottest the planet has been in around 120,000 years. These ominous milestones prompted the UN secretary general to declare that “the era of global boiling has arrived.” This grim turning point has emphasized the Plutonic tendency towards extremes as well as the elemental forces and evolutionary pressures that will continue to shape our lives in the decades to come.

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The record-breaking temperatures are of course related to human industrial activity, specifically the burning of fossil fuels. These primeval resources are imbued with Plutonic significance, both as a source of tremendous power and via their association with subterranean depths. Our ability to harness these elemental energies has enabled many profound transformations to the way that we live and is the driving force of our dynamic, modern civilization. However, this massive empowerment has come at a price and the alarming consequences of fossil fuel driven climate change are becoming increasingly apparent with every passing year. 

Despite repeated warnings from climate scientists that our failure to curb emissions would result in the imperilment of organized human existence, we now find ourselves in a situation of dire urgency and a stark choice stands before us: evolve or die. This would seem to be the imperative that Pluto is confronting us with. It is in moments such as this where we can better understand how the evolutionary impetus of Pluto is deeply intertwined with the destructive powers of nature. Darwin’s “struggle for existence” is what drives transformation on scales large and small. As Pluto has opposed the Sun, this evolutionary drama has become ever more explicit and ever more central to our experience of the world.  

This focus on existential threat and forces of elemental power and destruction has similarly been reflected in the arts. Director Christopher Nolan's film Oppenheimer, about the life of Robert Oppenheimer—the famed theoretical physicist and father of the nuclear bomb—was released on July 21st when the Sun-Pluto opposition reached exactitude. By contemplating Oppenheimer's role in the Manhattan Project and the development of nuclear weapons we might come to appreciate how the heroic impulse that is represented by the Sun, and with which Oppenheimer was strongly identified in his quest to win the arms race with Nazi Germany, might come to be entangled, subverted and pulled downwards by the darker forces of power struggle, destruction and evil that are represented by Pluto.

Oppenheimer was undergoing the personal transit of Pluto in square aspect to his natal Sun during the critical years that he worked on the Manhattan Project. His ‘luminary’ status within the project—his sense of personal empowerment and centrality, his intense drivenness and purposeful direction—was distinctively expressive of the Sun-Pluto transit, as was his identification with the larger, impersonal forces of history, hence his famous recitation of the Bhagavad Gita: “I am become death, destroyer of worlds.” 

It is similarly revealing that a Sun-Pluto conjunction presided over those fateful days in August 1945 when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed by nuclear bombs and hundreds of thousands of people were killed. The intense historical drama of those days, when the world bore witness to a horror that had scarcely been imaginable in the preceding decades, comprised an unflinching confrontation with the darkest aspects of our nature. In Oppenheimer’s words:

“In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.” 

The unforgettable image of the mushroom cloud that accompanied those terrible events has become a universally recognized symbol of the destructive power that Pluto represents. This visual rendering of the Pluto archetype can also be understood as an expression of the Sun-Pluto complex. As the archetype of illumination—that corresponds to both the inner light of consciousness and the physical light of the senses—the Sun relates to vision and to the way that things appear. When planets move into alignment with the Sun, we tend to see their corresponding archetypes with greater acuity. The mushroom cloud is what the Pluto archetype looks like when filtered through the limiting doors of perception. The blinding, overpowering light that was emitted by the detonation can likewise be interpreted as a plutonic intensification of solar luminosity. In Hiroshima, the flash of the detonation, which was comparable in brightness to the Sun, etched the contours of human shadows into the surrounding pavement; indelible reminders of that moment when the collective shadow cast by the atomic age emerged into wider consciousness. 

In Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan (who is undergoing the transit of Pluto in opposition to his natal Sun) plays with light in ways that are disturbing and highly evocative of Sun-Pluto themes. Oppenheimer’s luminous ascent is depicted in tandem with his eventual fall from grace, brought about by egoistic power struggles and Cold War paranoia, and we see that he is haunted by the terrifying radiance of his creation at the very moment when his star is shining most brightly.

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Nero’s Theater

In other recent news that is similarly reflective of this planetary alignment and the rich multivalence of these planetary archetypes, archaeologists in Rome have uncovered the ruins of Emperor Nero's theater. The Imperial Theater, which is described in ancient texts, was discovered during the course of excavations beneath the walled garden of the Palazzo della Rovere, near the Vatican. This finding reflects the Sun-Pluto combination insofar as it represents a glimpse into the solar underworld. The Sun is the archetypal performer and, as the central source of luminosity in our world, is quite literally the star of the show. The Sun appears to be correlated with the acting profession and with the impulse towards dramatic self-expression, whether on stage or off. The discovery of Nero's theater is thus reflective of the depth dimension of the solar archetype emerging into consciousness. Pluto's association with inner and outer depths, with the primal and subterranean realms is here connected with the solar impulse towards creativity, drama and self-expression. In our personal lives, we might have noticed that this period coincided with the stirring of long-dormant creative potentials and an intensified urge to excavate and express the deepest aspects of ourselves.

The above graph from Archetypal Explorer represents the ongoing T square between Mars, Jupiter and Pluto as it unfolds over time. The vertical axis shows the three overlapping planetary cycles—Mars-Jupiter, Mars-Pluto and Jupiter-Pluto—are reaching a climax in late May and this seems to be reflected in the turbulent state of the world over the past month or so.

The prevailing energies can be characterized in terms of the dynamic interplay between the archetypes that correspond to Mars, Jupiter and Pluto. In a nutshell, this T square suggests a moment of volcanic catharsis in which elemental forces of destruction and renewal are sweeping across the world. Healthy expressions of passion, vitality and courage are in evidence alongside more negative impulses towards conquest and domination. Lofty ambitions are being pursued with militant zeal and things are “heating up” in all sorts of ways.

The following images, which have all appeared in the news recently, give a tangible sense for how these archetypes are showing up in world events, both in the human psyche and in nature more generally.

Clockwise from top-left:

• The moment a gas explosion caused a geyser of flame to start burning a block of apartments in Bourg-de-Péage, France (April 20). The sharp ascent of the flame suggests a combination of Mars’ signature heat and Jupiter’s upward trajectory.

• A massive fireball rising from a site near Khmelnitsky, Ukraine. The explosion might have been caused by the detonation of a mass ammunition or explosive storage area, although details have yet to be confirmed (May 13).

• The image of an alleged drone strike against the Kremlin being shot down by Russia (May 3). Given Jupiter’s association with leadership, the timing of this incident is interesting; it would seem that Mars has the archetypal king in his cross hairs.

