Solunars by Aldebaran Sidereal Academy

...Saturn confines its meanderings solely to the constellation of Sagittarius, and all that this segment of the zodiac has come to be connected with symbolically will feel the limiting, low moral tone of the planet of restriction. Sagittarius rules long-distance transportation, for example, so it is inevitable that there should be less travel,. resort-hopping and vacationing abroad this year. Nominal religion with all its traditional trappings is intimately under the aegis of [Sagittarius], too, Hence, in our own country the church-building boom of recent years will become a financial boomerang in months to come.

Denominations every will be facing mortgage problems, and collection platters will tattle on the recession's true dimensions in people's lives. When Saturn is momentarily barraged by discordant aspects... incidents of sacrilege, spoilage of sacred relics, and holy-place vandalism born of bigotry will be commonly reported. Oddly enough, if Sagittarius literally affects trends in religious thought, a resurgence of fundamentalism will be marked, and throughout the theological world will be heard a renewal of emphasis on such Saturnian themes as celibacy, poverty vows and self-sufficiency. 1959 looks to be a year of disfavor for advocates of canons of religious thought now come to be slurringly referred to as the social gospel. Woe, then, from the church board to the preacher who brazenly holds that the sermon on the mount must be remembered in the voting booth - which is just what this snowballing make-him-stick=to=platitudes sentiment translates itself into on the community level.

Other Saturn-in-Sagittarius motifs center around the constellation's relationship to the pyramid-step structure of society, and to judicial functions. Sagittarius is the zodiac's sponsor or social caste, the heavenly embossed ruler of the idea pof peerage and entitlement, Old-World style. Saturn's passage...therefore implies that the balance of social affluence changes hands, no doubt to the newly-rich management class that is becoming the high society of our time...

As far as Saturn impinges on the continuing history of jurisprudence, it looks like this transit will shore up a movement in this country to impose some kind of curbs on high-court authority. Saturn had not moved further than one degree into Sagittarius in the spring of 1958 when the Cuban government issued a decree ordering the automatic arrest of any judge at any court level whose judgements in any way might be disadvantageous to the regime - a virtually unheard-of measure even for a Latin American dictatorship to spell out. But such is the judiciary-restricting nature of this influence. Nothing so extreme as this could possibly develop in a republic like ours, but the vibration is bound to assert itself noticeably throughout the current cycle.

Jupiter in the richly twinkling starfield of Scorpio is easy to interpret, for that constellation is always linked with things military... Since Jupiter's office is to make fashionable and imbue with superiority, the result of this placement is obvious: the world will undergo a phase of glorification or militarism, with all its attendant dangers. There will be a return to the practice of colossal displays of marching troops, rolling atomic-age caissons and skyward-pointing contraptions. More nations than ever will come to be captained by gold braid and brass bands - perhaps desirably so in the era when political leadership and military readiness are so needfully interdependent. But the astrological symbolism of Jupiter changing its address from Libra to Scorpio is disturbing. Justice lays aside her scales and grasps a sword.

Among the helpful by-products... will be medical discoveries and new surgical techniques having a bearing on endocrinology and glandular diseases, those in the throat and pelvic areas particularly. In the fashion industry, emphasis will return to the neck region, suggesting that novel neckwear or decoration will be the rage for a while. ...there is likely to be a voluminous migration to what used to be wasteland, transforming erstwhile sparse areas ibto well-irrigated productive and residential regions. This circumstance also suggests that desert countries like those in North Africa and the Near East will stir into life and productivity, getting ew leases on the promising future.

Inasmuch as Sagittarius is the zodiac's natural "home" of Jupiter, this position is always a favorable omen for the political Ins, for the prevailing Administration, as witness the elections of '48 and '36...

In the Tropical zodiac the [Jupiter-Saturn] conjunction occurs on February 18th at 25°12' of the sign Capricorn. In the sidereal zodiac this is equivalent to 1°00' of the constellation Capricornus. Thus it becomes apparent that this particular conjunction is the most important in many centuries - therefore the most important Jupiter-Saturn union in the whole span of modern history! This is because the first degree of Capricornus is the very "pivot" of the entire zodiacal structure in space. While this conjunction remains in orb, every ingress of the Moon into a cardinal constellation will occur within orb of a conjunction, square, or opposition to those massive bodies out there in space. The effects will be obvious, touching the lives of all nations and all the individuals comprising their populations.

...Pluto's changeover fro the constellation Leo to the constellation Virgo... is one of the momentous astrological events of the 1968-69 calendar...

