Mercury, the communicator, transits Aquarius:
A message for THE PEOPLE:
On March 9th of 2020, Mercury went direct at 28 degrees Aquarius and the shocking message resounded throughout America that a global pandemic, COVID19 was upon us. The stock market crashed, businesses closed, goods were hoarded, masks were ordered, and the rest is history.
Multiple autopsies on how our government handled this have been presented, discussed, argued, and dissected. Most people would agree that the information came too late and there were no plans or centralized organization to address the emergency, thus, chaos ensued and people wasted their time and health arguing over their “freedom” to refuse to wear masks and whether to gather or not to gather in large crowds.
The question presented to us was – facing a reality as described by medicine and science or living in an alternative reality, framed by Pres. Trump, that this virus was no more troublesome than the flu and it was a “hoax created by the Democrats.” The issue is what people actually hear, how they interpret what they hear, and most of all how they handle what they hear. Or do they simply shoot down the messenger?
Last month, armed, violent, uncontrolled mobs, claiming Trump actually won the election, attacked the buildings and personnel of the US government; something that had not happened since the British sacked Washington in 1814 during the War of 1812. In my books and past newsletters, I repeatedly predicted that between 2008 and 2024, we would likely experience the “Second American Revolution”. All this lines up with the Pluto return in the July 4, 1776 birth chart, signifying a “death and/or rebirth” of the American Republic. The US government designed at that time “by and for the People” leads us to a question. Who are “the People?” It seems as if many are angry, raging, white supremacist, anti-government mobs reminding us of the Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazis, Skin Heads, and other homegrown racists. This is reminiscent of the domestic terrorist, Timothy McVey, who bombed the Oklahoma federal government building in 1995, killing the innocent men, women and children who were there.
The end result of all this is that Trump, who openly and live on television, encouraged the violent mob, has become the first American president to have been impeached twice. It is also very important for us to look squarely at the fact that 74 million people voted for Trump and when polled, 85% of the Republicans still approve of him. Right now, there are not enough Republicans who would join the Democrats to successfully convict him.
The current transit of Mercury in Aquarius (Jan. 8 – Mar. 15) now moves through a new time and a new administration. Delays will happen, but on Feb 20th Mercury goes direct, assisting momentum in the newly organized public health system, so that the shots may go forward to the public-at-large. My take is that we will likely have most people vaccinated by late August, right before school starts. The supply infrastructure will struggle before then since with Pfizer and Astra Zeneca vaccines, everyone has to get two shots to be effectively immunized. Johnson and Johnson’s vaccine is shortly to be approved and requires only one shot.
However, the new Biden administration will be more focused, have defined plans, and clearly communicate with the public what needs to be done. In addition, he will have to make use of his executive powers as the highly partisan legislature will be unlikely to come together to enact legislation. I do think that the transit of Mars in Taurus, harmonizing with Pluto at the end of this month, will stimulate them to provide more financial assistance to people in need.
I hypothesize that Trump may attempt to create another televised “reality show” or a channel of his own, suggesting he may run for president again.. He will have trouble raising the money for this or enlisting the cooperation of the media. In January, before the Biden inauguration, Trump was known to have “sold” pardons for a good price; Trump’s “lawyer” Rudolph Giuliani suggested they would be given out for $2 million a piece. This will keep his “personality cult” alive until it isn’t. I also think he has declining health and will eventually lose his momentum and celebrity.
Consequences over the decades:
The discontent that has swept this nation for many years will not magically go away. Many people know the economy has not worked for them in decades, and the cultures they were familiar with are no longer dominant. White supremacy has been part of this nation’s history from its very beginning. Thus it is is easy for many people to “blame” immigrants, people of color, and persons of differing religious backgrounds for all their troubles.
The harsh historical reality is that both political parties have “followed the money” and passed laws that favor the mega-banks and giant corporations – who work their employees “to death” at a comparatively low wage, outsource manufacturing and employment abroad or import cheap labor, and are getting tax cuts while the public infrastructure is collapsing. Homelessness and poverty are at record highs. What we need is education without indoctrination so people will better understand what really happened and why.