• Wildfires burn through forests in Alberta, Canada. There were as many as 91 active fires as of May 20, burning through 842,000 hectares. The widespread destruction suggests an inflection of the Pluto archetype by the broadening impulse of Jupiter.

• In Mexico, Popocatépetl volcano spews smoke and ash, putting millions on high alert (May 24). Residents have been instructed not to go within 7.5 miles of the volcano, which is considered to be one of the most dangerous in the world. Majestic and terrifying in equal measure, the Plutonic underworld rises from the depths.

• Speaking of volcanos. This image, taken from a flyby of NASA’s Juno mission on May 16, depicts composite infrared views of volcanic activity on Jupiter’s moon Io, which is home to hundreds of actively erupting volcanos. The timing of the Mars-Jupiter-Pluto T square with this glimpse into a Jupiterian hellscape is conspicuous, given the Mars-Pluto association with volcanic catharsis and fiery destruction.

Clockwise from top-left:

• This stunning image captured by photographer Dan Howe depicts the moment a peregrine falcon flew off with a puffin in its talons at a nature reserve in East Yorkshire (May 19). Mars-Pluto alignments seem to bring the predatory and aggressive side of nature into the foreground. In its role as an apex predator, the majestic peregrine falcon also reflects the hierarchical dimension of the Jupiter archetype.

• A giant phallic symbol that was mown onto the lawn of Royal Crescent in Bath, ahead of the King's coronation on May 6. The bawdy, penetrating and libidinal side of the Mars-Pluto complex is on full display here, taking aim at royal pretensions (Jupiter).

• MP Penny Mordaunt carrying a giant phallic symbol the “Jewelled Sword of Offering” as part of the coronation ceremony. Mordaunt’s stamina impressed many, and the sword itself became a fixation on social media. As a symbol of war (Mars), power (Pluto) and royalty (Jupiter) it stands at the intersection of all three planetary archetypes.

• In The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, the evil warrior-king Ganondorf rises from his subterranean abyss to terrorize Hyrule once more (released to huge acclaim on May 12).

Just as the gods are rendered intelligible in the night sky, they are likewise revealed in the ephemera of popular culture. For those who are attuned to the archetypes, a trip to the cinema to watch the latest box office hit can provide invaluable insights into the archetypal dynamics of the day, week or month. The rollout of Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 into cinemas around the world has coincided with some exceptionally potent astrological transits and these transits are strikingly reflected in the film’s major characters and themes. The film's dominant archetypal themes are illustrated by the current T square between Mars, Pluto and Jupiter, a tense configuration that signifies a mixture of hot-headed action, transgressive thrill-seeking and swashbuckling adventure on a grand scale.

In this latest installment of the superhero space saga, Peter Quill and his gang of intergalactic misfits find themselves pitted against a new villain known as the High Evolutionary, who is hell bent on creating a “Counter Earth” where he is to rule as God Emperor over a genetically enhanced society of anthropomorphic animals. The High Evolutionary is a villainous embodiment of the Jupiter-Pluto complex, he represents a synthesis of the Jupiterian drive towards excellence and high achievement with the evolutionary impulse that is connected with the Pluto archetype, this is expressed through his obsessive quest to transform “lower lifeforms” into more advanced versions of themselves, with a view to creating a genetically perfect society. The High Evolutionary is willing to utilize any means available, no matter how cruel, to pursue his vision of greatness. When his creations inevitably fall short of his lofty expectations, he has a tendency to obliterate these fledgling societies in a vengeful, apocalyptic firestorm, illustrating Pluto’s dual nature as creator and destroyer.

As his name would suggest, the High Evolutionary has a somewhat inflated self-image, appropriate for someone with his megalomaniacal ambitions. Chukwudi Iwuji, who portrays the character, was born during an axial alignment of Sun, Jupiter and Pluto, and he brings arrogance and majesty to a role that combines a taste for high culture with more sinister appetites. His performance is a darkly playful exploration of Jupiter’s shadow, enacting the pitfalls of hubris and elitism that tend to afflict leaders and people of high status.

Another side of the Jupiter-Pluto complex is explored through the film’s emphasis on animals. Insofar as Pluto represents the wild and untamed aspects of ourselves, it also represents the wider animal kingdom and our relationship to the natural world. In one way or another, Pluto transits tend to bring this relationship into focus, providing opportunities to transform our relationship with nature and connect with the more primal side of life. 

In GOTG Vol. 3, the Jupiterian dimension of nature—its richness and plenitude—is on full display. The film depicts an abundance of different species, both real and imagined, including creatures of tremendous size and spectacle. Director James Gunn (natal Jupiter sextile Pluto) seems to hold the animal kingdom in an essentially high regard, inviting the viewer to root for his animal protagonists with the same verve as their human counterparts. The small but memorable subplot of Cosmo the space dog is a case in point, her tireless efforts to assist the guardians and to be recognized as a “good dog” serves as an uplifting tribute to the human-canine relationship and the deeply enriching bonds that can exist between species. 

Meanwhile on Counter Earth, and in parallel to the above-mentioned correlations, non-human animals have been granted an elevated status in a world without humans (with the notable exception of the High Evolutionary). The animal populated cities and suburbs of Counter Earth recall that brief window of time during the Jupiter-Pluto conjunction of 2020 when, amidst the quietude of widespread lockdowns, the animal kingdom reclaimed cities around the world, as monkeys, foxes, boars and jackals lined the streets of abandoned urban centers. During that conjunction, it was as if Jupiter—the archetypal king—had given the crown to Pluto, allowing nature to once again reign supreme. And so it is that during the first hard aspect alignment of these planets to follow the conjunction, we are once again confronted with images of an animal metropolis and the triumph of the wild. 

In addition to its Jupiterian qualities, GOTG Vol. 3 bristles with the instinctive aggression of the red planet, it's a visceral, bloody and profanity laden departure from the Marvel tradition, which has tended towards more sanitized fare in the past. The Mars principle of energetic force and vulgar directness is here combined with the Plutonic impulse towards the sinister, transgressive and taboo. The film really stretches the limits of its PG-13 rating and features many instances of gory violence and psychological darkness. The film is a sensory assault for most of its 150-minute runtime and audiences barely have time to catch their breath in between its relentless action sequences. Most of the characters seem to be caught in the grip of a powerful rage, especially Nebula, who spits venom in almost every line she utters (note Karen Gillan’s natal Mars-Pluto conjunction). 

