OVERVIEW
Conflict between those who want power or who wish to maintain the current status quo (Pluto) and those who wish to restrict or prevent this power by discipline and restraint (Saturn) will be in even sharper focus this month.

Saturn (stern karma) just newly in the sign of Libra (scales of justice) is now squaring up to Pluto (ruthless power) in Capricorn (establishment) in an attempt to limit Pluto’s power, and the demands for more justice and fairness will be manifest

Capricorn-ruled Afghanistan will be increasingly high profile and the rock and hard place dilemma over the validity of the West’s involvement in that country will become increasingly significant and even Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai has had to acquiesce to demands of social justice. The fresh election is a timely response to the demands of the Saturn‘s new position, but the price paid for an election rerun in the depth of an Afghanistan winter will be high for troops and civilians. The Russians found Afghanistan to be an impossible battleground, and now we are finding the same. Trying to impose a western style democracy seems like liberal imperialism; a hubristic vainglory of an effort. The Taliban are funded not only by massive drug profits, but by many other countries. While Pluto remains in Capricorn (another 13 years or so) Afghanistan will remain largely untamed and deeply factionized. With Saturn square to Pluto now, Karzai’s power maybe weakened, but fundamentally very little will change.

This month fixed squares to both Mars and Jupiter (also currently in opposition to each other) abound from planets in Scorpio, creating various fixed T squares of tense energy in the cosmos, that correlates with irresolvable standoffs and tensions globally and indeed in individual lives.

Money, finances, debt, economic issues (Scorpio is very connected to power and money) all remain very high-profile this month in a very stressful way, with much anger and confrontation over these issues, particularly around the 19th when Mars squares up to Venus, often presaging financial conflict.

The financial industry will be in a learning curve, either through enforced changes in structure or because of very difficult events. Obama has signaled, in response to pervasive public anger, a large reduction in the salaries of many executives in the financial sector. However, with Mars in fixed Leo opposition to Jupiter in fixed Aquarius this month, there is a very strong sense of arrogance that will dominate and therefore there will be little desire for any group wanting to maintain their power to show any humility or retreat. However, Saturn in Libra will get heard and the growing diffuse anger and sense of lack of justice (Libra) that is abroad about the banks continuing advantages and bonuses (Pluto in Capricorn) after their giant bail out by the tax payers, will emerge and be somehow acted upon.

Saturn is after all the Lord of Karma.

The governor of the bank of England, Mervyn King, said recently, paraphrasing Winston Churchill, “Never in the field of financial endeavor has so much money been owed by so few to so many. And, one might add, so far with little reform. The casino megabanks cannot remain too big to fail. Saturn now squaring Pluto will encourage discussion of the idea that Main Street commercial banks should be separated from the investment banks (as in the Glass- Steagall Act, instituted in 1933 in response to the great depression and repealed in 1999). At the least there will be growing awareness of the need to break up the big finance institutions into smaller more independent bodies, so that should (when) they fail, again, they don’t bring down the whole system.

A seeming “jobless recovery” both paralyzes financial reforms and fuels collective anger; and militancy and strikes among the populace will erupt more frequently. The idea of the financial sector being the driver of larger economic health does not ring true to the average Joe. There is no visible trickledown effect to the many. With Saturn (reality / economy) challenging Pluto (abusive power) there is a growing realization of the disconnect between Wall Street and the real economy. Companies can thrive now at the expense of their workers. Economic polarization is growing, correlating with growing planetary stresses. In the States, in many cases, the church feeds the underclass, keeping class warfare at bay.

The Saturnian demand to address public welfare and social justice will now grow.

The growth of Super Capitalism over the last few decades has, as Karl Marx warned, “alienated mankind from its humanity.” Deregulated financial freedom has become license. There are no rainy day funds in the big casino banks, in case of more future collapse, the profits again go straight into bonuses.

The cultural response to the current economic scenario is proving to be very different to the one that was manifest in the 1930s. There was then in film and literature an element a real exposure of the poverty and discontent of the time. A genre developed with both tragic and heroic undertones such as manifest in John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath and in James Cagney’s role in The Public Enemy (1931) as the first of a string of antiheroes and in novels such as Henry Roth’s Call it Sleep (1934).

The depression then did largely lead to the democratization of culture.

Social pathology alone was exposed in the cultural responses to the ‘30s, but not so deeply examined then was the socioeconomic and sociopolitical pathology.