People frequently ask me what I think needs to be done. My answer is a balance between public and private sectors instead of an ongoing “war” between the two. Public/private alliances such as Space X and NASA have been very successful. Government financed safety nets including healthcare for all, top notch public education, rebuilding of our decaying infrastructure – all financed through fair taxation; advanced education that trains people how to become entrepreneurs; laws and regulations to keep giant banks and corporations from criminal behavior such as moving parts of their industries abroad to tax free zones; and laws keeping jobs at home. The new green energy infrastructure will need people trained in the trades to install the systems. Community colleges already in place throughout the US could fill this need, leading their graduates into good well paying jobs over the long term.
The Economy:
The divisions between Wall Street and Main Street will be highly visible, as financial markets will be strong this month, yet jobs will be scarce for those in restaurant, hotel, and small retail businesses. With Mercury retrograde in Aquarius until the 21st, there will be serious uncertainties within airlines and aviation industries.
In the1980s there were crazy surges of investments in junk bonds and penny stocks, combined with newly installed computerized trading, that all led to the 1987 crash on Wall Street. Massive unsecured derivatives and the sub-prime mortgage lending between 2000 and 2008 led to great meltdowns, a crash and the Great Recession. In addition to the current massive bubble in the stock exchanges, there has emerged an exotic means of investing called SPACs which is short for a special purpose acquisition company, also known as a “blank check” company; essentially a form of a backdoor IPO. Investors in the IPO are not even aware of what company they will be investing in and only do so because they may “trust” in the particular investor/entity seeking to make the acquisition. SPAC funds are placed in a trust account and will typically bear interest. The interest accumulated will normally be returned to investors at some point or be used to help fund the operations of the target company. The blank check notion was used in the 1980s and were commonly populated by lower-quality or even fraudulent companies. Today, entities like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, are underwriting SPACs. This exotic way of investing your money sets off alarm bells that a serious “correction” may lie ahead in this ongoing casino economy.
Even Wall Street is not exempt from the current “revolutionary” tide. A big crowd of private traders and traders, who have been “chatting” on Reddit, have “ganged up” and bought old unprofitable stocks like Game Stop and Blackberry in which giant hedge funds have massive “shorts” pumping up prices and locking these short sellers into massive losses. There is a rightful resentment that these hedge funds have manipulated stock prices for decades, stoking the “casino” frenzy on Wall Street.
This month’s Mercury retrograde suggests wild moves up and down in financial markets.
When Mercury goes direct on the 21st and moves to connect with Jupiter in March, vaccines will become available and optimism about ending the pandemic will rise. There will also be an increased awareness that we must make sizable investments in American cyber security companies to address the coming threat posed to digital internet and electrical infrastructures. This will be highlighted in the period between April and July, due to the Saturn/Uranus square.
Russia:
I have been calling attention in previous newsletters, to the astrological chart of Russia (Nov. 7, 1917, 10:00 AM GMT, Leningrad, Russia) and planetary patterns hitting this chart. The coming square of Saturn to Uranus is hitting this chart, a time similar to the early 1990s when the Soviet Union collapsed. Alexei Nevalny, the political opponent of Vladimir Putin, was poisoned last year as he fled to Western Europe and, miraculously, his life was saved. Now, he has returned to Russia, was immediately arrested, and has helped to martial massive numbers of protesters in Moscow. His bravery is impressive and is stoking coalitions of Russians who are sick of Putin’s absolute corrupt dictatorship, their devastated economy, and repeated murders of his opponents. There are highly visible signs the people-at-large may be attempting a revolution.
Better news is that Pres. Biden and Putin have recently negotiated a new nuclear disarmament treaty. The US and Russia combined have 90% of the world’s nuclear weaponry.