Whereas Jupiter-Pluto aspects tend to accentuate the more noble and benign aspects of nature, interactions between Mars and Pluto tend to correlate with more aggressive and predatory instincts coming to the fore. The militarized animals that fill the ranks of the High Evolutionary’s personal army—gigantic worms with thousands of menacing fangs, a horrendous squid-like monster and a gun toting war-pig—epitomize a nature that is red in tooth and claw.

These archetypal threads all converge around Rocket Raccoon, whose torturous origin story is told in the form of flashbacks to his infancy where it is revealed that Rocket’s super-intelligence is a product of genetic engineering by the High Evolutionary. Rocket’s torment at the hands of this sociopath, and his anguish at the treatment of his fellow test subjects, makes for some genuinely uncomfortable viewing that taps into real concerns about humanity's abusive exploitation of animals. There is a sense in which Rocket is an avatar of the Pluto principle, and his justified rage against his human captors is a rallying cry for nature itself, or at least for those humans who are sensitive to the plight of animals. 

In one of the film's later flashbacks, Rocket's simmering resentment reaches a boiling point when he is confronted by the utter callousness of his creator; no longer willing to tolerate such treatment, he proceeds to tear the skin off his face in a moment of bloody catharsis. The visceral gore of this moment, and the subsequent revelation of the High Evolutionary’s disfigured appearance in the present day, make for a jaw-dropping moment of body horror that wouldn’t feel out of place in a David Cronenberg film. Cronenberg and Gunn were both born during exact Mars-Pluto alignments and this archetypal complex is clearly informing their style of filmmaking. 

Further to its association with the cycle of birth, sex and death, Pluto signifies the life principle in its deepest sense, it has to do with the vital processes which sustain living creatures and that we usually do our best not to think about. It signifies the bloody and sometimes disturbing biological realities that lie beneath the surface of things, a surface that is only ever skin deep. It is this principle which is affirmed and amplified by Gunn’s film, as he takes considerable delight in his exploration of the throbbing, splattering, oozing realities of organic life. Gunn’s expression of the Mars-Pluto complex is inflected by a sense of grandeur and exuberance that is distinctly Jupiterian; his violent spectacle of the grotesque stands as a noteworthy convergence of all three archetypes.

At one point in the film, the guardians attempt to infiltrate a fleshy organic planet that is home to the Orgocorp company. The sequence—in which bumbling guards dressed as bloated tardigrades attempt to subdue the guardians—unfolds against a backdrop of gigantic, fleshy mega structures that protrude into space amid reservoirs of goo. The entire sequence tailor-made to elicit the viewer's sense of disgust. Disgust, like arousal, is a Plutonic emotion, it originates from the most primal part of our psyche and is a product of our evolutionary struggle for survival. A film like GOTG Vol. 3 provides an opportunity to explore this emotion within the safe environment of a cinema, and perhaps this tells us something about the role that popular culture can play in the navigation of challenging transits. 

While the film is dominated by the Mars-Jupiter-Pluto complex, it should be mentioned that the square aspect between Venus and Neptune, concurrent with the release, also informs the film on a more peripheral level. This is most pronounced through Peter Quill’s encounter with an alternate version of Gamora, his deceased lover, who does not remember Peter or the love that they shared. Haunted by this facsimile, Peter attempts to drown his sorrows at the bar, seeking to dissolve his romantic longing in Neptune’s realm of intoxication and escapism. The vulnerable, acoustic rendition of Radiohead’s Creep that graces the opening credits— “you’re just like an angel, your skin makes me cry” —might also be interpreted as a serenade from the Goddess at her most ethereal.

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The dynamic alignments of Jupiter and Pluto are connected with journeys of ascent and descent. As the cosmic principle of elevation and grandeur, we can think of Jupiter as the archetypal mountaineer; the ascent vector, always seeking to climb higher and see beyond the distant horizon. Pluto, by contrast, pulls us downward, down into our innermost depths, and sometimes into the chasms of the Earth itself. Pluto demands that we undergo periodic descents in order that we may emerge renewed, and perhaps transformed by such experiences.

Between these archetypal polarities stands the Sun, whose daily rise and fall evokes both sides of the Jupiter-Pluto dynamic; like the archetypal hero who rises to meet the challenges of the day with its brilliant luminosity, whose inevitable fall once again plunges the world into darkness. The meeting of these three celestial bodies, in hard aspect alignment, has been heroically enacted by Flamini, the timing of her ascent in perfect harmony with the universal symphony.

Flamini is thought to have broken the record for the longest period of time that a person has spent alone in a cave. This titanic accomplishment suggests a Plutonic activation of the Jupiter archetype; it seems as though the powerful, driving forces that are connected with Pluto have, in Flamini’s case, intensified the Jupiterian impulse towards greatness and high achievement to an almost superhuman degree. At the same time, we might also interpret this in terms of Jupiter’s descent; it is as if the archetypal King has descended into the depths of the Earth and bestowed his glory on the Plutonic underworld.

The Moon’s presence in this alignment offers further insights into this remarkable feat, for the Moon is often interpreted as a symbol of the feminine principle, of the Great Mother Goddess, or of womanhood generally. As the Earth’s only natural satellite, I suggest that the Moon is an astrological proxy for the Earth, it shares the maternal connotations of our home planet and, like the mother-child relationship, a complete differentiation is not possible.

A Moon-Pluto conjunction can thus be interpreted as representing not only the descent of woman, but the descent into Mother Earth. During her time underground, Flamini was assailed by large swarms of flies and endured deprivations that most would find intolerable. She passed the time by drawing, knitting, reading and writing. While Moon-Pluto aspects can often signify emotional and domestic upheaval, they can also help us to feel deeply at home in the underworld, in Flamini’s words: “I was where I wanted to be, and so I dedicated myself to it.”

As a prequel-cum-sequel to Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul has its roots firmly planted in the volatile archetypal landscape that emerged from the mind of Vince Gilligan, all the way back in 2008. The dangerously unpredictable, and morally perilous fictional universe that he created stood as a potent instantiation of its accompanying outer planet transit: the era defining T square between Saturn, Uranus, and Pluto (as well as the preceding hard aspect alignment of those planets that is a feature of Gilligan’s natal chart).

