Printed in the Summer 2020 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Smoley, Richard, "From the Editor’s Desk" Quest 108:3, pg 2
by Richard Smoley
At New Year’s, I told my wife, “Next New Year’s, we will no longer recognize the world.”
So it has proved, as I write this less than three months later. The world has been convulsed by a virus that came seemingly out of nowhere.
My remark hardly makes me a prophet. As a matter of fact, I don’t believe in prophecies, since very few of them came true, even those in the Bible. (For my views on this subject, see the chapter “Nostradamus and the Uses of Prophecy” in my book The Essential Nostradamus.)
Where, then, did I get this idea? From astrology. On January 12, there was an exact conjunction of Pluto and Saturn in Capricorn, which pointed to some convulsive event that would occur around that time. Nineteen years ago, a similar though less intense aspect—an opposition between Pluto in Sagittarius and Saturn in Gemini—presaged the 9/11 debacle.
I was by no means the only one to have seen something like this from the positions of the planets; it was a common topic of discussion among astrologers (and I am very far from the most proficient person I know in this subject). They did not predict either disaster specifically, but in both cases they knew that something was coming.
In the case of 9/11, the astrological picture was especially striking. Pluto, the wrecking ball of the planets (and the planet of fanaticism), was in Sagittarius, the sign governing religion. Saturn, the planet of established structure, was in Gemini. Hence destruction wrought by religious fanatics upon the structure of the World Trade Center. Because Gemini is the sign of the twins, it was uncannily fitting that the destruction should have been visited upon the Twin Towers.
As for the January 2020 conjunction, which took place just as the coronavirus crisis was beginning to emerge worldwide, here is a quote from the website astrotwins.com: “The ‘rip it down to the studs’ renovations that a Saturn-Pluto conjunction demands is rarely gentle. Pluto, the galactic Grim Reaper, has no problem destroying anything that comes into its path. The dwarf planet demands total transformation, and that means getting rid of whatever is keeping us stuck in an old groove” (https://astrostyle.com/the-saturn-pluto-conjunction-busts-the-status-quo).
This prediction, made last year, has proved true. Nothing specifically was foreseen, but as we learn from the tale of the appointment in Samarra, specific foreknowledge would very likely have done no good: often you hasten most furiously toward your destination when you are fleeing from it. This event is simply something the world has to go through. Each of us will learn our own lessons from it as we need to.
Although much of this year will consist of processing the shock of this conjunction, the story isn’t over (it never is). The year will end with an equally momentous astrological event: the great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on December 21. This event takes place every twenty years, and introduces huge transformations of its own. (A great conjunction in 7–6 BC, involving Mars as well, is sometimes correlated with the birth of Christ.) The last great conjunction, which took place in May 2000, coincided with the burst of the dot-com bubble, followed by serious dislocations in the politics of the United States.
The 2000 conjunction took place in Taurus, an earth sign, which dashed many foolish expectations. The one to occur in December is different: it will be in Aquarius, an air sign.
This fact is even more momentous. The great conjunctions occur in signs of the same element for roughly two hundred years. With one exception (in early 1981), ever since the conjunction of 1802, they have taken place in earth signs.
From now on, great conjunctions will take place in air signs for a couple of centuries. The one to come in December will be coupled with a square (a harsh aspect) to Uranus, the planet of upheaval. This event will mark a convulsive turning of the age.
For better or worse? We don’t know. It is risky to say more. I myself suspect that this shift of the great conjunctions from earth to air signs will correspond to a definitive break with the materialism that has dominated Western thought for the past 200 years. We have long since seen hints that this will occur, but even up to this moment, materialism maintains its hold.
How, then, are we supposed to behave in this transitional moment? In the most important sense, nothing has changed. If you are committed to esoteric work (however you understand that), your standing orders remain: you have to be a stabilizing force in the world. You have to keep your center even though everyone else is losing theirs. The present crisis does not change the task, although it may make it more difficult.
Hard times or good times, the message is always the same: we have to do our inner work.
Richard Smoley