Science and Medicine:
Multiple vaccines are now coming into the market to relieve the COVID crisis. I think that COVID vaccines will become integrated into a pipeline like the routine flu vaccines we are all offered in the Fall of each year. Information coming out of Spain is that a new drug called Aplidin has been developed that blocks the virus from replicating. I am of the opinion that this is hugely important as new mutations of COVID will likely emerge, and this drug may be effective in treating all of them. Anti-viral drugs are the wave of the future as “cures” for infection, alongside the vaccines, which are preventatives.
For all you physics nerds, in January, Scitech Daily published an article about a recent breakthrough described as “a new state of matter in a one dimensional quantum gas.” This has resulted in a “quantum Archimedes Screw” that may power quantum computing and take it all to a new level. Along with Nuclear Fusion, Quantum Computing will change human civilization forever and take us flying into the Age of Aquarius.
In January, The Asia Times reported: “Fusion power is moving out of government-run science labs into the private sector. Catalyzed by the public/private partnership methods which created the commercial space industry, fusion startups are attracting increasing interest among investors and accelerating the race to commercial power.” This article also mentioned LLP Fusion and Commonwealth Fusion as templates for these growing sectors. They also reported that, for the first time, the December 2020 US Government Budget appropriated money for Nuclear Fusion.
Climate Change:
In my first book, “What Next? A Survival Guide to the 21st Century, published in 2007, I quoted material from the famous Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, hypothesizing that major global warming may surprisingly lead us into a new mini Ice Age. New articles are now emerging that, since 2020 recorded the hottest global temperature in history, the warming currents in the Atlantic Ocean – the most common one we all know as the Gulf Stream – are slowing. This trend is generated by melted ice from the Arctic that releases massive amounts of fresh water into the ocean, desalinating the waters and slowing these important currents that are responsible for the warming trends favorable to agriculture that we have enjoyed since the last mini Ice Age ended.
We may also be entering a long term Solar Minimum – a time when fewer sun storms appear – initiating a global cooling cycle. Pluto will go into Aquarius in 2024, suggesting a new mini Ice Age as the last transit s of Pluto in Capricorn and Aquarius were present in that previous time. Interestingly, The American Revolution was fought and won during this era. However, the greenhouse gasses remaining in the atmosphere for hundreds of years that did not exist in the previous Solar Minimum, may alter all this, bringing a significant level of complexity into these forecasts.
Final Thoughts:
Humans have behaved far too predictably in recent centuries. Throughout history, empires have risen and fallen, horrible wars have been fought fueled by greed for wealth and power, genocidal massacres have been committed by both mobs and military governments – all based on a belief that there is “never enough” – that we live in a competitive predator/prey world – lizards eating lizards. This has led us to the edge of extinction of life on earth.
Recent centuries’ practices are shortly coming to an end because, quite simply, they must. The prophecy foreseen thousands of years ago, that a new age would dawn, that “the lion shall lie down with the lamb”, that “there shall be no more war”, is the coming mandate of our times. The inspiring young poet, Amanda Gorman, who was featured at the Presidential Inauguration and the Super Bowl is a champion for all the young men and women who foresee a massive change and a brighter future ahead.
In this process, all the seemingly overwhelming forces of destruction are now being radically exposed to the light. This feels, to many of us, like a painful major surgery as our society has come close to a collapse and so many who we have loved have died. But we can no longer evade the great truths that hold the key to the miracle – that we are being offered a chance to be healed – that a new humanity is being born out of the last remnants of our despair – that we may come together to build a new world.
The constellations are speaking to us. The time is at hand.
Blessings to you all,
Linda
Important Points of Reference (for Astrologers):
New Moon at 23 degrees Aquarius on Feb. 11; Full Moon at 8 degrees Virgo trine Uranus on Feb. 27; Mercury retrograde (Jan. 30th) semisextile Pluto on Feb. 2; Mercury goes direct at 11 degrees Aquarius Feb. 20; Venus goes into Aquarius Feb. 1, is conjunct Saturn and square Uranus Feb. 6;
Saturn is square Uranus Feb. 16; Mars in Taurus is sextile Neptune Feb. 13 and is trine Pluto between Feb. 22 and Feb 24; Jupiter is trine the North Node and sextile the South Node on Feb. 26.