Breaking Bad introduced us to sleazy lawyer Saul Goodman in its second series, and he quickly became a fan favorite, in large part due to the levity and panache that Bob Odenkirk brought to the role. When Breaking Bad finished its run, Better Call Saul stepped in to fill the void that was left by Albuquerque’s most wanted, and Bob Odenkirk stepped up to the role of leading man. Most of the show is set before the events of Breaking Bad, charting the escapades of struggling lawyer Jimmy McGill, prior to his transformation into the corrupt Saul Goodman. Better Call Saul is less suspenseful than its parent series, but this slow burn drama is a great candidate for archetypal analysis on account of the rich characterization that is afforded to its central players.

Having reflected on the show, and the character of Jimmy, in some depth, I am led to the conclusion the Bob Odenkirk’s Natal chart — and the archetypal potentials that it suggests — is the determining factor in Jimmy’s characterization; the archetypal template from which the character is drawn. This is not to downplay the contributions of the very talented writing team, including cocreators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould, but merely to suggest they were actively collaborating towards the fulfilment of the potential in Odenkirk’s natal chart, sensing and articulating its latent dramatic possibilities, and that Odenkirk’s chart should be viewed as a representation of a universal phenomenon in which other people are active participants.

Slippin’ Jimmy (Jupiter-Uranus)

Odenkirk’s chart is highly dynamic, and notable for the presence of two distinct T squares. These T squares seem to reflect different sides of Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman, and when considered in tandem they present a compelling portrait of the multifaceted nature of the character as a whole. The first T square that I would like to consider is composed of a conjunction between Uranus and Pluto, in opposition to Jupiter, with all three planets in square aspect to Venus. In my opinion, this is the T square that correlates with the more zestful and ostentatious side of the Jimmy/Saul persona and is the more conspicuous of the two configurations.

The tightest aspect in this configuration is the opposition between Jupiter and Uranus, which is close to exact. This aspect combines the Jupiterian impulse towards confidence, joviality and good fortune, with the Uranian tendency towards risk, rebellion and disruption. It is the aspect of the joyful trickster, exemplified by the happy-go-lucky antics of Jimmy McGill’s early days. Through flashbacks, we see glimpses of Jimmy’s past when he excelled as a small-time hustler and scam artist, specialising in “slip and fall” accidents, and earning himself the nickname “Slippin’ Jimmy”. Despite his mischievous ways, this version of the character was affable, playful, and free spirited, and could easily charm the audience into rooting for him.

The episodes that established the Slippin’ Jimmy backstory were first broadcast during the Jupiter-Uranus trine of 2015. The Jupiter-Uranus complex could also be discerned in the breezy and quick-witted showmanship that Jimmy displayed during his brief stint as a bingo caller for a retirement community during his work on the Sandpiper case.

A real-life parallel to Jimmy can be found in the life of con artist Frank Abagnale, who was born during the Jupiter-Uranus opposition of 1948. Abagnale’s exploits, including numerous thefts, impersonations and forgeries, were dramatized in the film Catch Me If You Can, which was released during the Jupiter-Uranus opposition of 2002. Like Abagnale, Jimmy is a compulsive risk taker (Uranus), and although this tendency is mitigated by his good luck (Jupiter), he does occasionally find himself in trouble.

While Jupiter-Uranus aspects are rightly associated with good fortune, we can also connect this complex to Jimmy’s weaknesses: he is a gambler that is constantly on the lookout for shortcuts and workarounds, anything that will help him to avoid the hard work and diligence that might otherwise be required for success. Jupiter-Uranus aspects combine the Jupiterian principle of prosperity with the acceleration impulse that is associated with Uranus. A crude expression of this synthesis can be found in the get-rich-quick scheme; an enterprise with which Jimmy has considerable experience.

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Saul Goodman (Jupiter-Uranus-Pluto)

A different side of this complex is expressed in Jimmy’s later career when he is operating as a criminal lawyer under the name Saul Goodman. It is during this period that Saul indulges in shameless self-promotion, advertising his professional services with tacky commercials and gigantic billboards bearing his appearance. As a lawyer, Saul offers his clients the proverbial get-out-of-jail-free-card, using his bombastic optimism (Jupiter) to entice the custom of a dubious clientele with promises of legal impunity and massive insurance pay-outs.

The version of freedom (Uranus) and prosperity (Jupiter) that Saul offers his clients is aptly symbolized by the crude, inflatable replica of the Statue of Liberty that adorns the strip mall office where he conducts his business. The authentic Statue of Liberty was dedicated in New York harbour during the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction of 1886, as a synthesis of “Jupiter’s elevating crown and Prometheus’s liberating fire”, that Richard Tarnas described — with reference to the statue’s astonishing size — as “the quintessential Jupiterian monument to the Prometheus archetype”. The billowing imitation that crowns Saul’s office is just as much a symbol of Jupiter, although one that reveals Jupiter’s proclivity for showmanship and gaudy excess, as well as literal inflation, more than its potential for grandeur or cultural refinement. The freedom that it represents, from consequences and responsibility, is similarly degraded.

Despite his many vices, Saul became a fan favorite as a result of the comic relief that he brought to the dark and morally complicated world of Breaking Bad, punctuating its intense drama with brief moments of levity. Prior to this role, Odenkirk’s comedic talents were already well known through his work as a writer and performer on comedy shows such as Saturday Night Live and Mr. Show. This aptitude for humor and light heartedness illustrates the positive dimension of the Jupiter-Uranus complex, and is one of the more noble expressions of the trickster archetype in our culture.

In Odenkirk’s T square, the Jupiter and Uranus archetypes are both intensified by the presence of Pluto, which infuses the alignment with a darkly transgressive, and potentially destructive impulse towards power and domination. The sinister and corrosive side of Pluto is expressed in the downward vector of Jimmy’s trajectory: his transformation into Saul Goodman, his descent into an extreme form of corruption, and his involvement with the criminal underworld via characters such as Lalo Salamanca and Walter White. This descent (Pluto) is driven by Saul’s desire for unlimited personal enrichment (Jupiter), and his compulsive need to defy the system (Uranus) at every opportunity.

Saul’s criminal career reaches its culmination through his role as an adviser and money launderer for Walter White. Saul helps to channel the proceeds from Walt’s drug empire through outwardly legitimate businesses, as well as aiding in his evasion of the law. His facilitation of financial crime via cunning and highly creative methods suggests a dark convergence of the Jupiter, Uranus, and Pluto archetypes: extreme prosperity and success (Jupiter) is made possible by risky enterprises (Uranus) in connection with the criminal underworld (Pluto). As the archetype of darkness itself, Pluto draws forth the shadow qualities in whatever it touches, impelling the other planetary archetypes towards dangerous extremes.