The changeover marks the end of a cycle of social and governmental experimentation in the handling of masses of people in general and mobs of persons in particular. During Pluto' reign in Leo the emphasis was on the authoritarian aspects of the idea of government - the need to wield superiority over populations, the need to strike back viciously at so-called better classes of people within the social structure, the need to sell out God Himself if need be, to further the cause of His kingdom in a political sense. Pluto in Leo strives to make "every man a king," even if it takes purges, burnings, and making pacts with the devil to achieve that end. Pluto in Leo represents those haughty and piously fraudulent attitudes which wonder why the peasants don't eat cake when there is a shortage of bread.

By contrast, the action of Pluto in Virgo will be toward more equalization of peoples, to further blurring and even erasures of differences between castes and classes of people. Not that such egalitarianism in practice is any better than social orders where everything settles at its own level. The starfield of Virgo is traditionally that of the common denominator of peoplehood, of the concept of service in both workaday civil and military senses of the word. It is concerned with plebeian interests and their attendant trivialities, the odd food-shelter-clothing trinity of needs the degree of satisfaction of which dictates what is called the standard of living.

Pluto also is said to rule health matters, especially on the level of public health and hygiene, which rulership no doubt stems from the purity motif of the symbolic virgin. This being so, if Pluto is indeed the regenerator... perhaps Pluto's sojourn in Virgo will these next dozen years mark some genuine progress in the cleaning up of polluted air and water throughout the world... we welcome Pluto' switch from the Lion to the Maiden context, if only because Virgo is imminently more practical than squanderous, pretentious Leo who loves to talk about improvements while jailing the improvers....

Neptune this past year has crossed over the border between Libra and Scorpio... In Libra these past 14 years, Neptune had,,, cardinality of expression. That is to say, Neptune's influence was channeled into human affairs directly and within a meat-and-potatoes context.

Cardinality in astrology sees only black and white, right and wrong, patriotism or treason, true blue and sinister red, fanaticism or atheism, whole hog or none. During Neptune's transit through Libra the big issues, such as civil rights, uncivil wrongs, the position of Red China, the space race, the generation gap, ad the like, have been characterized by a religious kind of blind sidetaking which can wee no merit in looking at both sides objectively. The prevailing attitude has been an echo of the scriptural fillip, "He that is not with me is against me." It is no coincidence that Libra is the most schizoid of the constellations, tending to think in terms of extremes only, not the picture as a whole, Neptune has been in its glory while in Libra's starfield; they have a natural affinity for confusion.

...The Libra stint from 1954 to 1968 is to a great extent reflective of Neptune's activities farther back in time, from 1789 through 1802.

Entering upon the starfield of Scorpio, Neptune takes on the attribute of fixity in place of its former cardinality of expression. As usual, Scorpio is the most difficult sign to interpret in practical terms - but that old keyword, regeneration, probably applies as conveniently as any. Historical repetitions provide the clues about what to expect from Neptune's constellation transits... the 1803-1816 period of national and global history will echo frequently in trends and eventualities during the next 14 years. Study your history books carefully, with this astronomical circumstance in mind, and you'll have a preview of what lies in store for us. One man, Napoleon Bonaparte, dominated that era, and if you check back one cycle further, to the Neptune-in-Scorpio tenure before that, you'll be struck by the fact that one man's name, Cromwell, and his orneriness, dominated that era's developments in the saga of western man. Could this mean that the next few years will produce the same sort of Machiavellian strongman figure that yokels usually welcome and intellectuals rightly fear? The scroll of past human foibles is enough warrant for suggesting that campaigners who figuratively wrap themselves in red, white, and blue should be carefully watched.

This superman prospect is more likely than we like to face up to. In any event, the emergence of a Cromwell or Napoleonic type of era, even if not a specific personality, lies immediately ahead of us... A new power structure will come into being in Europe, Africa and Asia, and very possibly also in America as something that cannot be avoided if the nation is to survive intact.

Saturn is lumbering along in Aries, a real blessing as far as its symbolism goes. Aries is the most militant sector of the zodiac, and Saturn is the repressive planet of the solar system. Ergo, Saturn's entry into the stars of the celestial Ram in 1968 coincided with the first jelling of the international yearning for nonproliferation agreements and, hopefully, ultimate disarmament. At the same time, the principles of the Vietnam tragedy were able to sit down together if only to glare at each other between half-hearted proposals that the other party concede and pull out. Aries is the "fall" of Saturn..., and we must recollect that Saturn spent most of 1940 and '41 in Aries, departing it only in early December of 1941 when so-called peace talks were also in progress... Just the same, Saturn in Aries is conducive to the idea of peace, even if acts of war seem to accompany the end of its journey through that sign as in 1941 and 1912, its last two times around.