This time around, there is more sardonic anger and satire that drives the cultural and artistic engine in response to the times. The Michael Moores of this world take over the job of moral exposure, with no mere escapism or sentimental indulgence allowed. The sense of moral bafflement is strong now in the arts. We are less content to display our victimhood, but are more shocked observers of and commentators on events.

There is a new “Apocalypse Porn” afoot in film and the media. The reality show Colony in the States challenges people to find food and drink in a projected post-apocalypse USA. The extreme Bible Belt thinking feeds the fear of, or belief in, the apocalyptic scenario. Their faith rests on the belief in the Biblical “prediction” of the necessary coming of the end of the world.

A plethora of new films and documentaries expose the inner machinations of the banking system’s unacceptable pathology. The cultural intelligentsia seems now more at war with the economic system, not just responding to it. There are also interesting philosophical / psychological analyses on the current emasculation of the male businessman, such as in George Clooney’s new “downsizing” themed movie, Up in the Air.

Like post 9/11, it takes time to respond to national and global shock in terms of resultant considered cultural and artistic feedback and more time will bring more needed responses.

We can see ourselves as powerless atomized individuals or able to pull together to have a voice, which Saturn in Libra squaring Pluto in Capricorn does now invite. As a society we cannot have the professed desire for mass higher education without facing the feedback of discontent about a skewed system, by those who are taught to critically think about society, unless of course education is reduced to being a subservient tool for merely fuelling the current economic system
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Saturn new in Libra, will also very likely bring a new shift in the arts, combining a sense of stringency with a new desire for very high standards in technical skill and a revering of the classical model. The need for harmony with Saturn in Libra (esthetics and symmetry, high art) will be felt as a must, both creatively and politically, but it will be very hard to come by this month.

The visual arts have been less ready or able to deal directly with the subject of the financial crisis, as the narrative mediums of film and theatre being more appropriate tools. There are notable exceptions, such as the Danish subversive art collective Superflex, which has made a series of short films which were televised last month in Britain, and which were on display at the thriving Frieze Art Fair in London, in which the artists consider the financial crisis as a form of psychosis to be treated by a hypnotist. They have also made a video called Flooded McDonalds in which they have created a full-scale replica of a McDonald’s interior and slowly filled it with water. It can be a comment on many things, including globalization, rising sea levels, an apocalyptic revenge on conglomerate arrogance and the hubristic assumptions of permanence.

Saturn in Libra will be good for the arts, as it will rubber stamp it as a serious intellectual social tool and although it will inevitably bring restriction (Saturn) to the arts (Libra) because of the lack of cash around, it will of necessity separate the wheat from the chaff. The overblown commercial merry-go-round with real estate agent type values (as Grayson Perry commented) that had invaded the arts since the late ‘80s is now in serious decline. Meanwhile, banks have also withdrawn support for the backing of Hollywood movies.

Small will have to be beautiful.

The response to the exhibition “Pop Life” at Tate Modern, featuring works by Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst and Andy Warhol, has been relatively subdued when compared to the public and (largely negative) critical response to this year’s Turner Prize. Art that thrived in the boom years now feels quite passé. Indeed, so much of that work has become subliminally associated with the abusive powers of banks and toxic finance.

In a current exhibition in London, at the Wallace Collection, Hirst has a series of paintings hanging alongside the Watteaus and Fragonards. His experiment with “painterliness” in this exhibition has led one critic to call him “a jumped-up pretender,” and note that despite his preoccupation with mortality, he has in fact “the small soul of the interior decorator.”

We are back to looking for more subtly thoughtful (Libra) work, less driven by bandwagon-inspired energy. The “overproduced” during the ”good times” has declined in value. Even Banksy’s work is less in demand. Neville Wakefield, who curated special commissions for Frieze, points to the scene in New York as an indication of arts future path. He cites the subversive Bruce High Quality Foundation, which is a group of unknown artists who aided by an anonymous benefactor have set up their own free art school in Tribeca. The curriculum is spontaneous, and the university describes itself as a “Fuck You” to the hegemony of critical solemnity and market-mediocre despair. It offers for instance courses in what is titled “Occult Shenanigans in 20th-21st Century Art (a Scorpionic title).

However, Saturn in Libra will demand a subtle quality.

All “recessions” invite subversive underground art to flourish, but ironically this very art can become the desirable and pricey pieces of the future when (if) a boom subsequently develops, as for instance was the case with the YBAs.