A real-world expression of this archetypal complex can be found in the life of Jordan Belfort, the New York stockbroker and salesman who achieved notoriety for his involvement with stock market manipulation, money laundering, and other criminal scams. Belfort and Odenkirk were both born in 1962 during the very same outer planet alignment of Jupiter, Uranus, and Pluto. The sleazy charisma and wily ambition displayed by Belfort are strikingly similar to the qualities displayed by Odenkirk in his portrayal of Saul Goodman. Odenkirk’s performance of Saul is drawn from the same archetypal template that shaped the trajectory of Belfort’s actual life, and this template is illuminated by an understanding of their natal charts.

Although these men have certain archetypal factors in common, the talents that are indicated by their natal charts have been utilized in very different fields of activity, and towards entirely different ends, and the difference in moral character could not be starker. As an actor, Odenkirk tapped into the archetypal drama and tension that is suggested by his natal chart for the purpose of entertainment, in a way that allowed audiences to vicariously enjoy the thrill of misbehaving (Pluto) without incurring real world consequences. Belfort, on the other hand, did it for real; bringing misery to thousands of people.

Belfort’s crimes, along with his extremely opulent lifestyle, were dramatized in the black comedy film The Wolf of Wall Street, which was released in 2013 during a T square of those same planets. This was the same T square that coincided with the final series of Breaking Bad, and the dark pinnacle of criminal profiteering that made Saul Goodman millions of dollars, before it all came crashing down in spectacular fashion.

Jimmy and Kim (Venus-Jupiter-Uranus-Pluto)

As mentioned earlier, Odenkirk’s Jupiter-Uranus-Pluto opposition is also connected with Venus — the planet of love, beauty and sensuality — through a square aspect. The Venusian element of the T square is expressed in Saul’s frequently garish fashion choices: his expensive watches and rings, as well as the many colorful suits and ties that fill his wardrobe. His personal style reflects a Jupiterian elevation of the fashionable Venus archetype towards a pinnacle of opulence and luxury. This Venus-Jupiter aspect is also present in Saul’s appetite for sensual indulgences such as massages and spa treatments.

The combination of Venus, Uranus and Pluto can be related to his relationship with fellow lawyer Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn). Their romance is catalyzed through Kim’s involvement in Jimmy’s schemes. Kim finds herself enamored (Venus) with Jimmy through the sense of risk and excitement (Uranus) that he brings into her life. Their attraction to the trickster (Uranus) archetype in each other is an unmistakable expression of the Venus-Uranus complex. This dynamic is intensified by the addition of Pluto, which, as we have seen, tends to bring out the more sinister and destructive potential in whatever it touches. Kim’s involvement with Jimmy’s schemes provides fertile ground for their romance to thrive but is ultimately what leads to both of their downfalls. They indulge each other’s vices and bring out the worst in each other; their passion (Venus) leaving a trail of devastation (Pluto) in its wake.

Kim first gets a taste for the transgressive thrills of con artistry in the season 2 episode ‘Switch’, which was broadcast during the Venus-Uranus-Pluto square of February 2016. Remarkably, Rhea Seehorn was born during a T square of the same planets — Venus-Jupiter-Uranus-Pluto — that constitute the T square that we have been discussing in Odenkirk’s chart; albeit separated by ten years.

A more extreme counterpart to Kim and Jimmy can be found in the example of Bonnie and Clyde, who were both born during major alignments of Venus, Uranus and Pluto. They committed their sensational crime spree — which included numerous bank robberies and murders — during the Uranus-Pluto square alignment of the 1930s. When Venus joined this alignment by hard aspect in May of 1934, the couple were killed in a hail of gunfire as they tried to escape from police in a stolen car. Their story was given a cinematic treatment in the film Bonnie and Clyde, which was released during a rare triple conjunction of all three planets in 1967.

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Jimmy and Chuck (Sun-Mars-Saturn-Neptune)

The other T square in Odenkirk’s chart is composed of a wide Sun-Neptune conjunction that sits at the apex of a T square with Mars and Saturn. The tightest aspect in this configuration is the exact opposition between Mars and Saturn, which speaks to a high level of frustration and pent-up rage within Jimmy. This is an aspect of action (Mars) meeting resistance (Saturn); it suggests challenges that can only be overcome through strict discipline and sustained effort. This is the side of Jimmy that keeps him on the straight and narrow through fear of punishment and humiliation, it also describes the suppressed antagonism (Mars) he feels towards established authority (Saturn), and the combative stance he assumes in the courtroom on behalf of his clients. This is the version of Jimmy that spent years grinding away in the mailroom of his brother’s law firm while he completed his online law degree, then spent years doing thankless work as a public defender for the down-and-out.

This T square can also be interpreted with reference to the Sun-Saturn square, an aspect that is perfectly illustrated through Jimmy’s relationship with his older brother Chuck, a respected lawyer portrayed by Michael McKean (natal Sun sextile Saturn) who plays a somewhat paternalistic role (Sun) in Jimmy’s life. Chuck exemplifies the Saturnian characteristics of seriousness, professionalism, and moral uprightness that Jimmy struggles to embody, although Chuck is also capable of extreme pettiness towards Jimmy.

During his early days as a practicing lawyer, Jimmy looks towards Chuck as a kind of role model (Sun), despite Chuck’s often condescending attitude towards him. Having witnessed the wayward antics of Jimmy’s youth, Chuck regards his younger brother’s law career with suspicion, believing him to be the same old Slippin’ Jimmy that used to rob the cash register of their father’s store and sell fake IDs to his classmates. Chuck’s attitude towards Jimmy fuels the development of an inferiority complex (Saturn) that informs much of his later behavior.

I know you. I know what you were, what you are. People don’t change! You’re Slippin’ Jimmy! And Slippin’ Jimmy I can handle just fine, but Slippin’ Jimmy with a law degree is like a chimp with a machine gun!

Neptune’s role in this complex is more subtle, the Sun-Neptune conjunction points toward the essential confusion around the character’s identity: is “Saul Goodman” a mask that Jimmy McGill wears? Or is he an expression of his long-repressed authenticity?

Neptune’s function in the T square with Mars and Saturn seems to be one of obfuscation and sublimation. Jimmy’s underlying sense of inferiority (Saturn) is concealed behind a carefully maintained veneer of bluster and bravado (Mars). There is a sense in which Jimmy throws himself into the Saul Goodman persona as a form of escapism (Neptune); a way to avoid dealing with his personal vulnerabilities and moral shortcomings.

