Historians agree to call “contemporary period” that which extends from the end of the 18th century to the present day.
Astrology confirms this division of history since the planets beyond Saturn were discovered in the meantime: Uranus in 1781, Neptune in 1846 and Pluto in 1930. The entry of each of the three planets onto the cosmological scene corresponds to the outbreak of a revolution whose consequences have had, in the more or less long term, a worldwide repercussion: for Uranus, the independence of the United States and the French Revolution; for Neptune, the birth of communism and the Romantic Revolution; for Pluto, the National Socialist Revolution and the Second World War. However, for astrologers, the discoveries of the trans-Saturnian planets do not only correspond to events, but also to profound transformations of society linked to technical, economic and social progress.
Thus, when discoveringUranus there are a number of remarkable facts that are strictly related to the symbolism of the sign governed by this planet. Let us cite, among many others, the Declaration of the Rights of Man, which affirms the principle of equality between all citizens and joins the notion of horizontal order specific to Aquarius, as opposed to the vertical order signified by Capricorn; the republican motto, each of the three terms of which constitutes a key word in the Uranian dialectic; on the scientific level, the first balloon ascent: for the first time, man rises into the sky, the world of Uranus, freeing himself from the gravity of Saturn. From then on, the main features that characterize the contemporary era will emerge: the gradual acceleration of time and the supremacy of the human — Aquarius is the sign of Man — at the expense of the divine, which belongs to Leo, with the corollary of the emergence of individualism and the affirmation of free will.
With the discovery of Neptune a set of very different and in some respects opposing tendencies is emerging. Astrology naturally attributes to the planet the control of Pisces, the opposite sign of Virgo, and we therefore witness the gradual disappearance of limits. Geographical limits with the exploration of the distant oceans (Pacific, Indian) and the interior of the continents (Africa, South America, Australia, Siberia), which gave rise to the conquest of colonial empires. In accordance with the Neptunian dialectic, the immensity of these empires is to be compared to their ephemeral character, since in less than a century these territories, in their great majority, have acquired their independence. Psychic limits were also erased with the use of narcotics to relieve pain (the first general anesthesia in 1847), as well as to promote inspiration (hashish dear to Baudelaire and Théophile Gauthier) or escape (opium). Finally, the erasure of religious limits, with the triumph of Christianity over most of the world, and the spiritual ones, with the wave of mysticism that characterized the second half of the nineteenth century: Marian fervour (Virgo/Pisces dialectic), apparitions, miracles, spiritualism.
The exploitation of steam energy (Neptune symbolizes vapours, mists, which veils reality) contributed to the rapid development of industry, with the consequence of the mass exodus of peasants to the cities and the miserable conditions in which the new social class that resulted, the proletariat, lived. It is therefore not surprising that a new philosophical and political doctrine emerged during this period, communism, which we now know to what extent it is a vast illusion.
Concerning Pluto, the smallest, most distant and most mysterious of the planets — the only one not yet to have been photographed by a space probe — it is certainly the one whose manifestations are the deepest, the most insidious and in fact the most active. It symbolizes the process of transformation, i.e. the corruption of an existing form with a view to its disintegration, followed by the emergence of a new form. To do this, it induces extreme tendencies in a given situation, thus promoting a process of irreversible reversal that will give rise to the destruction of a state and the advent of chaos; It is from this chaos that an entirely different reality will emerge later. Obviously ruler of Scorpio, Pluto acts in a masked, invisible, imperceptible way, and when its effects finally appear, it is often too late to divert or even slow down the course.
God of the underworld, Pluto governs the riches buried beneath the earth's surface, especially gas and especially oil, and it was at the time of its discovery that its exploitation intensified. He is the holder of the most powerful energy in the smallest form, that contained in the nucleus of the atom. However, it was in 1938 that the first artificial fission of uranium was carried out, thus bringing humanity into the nuclear age.
On October 24, 1929, the famous "Black Thursday", an unprecedented stock market crash occurred in New York, the first act of an economic crisis that would ruin millions of people and put even more out of work. On that day, at 9:30 a.m., the opening time of the Wall Street stock exchange, the Sun had just entered Scorpio while the Moon was at the conjunction of Pluto in Cancer in the 8th house.
From then on, the forces of darkness appeared in broad daylight and throughout the world in the form of totalitarian dictatorships, particularly in Europe and Russia, but also in the Far East and South America. The most exemplary was, as we know, the one that happened in Germany. It took only three years for this country, bled dry by the Treaty of Versailles and devastated by the economic crisis, to equip itself with a new type of regime, based as much on terror as on an implacable and criminal ideology. However, for those who knew how to see them in time, there were many signs that left little doubt about the intentions of its leaders, starting with the flag, whose colors are those of the Scorpion, the black uniform of the SS with a skull and crossbones or the racist and anti-Semitic hate speech. On January 30, 1933, 40 days before the square between Uranus and Pluto became exact, Hitler became Reich Chancellor.
On a collective level, it is by the mixture of fascination and fear that we recognize the mark of Pluto, as well as by its ability to put fears to sleep when they are awakened. Six years after the Nazi seizure of power, the Second World War began, the deadliest conflict of all time, with the corollary of the Holocaust and the use of atomic weapons.
In order to better understand the issues at stake in the current period, we will study in the following three articles the contemporary aspects of the three trans-Saturnian planets, the meaning of which we have recalled according to their time of discovery. Indeed, their influences have continued to grow and to become more and more closely intertwined with our daily lives, to the point that the values of the ancient world seem to be moving away faster and faster. In this we recognize the mark of Uranus, whose purpose is to promote a new world freed from the laws of Saturn, in particular those of time and verticality.
To see Uranus News, Neptune News, Pluto News.