Jupiter spends the entire 13 months from October 16, 1968 to November 16, 1969 in the constellation of Virgo. Meanwhile, both Uranus and Pluto nuzzle into prolonged stays in this same zodiacal division, so we can say that 1969 will definitely be a Virgo-dominated year. Even if the more conservative sociopolitical viewpoint holds sway on Capitol Hill, the very fact that Virgo plays hostess to three major planets will mean wholesale changes in the picture of medical care in this country. Virgo has long been associated with the subjects of health, sanitation, nursing care, and medication. Jupiter and Uranus together signify liberalization of existing codes and practices, so we expect the medical profession itself to promote the cause of direly needed reforms in the drug-markup business, the Medicare allotment racket so widely carried on as to be almost respectable, and the hospital-cost outrage...

As 1969 opens, Jupiter and Uranus are less than two degrees past their first of three conjunctions in Virgo, the others climaxing on March 11th and July 20th. Jupiter-Uranus aspects are the single most important time markers for American business cycles, according to extensive and widely verified research into economic ups and downs. The clearest-cut business cycle is the 41-month fluctuation in financial affairs, security price averages, futures and inventories of key industries. The conjunction is a downward or dipping phase of the fuller cycle spanning just under 14 years comprised of four 41-month wave patterns.

We do not believe that this triple conjunction actually signals the end of the longest boom period in national experience, but it does create the kind of troughs in business indices which pessimists invariably interpret as recession indicators or worse. There will be a downward slide lasting most of the first half of the year, of this we can be fairly certain, since the early months of any new administration keep shareholders and their brokers guessing and a mite nervous. Outwardly the business community has things its own way on the political level, but turning policy into action is something else again. Our Presidents and their cabinets have a way of thinking on a bigger scale than do the big contributors to their campaigns.

By itself, apart from matters monetary, strong Jupiter-Uranus influences are a blessing to the community of scientists and engineers (and sidereal Virgo is often aptly described as the celestial technician since statistics show more engineers born under this sidereal sign than any other). Our space effort may have been trimmed a bit in terms of the budget, but only in nonessential ways [which] won't deter the heart of the program to land men on the Moon within the next couple of years. Scientific research in general will produce some whopping news during the run of this show in Virgo... Medical breakthroughs are definitely on the way. Where gadgetry for the buying and hustling public is concerned, this influence guarantees that efficient electrical automobiles will become available sooner than is generally assumed.

Virgo, by don't of its traditional touchiness and prudery, is the sign of the militant moralist, especially the witch-hunting and book-burning types...righteous indignation usually gets out of hand... Publicity-conscious darlings of extremist groups will no doubt enjoy an extended heyday [he enumerated many possibilities of these]... An important rulership of Virgo is over agriculture and produce in general... Virgo also rules militant females, via the traditional Athena-Minerva motif in mythology. [He then missed the main direction this would actually develop and predicted intensified prudery.]

First of all, Aries is the sign of commerce, the ups and downs of the world of barter and trade, and, if one takes literally what the Greeks and Romans believed about this sector of the zodiac, Aries is the sign par excellence of capitalism... Whenever Saturn sallies through the stars of the Golden Fleece, the smug, snug business world gets a good drubbing from within its own ranks.

Saturn, being the so-called cold, dry planet in astrology's traditions, is just not at home in Aries... Nonetheless... Saturn in Aries is to be welcomed for its depressant effect on things military and aggressive in nature. Wars tend to become drawn-out stalemates in which both sides merely bide their time awaiting reinforcements that seldom arrive, if at all...

As for Jupiter in Libra, let us assume that it stands for a kind of celestial blessing on the new love-oriented creeds that have become almost evangelical calls for societal improvement among young people in every land. From earliest times the Libra symbol has represented blind idealism and the yearning for peace and brotherliness among mankind. Jupiter was parading through Libra in those first two years after V-J Day when so man of us were uplifted and made optimistic about the chartered course of the newly formed United Nations organization. A vain dream it may have been, but at least it was a happy one for millions of weary and sorrowful people around the world. The first stages of the Space Age, 1958ish or so, also coincided with a the-sky's-the-limit sunburst of world-wide daydreaming of a better future for humanity. One can trace the Jupiter-in-Libra compulsion to visualize the rainbow's end through the pages of history, in one form or another. [Allusions were made to some diplomatic openings Nixon was making in Bucharest in 1970.]