The karmic schoolteacher Saturn, planet of the necessity principle in earthy Virgo for two-three years, was a reality check about how the natural world and our ecosystems are being devastated by climate change. Now with Saturn newly in the airy sign of social relationships and justice orientated Libra, we will have for some years to come, a wakeup call about the necessity of social justice.

Saturn in Virgo has done its job in terms of an alarm call about the planet, but it is up to us to listen and act on that reality check. If we don’t, in 30 years time, when Saturn returns to Virgo we will face an unthinkably heavier price environmentally. We ignore Saturn’s lessons at all our peril, he always catches up with us karmically, if we do not pay heed to his demands. Art is still reverberating with social consciousness about the environment.

Artist Angela Palmer has been making regular trips to western Ghana so as to organize and undertake the huge task of exporting whole naturally fallen tropical trees, roots and all, and several logged stumps, fallen victim to deforestation, and bring them to London for a massive installation in Trafalgar Square, Nov 16-22, 2009. She is eager to bring to the British capital an in-your-face reminder of the decimation of the tropical rainforests and their link to climate change. She says that “for most visitors the scale, beauty and diversity of the stumps will be unlike anything they have experienced before. Nelson’s Column stands over 50 meters tall, the approximate height many of these trees would have stood at in the wild.” It will be impossible not to imagine what a space like Trafalgar Square would look like if populated by such massive examples of nature’s work alongside man’s, and to think about the destruction the missing trees represent.” The work will be called The Ghost Forest.

About 20 percent of global emissions are a result of deforestation.

Wait till Uranus enters Aries in late May 2010 for approximately seven years; when he starts to square up to Pluto, then we really will see the birth of radical change and revolution as a fiery proactive force that will scream mercilessly at Pluto in Capricorn’s resistance at all costs, to bow to urgent root and branch transition. Really in-your-face innovation, at the breakneck speed of necessity, will start to get under way. A battle royal with the tenacious establishment is on the way, however. Revolution or the desire for it is relatively subtle and rather covert under Uranus’s current position in Pisces. From Aries revolutionary, innovative energy will be very aggressively expressed.

Obama needs to seriously be on his toes as Uranus in Pisces is now exactly opposing his Mars in Virgo in a once-every-84-year transit. This brings danger and the unpredictable from “out there” and he himself will be in a volatile and possible gaffe and accident-prone mood, unsurprising after some of the mindless verbal attacks he has had to endure. Between the 12th and 17th is a particularly stressful time for him. Fortunately, however, Jupiter still offers him some protection as that planet still hovers around his Aquarian ascendant in its once-every-12-year visitation.

When Jupiter is going over someone’s ascendant (every 12 years) as it did exactly for Obama last month, there are always accolades and recognition of some sort gained; and the award of the Nobel peace prize to Obama was a classic example.

However, this is not a comfortable month, as no one will wish to give leeway and the pride, arrogance and stubbornness that is prevailing is indeed a dangerous combination.

Dangerous days geophysically are around the very end of the month when Mercury squares up to Uranus.

Excellent days for the arts are the 3rd, 9th, 15th, 16th and 26th.

This of course is Scorpio’s month and Mercury is also in Scorpio until the 16th and Venus is there from the 8th. Scorpio is a sign of depth and power. It is also not afraid of dealing with the dark and hidden side of life. Truth, rather than comfort, is its mainstay. Scorpio, ruled by Pluto (Greek god of death and the underworld) is a very intense sign (the words plutonium and plutocracy are redolent of the planets and sign’s implications, representing power that can bless or burn). The power it has can be used for good or ill. When Scorpio is afflicted, the latter tends to dominate. However, when Scorpio is strong, truths will be told and will be uncovered and the dark side of humanity’s face may well once again be powerfully exposed, in all its ugly manifestation.