The antagonism between Jimmy and Chuck is often expressed in a covert, passive aggressive way, with both brothers behaving in deceitful and underhanded ways at various points in the story. This dynamic is typical of the Mars-Neptune combination, which often correlates with subtle expressions of conflict that simmer beneath the surface. The cold war between Jimmy and Chuck reached its courtroom denouement in the classic episode ‘Chicanery’, first broadcast during the Mars-Saturn-Neptune T square of May 2017.

Gene Takovic (Sun-Saturn-Neptune)

Another expression of this Sun-Saturn-Neptune T square is embodied in Jimmy’s post Saul Goodman existence, when he is living as a fugitive in Nebraska in the aftermath of Walt’s downfall, going by the alias of Gene Takovic. This version of the character is a shadow of his former self, needing to repress his personality in order to blend in as a non-descript Cinnabon manager. Maintaining this illusion of mediocrity comes at great psychological cost to Gene.

These scenes are filmed in a monochrome palette that reflects his drab, joyless existence, and the ever-present anxiety he feels about the threat of being discovered. Haunted by regrets, Gene inhabits a mind made prison of fear and alienation, from which there seems to be no exit. The futility and despair of Gene’s predicament are deeply resonant with the spiritual trials of the Saturn-Neptune complex.

Gene’s only relief comes in brief moments of escapism when, isolated in his home, he replays the old commercials that he made as Saul Goodman. In contrast to the black and white living room, the commercials appear in full color; a reminder of former glories, and a hint that the vibrant palette of the Venus-Jupiter-Uranus complex is still alive in Gene, filtering through the grey monotony of the Sun-Saturn-Neptune purgatory that he finds himself trapped inside.

Two T squares, two visions of reality. Better Call Saul is ultimately an attempt to navigate the complexity of Odenkirk’s natal chart, and to reconcile its disparate parts. The final episode left viewers with a poetically resonant conclusion that pointed towards a possible integration of these different complexes, and the competing personas that inhabit Jimmy McGill.

RL’s Substack

Reflections on the Jupiter-Neptune Conjunction (Part I)

As we come to the end of the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction that has presided over the past fourteen months, I would like to share some reflections on what I believe to be significant correlations between this world transit and the general zeitgeist of the past year or so. This conjunction has coincided with another major alignment of the outer planets tha…

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3 years ago · RL Anderson

Zelenskyy

Beyond the glare of garish celebrity scandals, the archetypal dynamics of the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction have been emerging in much more consequential ways for the people of Ukraine, who last year found themselves defending their country from an invasion by Russia.

The invasion was initiated in late February during the Mars-Pluto conjunction of early 2022, and in most respects, the bloody events that have followed are an expression of the volcanic and aggressive Mars-Pluto energies that were unleashed during that conjunction. But if we take a wider view of the situation, the ongoing violence can be situated in an archetypal context that is better understood in terms of the outer planet alignments that have prevailed since the invasion began, and the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction is certainly relevant to many aspects of the war.

The leadership (Jupiter) of president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been very prominent in the media’s coverage of the invasion, and his bold stance against Russia has positioned him as a receptacle for the hopes and aspirations (Neptune) of the liberal West—contested though that claim to liberalism is—in the face of Russian authoritarianism and aggression.

Prior to becoming president, Zelenskyy was a comic actor and was well known for having played the part of the Ukrainian president in a popular television show. This strange blurring of reality and fiction adds a somewhat surreal character to Zelenskyy's leadership in a way that is strikingly appropriate to the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction, with its archetypal merging of the leadership principle (Jupiter) with the archetype of fantasy and idealism (Neptune).  

Zelenskyy’s knack for showbiz seems to have spilled over into his public relations, which have been extremely well managed, and very effective at keeping Ukraine in the headlines. His media blitz has included giving speeches to the Grammys and the Golden Globes, a glossy photo shoot for Vogue magazine, an appearance on David Letterman, as well as hosting a U2 concert in one of Kyiv’s subway stations. 

Keen to get in on the action, Hollywood luminaries including Ben Stiller, Jessica Chastain, and Sean Penn have all made a point of publicly meeting with the president, with Penn even going so far as to lend one of his Oscar statuettes to the embattled leader as a “symbol of faith” in Ukraine’s victory.

This glitzy spectacle suggests a strange meeting of worlds; an intersection of the Jupiterian domain of leadership and international affairs with Neptune’s realm of Hollywood illusion and misty-eyed enchantment. Perhaps this type of publicity is a necessary part of warfare in the social media age, but it has raised uneasy questions about the relationship between Hollywood spin and America’s already bloated military spending (Ukraine was the recipient of nearly $50 billion of military aid in 2022), not to mention the inherent risk of nuclear escalation that comes with US involvement. 

True to the multivalent nature of the planetary archetypes, another side of the Jupiter-Neptune complex has been apparent in Zelenskyy's political ideals, which include greater integration between Ukraine and its European neighbors. Accordingly, Zelenskyy has been pushing for Ukraine to become a full-fledged member of the European Union (a project which has reflected the unitive impulse of Neptune from its inception). Jupiter, commensurate with its grand size, seems to correlate with matters that are international in scope; Zelenskyy’s call for international unity and peace is thus reflective of Neptune's unitive and boundary dissolving influence being manifested on the world stage, as are the widespread feelings of solidarity and kinship with Ukraine that have been expressed across Europe.

A parallel expression of this dynamic can be discerned in the brutal displacement of around 8 million Ukrainians and the resulting refugee crisis across Europe. The influx of Ukrainians into neighboring countries is a reminder that nationhood (Jupiter) is, to some extent, an elaborate fiction (Neptune) that we all participate in, and that national borders are invisible, porous, and liable to dissolve at a moment’s notice. This massive displacement echoes the Syrian refugee crisis that occurred during the Jupiter-Neptune opposition of 2015. Jupiter-Neptune alignments seem to call upon us to extend our compassion (Neptune) to people from distant lands and diverse cultural backgrounds (Jupiter) in a spirit of global unity.

Nord Stream

On the more negative side of the spectrum of possibilities represented by the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction has been a tendency to overlook important details relating to the historical context of this conflict, namely the provocative expansion of NATO towards the borders of the old Soviet Union, into territories that were previously regarded as off-limits. NATO skeptics view its eastward expansion as an insidious form of encroachment that threatens the security of Russia. The tendency of western media to view NATO in an uncritical light could be interpreted as a form of deception, or at least naivete, that provides cover to an imperialist agenda.

