Citizen Covid

Not exactly a small subject, but big is sometimes easy to look at with astrology. Of course we are a reasonable way down the line with this story, so no danger of amazing feats of psychic prognostication here, but it might be interesting.

The time I have chosen to erect a chart for is the declaration of a pandemic by the WHO on 11th March 2020. I don’t have an exact time, but Time magazine ran an article at 12.39 pm EDT reporting what the WHO had “just declared”, so I have put the time (maybe optimistically) at 12.30 pm EDT, which would make it 17.30 pm in Geneva, the location of the WHO headquarters. Here is the chart:

Virgo ascendant seems appropriate for a health related event, and this puts the chart ruler in the 6th house (of health and everyday life) in Aquarius, and this has been an Aquarian crisis. Its nature has been global, the coverage has been internationally co-ordinated, and the response to varying degrees internationally directed (by virtue of intention, if not competence), often resulting in extraordinary degrees of State control of people’s personal lives. In addition, the virus originated in an Aquarian society, that of Communist China. Flow of information has been thoroughly regulated, and rigid, as you would expect from Mercury in Aquarius, though also accompanied by as much uncontrolled grass roots communication as can get through (also Aquarian). Now it’s not all gloom for that Mercury, but we’ll return to that later.

Sun conjunct Neptune in Pisces should tell us something about this affair. Something is not what it seems. Deception? Illusion? It’s not possible for things to be clear. Someone else might see this as an opportunity for the development of “universal compassion”, but that person isn’t me. Humility, maybe. Mass hysteria, also maybe. But with this involving the Sun, it suggests to me that it is a confusion involving leaders and rulers. Populations in this chart would be with the Moon I would think, in the dualistic sign of Libra, inconjunct the Sun Neptune conjunction. Rulers are not in touch with their populations here, and the populations themselves may be somewhat polarized. The disillusion which accompanies Neptune’s passage through Pisces is unlikely to be relieved.

A quite remarkable feature of this chart is Chiron’s squaring of the Nodal axis. North Node in Cancer in the 10th, South Node in Capricorn in the 4th, not too far off a powerful cluster of planets in the 5th. Again, the health related theme is amplified by Chiron’s unhealing wound motif, and the Node positions are interesting, given the responses to the pandemic. Capricorn in the 4th is a pretty good metaphor for authority controlling your personal life. Cancer in the 10th does have some suggestions of “the tribe pulling together” in a public way, but the withdrawal into control of private life is quite the opposite. The karmic point of the T square is in Libra in the 2nd house, too far off the Moon to be conjunct, but sharing its sign and house position. I think this shows where the stress emerges, basically in the physical life of the public. Chiron itself is in the 8th, in Aries. There is some very deep damage going on here, but being in the 8th it will be largely hidden.

The clear big driver of the chart is a small but dense stellium in Capricorn in the 5th. Mars, Jupiter, Pluto, Saturn. Pluto-Saturn is an energy combination of profound breakdown and transformation, Mars only heats and speeds this up, while Jupiter, which you might think would lighten things, actually magnifies the energetic mix. In Capricorn you can expect the structures of society and authority to be the object of some of these processes. It’s worth pausing here to take note of this as part of the journey of Pluto through Capricorn. Pluto does transform the area of the sign it travels through, but in the process it seems to bring out the most painful and difficult in that area of experience for us, as if purging the negativity by making us face it. Pluto is not through with Capricorn yet, and it won’t be till 2024, by which time we will have the joys of Pluto in Aquarius to contemplate! I do not expect this episode to really be through till then.

What the stellium really hits here is the Moon in Libra, the aforementioned “people” (didn’t take too much analysis to guess that honestly). On the other hand, the stellium is very well aspected to the “rulers” position of the Sun, with its deceptive conjunction with Neptune. The stellium itself is in the Sun ruled 5th house. So it rather seems that there’s a good deal of safety value wiggle room for those running things, but by no means so for the general populations. That will not however stop Pluto tearing all manner of things down, and it seems the “pandemic” is part of the pretext for this.

The one light in this picture seems to come from Venus and Uranus, which are conjunct in Taurus in the 9th house. Venus, who also rules the sign that the Moon is in here, the people, and Uranus the rebel, in the house of higher learning, philosophy, and distant horizons. This is the only part of the chart that speaks of freedom in any way. On the one hand this squares Saturn and so seems to resist the stellium (which also resists it). On the other it sextiles Mercury in Aquarius, which itself is the only planet that gives an easing aspect to the beleaguered Moon in Libra (the downside to this being the emotional nature of so much information circulating in all directions). This Venus-Uranus conjunction could relate to the help offered by scientists in developing treatments, but it also suggests the calling upon some kind of philosophy of independence in support of the “common”, which is not controlled by rulers, and which does not necessarily co-operate with their plans.

Given that Pluto is on its way to its ingress into Aquarius, I think this Uranian aspect of the crisis may prove very significant for the future.