In positive mode, Scorpio / Plutonic power can be used for necessary whistle blowing, in order to expose some dark dealings for the greater good and for healing purposes. Pluto and Scorpio can be great healing forces, but only after necessarily going through the dark, so as to get to the light. Scorpios can be the most magnificent and powerful players of the Zodiac, if they consciously choose to use their power wisely and for the greater good. Motive is everything with Scorpio and Pluto. If the motive is for good, the power it has can be transformational. Scorpio is obsessive and there can be truly magnificent obsessions or destructive ones. Used darkly and often unconsciously, Scorpios can be ruthlessly destructive and so ultimately be self destructive. It is a sign that is quite psychic and has a sting that is lethal, if need be, and they can often spot another’s Achilles heel at long distance and strike accurately. Scorpios are also patient enemies. It’s insight into others is of the x-ray vision kind, but if used positively and not for personal advantage, they can make great doctors, psychotherapists and analysts, by virtue of this very insight. Scorpios can be either Saint or Sinner and they can walk on a fine tightrope, with the possibility of going either way. They are often drawn to the dark and the pathological side of the human condition and are not afraid of it. Hence many work as pathologists, funeral directors, or work with criminals, the dispossessed, the marginalized or the terminally or mentally ill.

The plutonic power at large this month is one that will reminds us all somehow of the power of the dark and the unknown in life, and indeed within ourselves.

It is interesting that the Polish artist Miroslaw Balka has currently in the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall an installation called, with a nod to Samuel Beckett’s 1961 prose, At the Edge of Darkness. It is experiential art involving a huge metal box that you enter from a ramp and in which you find yourself confronted with most total dense darkness possible and in which one becomes totally disorientated and indeed fearful. Others in there with you can seem the enemy, as you have no access to them with sight. The felted walls are your only desperate link to orientation. People hover at the top of the ramp before entering; such is the daunting prospect of total profound blackness. However with time, the eyes adjust and some sense of reflected light starts to filter in. This is a totally apt image for Scorpionic experience. By bravely confronting the dark we can get through to the light. The installation raises issues about trust and lack of control: profound issues for life itself and indeed for Scorpionic energy.

Scorpios often deal with their own dark side by working alongside it, so as to expiate it and heal it in others and therefore in themselves in some way. If they do not acknowledge and confront their darker side, they can project it onto others and fight it ferociously as “the enemy out there.” We often do not like in others, the parts of ourselves that we are (often unconsciously) uncomfortable with. Margaret Thatcher had Scorpio rising.

There is a saying that a Scorpio would sometimes rather sting itself to death than forego the pleasure of stinging. Their desire nature is powerful and they had better be careful what they want, as they may get it, as their controlling and obsessive side can make their desires ruthlessly pursued. Scorpio rules sexuality and likes power, whether sexual, or financial, and the combination is preferred. After all, the sign of Scorpio is the shadow side of the money conscious sign of Taurus. Money can be a great aphrodisiac. The sexual energy generated by Scorpio can often be channeled through the arts and as a sign is often potently creative. Scorpio born Picasso is of course the most obvious example.

Scorpio also rules death (the Victorians called the orgasm “the little death”).

A Scorpio’s life is often very much marked by several metaphorical deaths that are often brought about by real eruptive crises, which mark dramatic endings of chapters in life. The phoenix rising out of the ashes of the old, is however often the resulting positive manifestation. A Scorpio often has to painfully learn that what he wants is not necessarily what is good for him or indeed is what he needs; and sometimes he has to willingly give up on things, even when desperately desired. In fact, the pain of forbidden or frustrated desire is often Scorpio’s greatest teacher, but he also can learn that he can “gain by giving up, conquer by surrendering and rise by kneeling.“ Humility is an important necessity for a Scorpio to use power wisely and to reach full wisdom.

Scorpios are often inscrutable, deep, secretive, highly magnetic and often stoical, but capable of great eruptions after long periods of control. They have deep desires and passions that are constantly churning and they can sometimes open doors that most would rather leave closed, as they search tirelessly and profoundly without fear, for “The Truth,” no matter how dark, taboo or uncomfortable. Scorpionic / Plutonic people can make great spies and researchers.

Because Pluto (plutonium) ruled Scorpio energy being strong this month, the thorny question of the use of nuclear power for the generation of the planet’s energy desires will be high profile, as will the impossibly daunting task of pursuing nuclear disarmament.

Scorpio’s energy at large is very inimical to Obama’s Leo / Aquarian energy and at the end of the month, when Mars in Leo reaches the opposition point to his ascendant; he will experience some real aggression and challenge from others personally and internationally.

The full Moon falls on the 2nd at 10º of Taurus. The new Moon falls on the 16th at 24º of Scorpio.

N.B. If you know your ascendant (rising sign), you should read the general trends for that sign, in conjunction with your Sun sign, for a more accurate forecast. In astrology, the nature of the planet symbolizes the type of energy that is happening, the sign it is in how it is happening and the house it is in where it is happening.

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