This blind spot was made abundantly clear by the deafening silence that greeted the publication of a recent article by the renowned investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, in which Hersh alleged that the US was behind the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline that occurred in September. At the time of the attack, most media commentators were keen to place the blame on Russia, despite the lack of any apparent motive.

According to Hersh, the covert bombing of the pipeline, which transports Russian oil through the Baltic Sea to Germany, was perpetrated by an elite US team of deep-water divers who were working under the direct supervision of president Biden; the attack was allegedly executed in close collaboration with Norway, and planned months in advance of the invasion. If what Hersh claims is true, then many of the narratives about NATOs defensive role in the world seem dubious at best, as this attack amounts to an act of war against vital European infrastructure. This is to say nothing of the catastrophic environmental effects of spilling an estimated 14.6 million tons of methane into the ocean.

In astrological terms, the timeline that Hersh alleges coincides with the successive hard aspect alignments of Mars—the archetypal warrior—with the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction. The planting of the explosives is said to have occurred in June during a widely publicized NATO exercise, known as BALLTOPS 22, that coincided with the triple conjunction of Mars, Jupiter and Neptune. According to Hersh, the explosives were attached to a device that could be triggered remotely at a time of the president’s choosing, and that this method was chosen to obscure the connection between BALLTOPS 22 and the Nord Stream bombing.

In this version of events, the explosions on September 26 were triggered by a sonar buoy that was airdropped into the vicinity following an order by the president. The explosions coincided with the beginning of a sustained square aspect between Mars and the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction.

Although conclusive evidence of the US or Norway’s culpability has yet to emerge, the concurrence of these events with the successive alignments of the Mars-Jupiter-Neptune cycle is highly suggestive of an event that combined aggression (Mars) with elements of subterfuge (Neptune) and international commerce (Jupiter). An American-Norwegian conspiracy to commit an underwater attack would certainly fit the bill, especially as both countries stand to make big economic gains (Jupiter) from the destruction of Nord Stream. Events such as this highlight the archetypal thread that connects the ocean with currents of secrecy, deception and mystery—hallmarks of the Neptune archetype.

This event has an historical precedent in Operation Ivy Bells—a joint mission undertaken by the US Navy, CIA and NSA to place wiretaps on Soviet underwater communication lines during the Cold War—which was initiated in October 1971 during an alignment of Mars, Jupiter and Neptune that was identical to the one that marked the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage.

It is important to note that Hersh’s claims originate from a single anonymous source and that astrological correlations, however suggestive they may be, do not amount to evidence of wrongdoing. We may never know who the real culprit was. Perhaps it was Russia after all, or, maybe it was the Sea-God himself who—in a moment of hubris—struck the pipeline with his mighty trident.

Wartime dynamics of the Saturn-Uranus square

If we look beyond the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction to the square between Saturn and Uranus, and its corresponding archetypal complex, we can illuminate additional dimensions of this conflict and hopefully gain a sense for how these simultaneous alignments have cohered over the past year or so.   

The tension between limitation and freedom is at the heart of the Saturn-Uranus complex. This square has represented a challenge to the established order by the cosmic trickster archetype in its eternal movement towards change, liberation and progress; at the same time, it has also symbolized the Saturnian impulse to constrain and punish such challenges in an effort to maintain traditional modes of being. 

In the eyes of most onlookers, Ukraine is carrying the torch for freedom in Europe in the face of an authoritarian dictatorship that holds the values of democracy and tolerance in contempt. In his public pronouncements, Russian president Vladimir Putin has identified himself as an upholder of “traditional values” and sought to portray himself as a bastion of conservative morality, standing in resistance to the rising tides of multiculturalism, radical feminism and LGBT rights across the world. Whether this position is the result of sincere conviction or political expediency is unclear, but as far as outward appearances are concerned, Putin is the world leader who can most readily be identified with the Saturn archetype, which tends towards strict, patriarchal authority and resistance to change. 

Considering that Saturn is supposed to be the archetype of stability and restraint, it is legitimate to ask why Putin’s behaviour has been so erratic and unpredictable over the past year. In astrological terms, the square between Saturn and Uranus suggests a period of instability and breakdown (Uranus) for established authority, and while this often comes from without, it can also arise from within, as seems to have been the case with Putin. His numerous blunders, strategic errors and bizarre behaviours have led to widespread speculation about his mental and physical health, although it should be noted that Putin has always had a streak of contrarianism in his nature (appropriate to the exact Saturn-Uranus square in his natal chart). Aside from Putin’s personal eccentricities, the Saturn-Uranus complex has also been apparent in the weaknesses of the Russian army, from issues with outdated military hardware to serious problems maintaining discipline and morale. 

Another, more noble, expression of the Saturn-Uranus complex has been apparent in the Ukrainian resistance, which, despite the extreme asymmetry of the conflict, has effectively deterred the Russian advance on some key battle fronts.

The Ukrainians tactical innovations have included the development of a strike drone with an astonishing 1,000km range that has enabled them to strike into Russian territory. Closer to home, Ukrainian engineers have devised ingenious ways of rerouting electricity supplies in response to Russian strikes that have targeted energy infrastructure. As a result of these rerouting schemes, the blackouts caused by Russian attacks have typically lasted for less than a day.

The astute resourcefulness of the Ukrainian people has helped them to defy the odds; their perseverance and ingenuity in the face of the Russian onslaught has reflected the combined qualities of Saturn and Uranus. In the words of Andriy Sadovyi, the mayor of Lviv: “We have discovered we’re coded to be ingenious, to improvise, to come up with solutions, to use what’s available and what’s at hand.”

As the archetype of ascent and good fortune, Jupiter is naturally associated with those who occupy privileged positions in society: royals, celebrities, leaders, the extremely wealthy, etc. By extension, the alignments that Jupiter forms to other planets tend to color our perception of the elite sections of society for the duration of those alignments. In the case of our current Jupiter-Neptune conjunction, our overriding perception of the rich and the famous has been mediated by the distorting influence of the Neptune archetype, which, among its multivalent potentials, can indicate tendencies towards idealization, deception and entrancement.  

Conversely, but still within the range of potentials indicated by Neptune, the Jupiter archetype (and the many things that it symbolizes) has been rendered increasingly vulnerable, impotent, and transparent; this side of the Jupiter-Neptune complex was given a literary expression by the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen in his famous folktale “The Emperor’s New Clothes”. First published during the exact Jupiter-Neptune opposition of April 1837, it tells of a vain emperor who is deceived into appearing naked before his subjects by a pair of swindlers who are posing as weavers. This deception (Neptune) is predicated on the belief that the emperor is wearing illustrious clothes (Jupiter) that are invisible to the unworthy. The story illustrates the ambivalent nature of the Neptune archetype, which can at once be subtly enchanting and profoundly misleading.

As the archetype of spiritual transcendence, Neptune signifies those processes which soften and dissolve the rigid structures of the ego. When properly integrated, Neptune can help us to recognise our inherent unity with all that exists and surrender to the flow of life. This process of egoic dissolution is not without its pitfalls however, and the unravelling of our worldly affectations can be a humbling experience. When the townsfolk see that the emperor is naked, they recognise that he is essentially no different to them; the apparent hierarchy between them is dissolved and their shared vulnerabilities are emphasized. 

Many of the past year’s most widely discussed figures, such as Queen Elizabeth, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Kanye West and Elon Musk, are notable for having a Jupiter-Neptune conjunction or opposition in their natal charts, and we can arrive at a better understanding of this archetypal pairing by exploring the significance of these people throughout the time of the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction. Each of these individuals has expressed the qualities of the Jupiter-Neptune complex in one way or another, and by holding them in mind we can get a sense for the multivalent potentials—the light and shadow—that are indicated by this planetary alignment. 

More broadly, I see the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction as being related to the pervasive entrancement with the world of celebrity that has characterized the last year, present in the excessive news coverage and gossip that has surrounded figures such as Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, Will Smith, Meghan Markle, Prince Harry, etc. The glamor and mystique that Hollywood celebrities cultivate and thrive on, in addition to their well-known tendencies towards intoxication and excess, are symptomatic of the more superficial impulses of the Jupiter-Neptune complex, which can correlate with addictions, delusions of grandeur, and tendencies towards narcissistic inflation. These tendencies reflect a Jupiterian amplification of the Neptune archetype.

In considering the various celebrity and social media spectacles that have unfolded throughout the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction, I am led to the conclusion that the personal crises that have thrust these celebrities into the spotlight are best understood within a wider astrological perspective that incorporates both the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction and the longer lasting Saturn-Uranus square, with its tendencies towards sudden separations, rifts and psychological breakdowns. In my view, the convergence of these two planetary cycles is key to understanding the events of the last year.  

The live-streamed courtroom spectacle that played out between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, with its shocking twists and turns, was emblematic of the volatile archetypal zeitgeist that is indicated by the Saturn-Uranus square aspect. The highly erratic nature of the trial, which seemed almost farcical at times, made it a target for ridicule on social media and made a mockery of the seriousness of the courtroom setting in which the events were unfolding. It was as if the Saturnian domain of law and order, with all its sombre formalities, was suddenly turned into a laughingstock by the unpredictable and highly destabilizing influence of the cosmic trickster (Uranus).

The trial was also used to fan the flames of the bitter US culture war as part of a backlash against feminism and the #MeToo movement. The extremely polarized nature of the response was expressive of the tension between progressive social change (Uranus) and reactionary-conservative backlash (Saturn) that is inherent to the Saturn-Uranus dynamic.

Throughout the proceedings, Johnny Depp was able to leverage his extremely dedicated fanbase to tip the social media discussion heavily in his favor, and to rehabilitate his public image to a considerable extent. The savviness with which Depp played the media was a masterclass in the kind of public relations acumen that Jupiter-Neptune aspects can sometimes indicate (Depp has an exact quincunx in his natal chart). The willingness of his supporters to overlook his obvious shortcomings illustrates the other half of the Jupiter-Neptune equation, which can tend towards misguided idealism, and a tendency to view one’s heroes in an unrealistically positive light; to pretend that the emperor is in fact wearing magnificent robes.

While Depp may have been successful in reviving his career, the trial was deeply exposing to both parties. Over the course of six weeks, televised testimonies from numerous witnesses laid bare the extent of Depp’s spiraling drug and alcohol addictions (Jupiter-Neptune), while painting an unsightly portrait of marital breakdown (Saturn-Uranus). The revelation of the most intimate and embarrassing secrets (Neptune) of these outwardly glamorous lives, the glimpse behind the curtain of fame and fortune (Jupiter), was enthralling to millions of viewers in a way that reflected the mutual activation of the Jupiter and Neptune archetypes.

More recently, these same archetypal dynamics have been apparent in the media circus that accompanied the publication of Prince Harry’s bombshell memoir Spare. In the extremely candid book, Harry (born during the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction of 1984) spilled countless secrets about his life as prominent member of the British royal family, including an altercation with his older brother (the heir apparent to the throne), a revelatory experience with psilocybin, and a story about losing his virginity in a field. In this royal expose, Jupiter—the archetypal king—is once again laid bare to the gawking amusement of millions.

The larger context for this memoir is the familial schism that came about as a result of Harry’s marriage to actress Meghan Markle, which reflects the Saturn-Uranus square in both its rupturing of an establishment structure, and its associated culture war dynamics; as public representatives of “wokeness”, Harry and Meghan have been the focus of widespread conservative backlash. The convergence of this rift (Saturn-Uranus) with the publication of the memoir (Jupiter-Neptune) constitutes one of the countless situations that have occurred during the past year which reflect the intersection of the two planetary cycles I have been exploring.

Over and over again, this pattern has been manifested in numerous different forms. Consider the debacle that overshadowed last year’s Oscars ceremony—“The Slap Heard Around the World”—that exposed the physical and emotional vulnerabilities of two of Hollywood’s biggest stars, and which immediately dissolved any prestige that might have been derived from Will Smith’s Best Actor win for his performance in King Richard. As Smith made his conciliatory and tearful acceptance speech, the pageantry and grandeur of the award ceremony (Jupiter) was exposed as a sham by the dissipative and enfeebling influence of Neptune. The King, once again, stood exposed for the whole world to see. The subsequent split between Smith and the Academy likewise reflected the Saturn-Uranus theme of sudden breakdowns and separations.

The cyclical unravelling of celebrated individuals (Jupiter) and the revelation of their very human weaknesses (Neptune) would seem to be part of a universal rhythm that is correlated with the Jupiter-Neptune cycle. In order for the collective psyche to maintain some kind of equilibrium, it seems that it is necessary that events should happen which cause us to withdraw our collective projections of ‘success’, ‘greatness’ and ‘royalty’ from the privileged few that have been elevated above the masses. Like the crowd who burst into laughter upon recognising that the emperor is indeed naked, we can all breathe a sigh of relief upon having realized that they are, in fact, just like us.

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