“How did we get into this mess?”
That’s the question a friend asked me the other day, and it’s a question that’s generally applicable to astrology of this summer. Most of the outer planets seem to be asking, with something greater than exasperation, ‘how the bleep did we get into this mess?’ Although the Gulf oil spill is the largest and most visible symbol of the disarray in the skies, many of us have felt the energy in personal ways. Let’s take a look at what’s been happening using the BP oil leak as a guide.
On April 20, 2010 an oil rig known as the Deepwater Horizon located in the Gulf of Mexico exploded. At the time, Uranus in Pisces was opposing Saturn in Virgo. Neptune was lurking about in an inconjunct with Saturn. Jupiter in Pisces was hovering near Uranus, ready to pounce. Pluto in Capricorn was stationed ominously in a wide out of sign square to both Uranus and Saturn.
In the symbolic language of astrology, the events that followed have tragically been almost literal at times. Uranus is Mr. Explosion, especially when he’s in a bad mood with other outer planets, as he was at the time. Hem in Uranus with constricting energies from other planets and all hell breaks loose. Uranus was in the sign of oil and the sign of the sea. Oil-related explosion at sea. Pretty literal.
Saturn is Mr. Safety and Mr. Let’s Do Things Carefully. In Virgo, he was in a sign related to workers, the environment and environmental regulation. Uranus beats Saturn in a fair fight, and even in an unfair fight. Uranus’s oil-related explosion at sea annihilated Saturn’s relatively weaker efforts to safeguard workers, the environment, to champion prudence and doing things right.
Uranus also relates to speed and technology. Pisces is also the sign of chaos, uncertainty, and ‘we don’t know what the hell we are doing.’ Saturn also relates to cost-cutting, delays, slowness, old ways of doing things, and the desire for order and procedure. BP’s demands for speedy drilling, combined with cost-cutting efforts, previous delays, and new technology for deep water drilling collided to create a swirling marine nightmare of chaos, uncertainty, and environmental degradation mixed with a desperate desire to get control of the leak using Saturn’s old-fashioned methods of procedure. Saturn’s reliance on precision Virgo-like engineering efforts was no match for Uranus’s burbling, gurgling torrent of oil spilling from underground.
In the stark mathematics of the universe at the time, the raw energy of chaos beat the pants off little ant-like human efforts to contain it. BP and everyone else responding to the disaster were in over their heads, not knowing what the hell they were doing, having unleashed a Pandora’s box of forces they were unable to control.
Neptune in Aquarius, the planet also associated with the sea and oil, in an unsupportive angle to Saturn, stood off to the side and said ‘I told you so. I told you were placing too much faith (Neptune) in new technology (Aquarius) for deep water drilling.’ Jupiter, the Great Expander, also in the sign of oil and the sea, piled on to make the disaster bigger and bigger and bigger with every passing day, vowing to continue until everyone got the message that things were out of control.
Pluto in Capricorn, symbol of wealth, corporations, and the riches of the deep, anchors the situation from his square position off to the side of the disaster, saying nothing. He doesn’t have to say anything. In Pluto’s world, the rules are obvious and brutal. You reap what you sow. Screw up and pay the price.
No one can accept this really, at least not quickly. The price is too high, too unexpected, too lingering. Pluto lessons are hard to absorb, and with Uranus and Jupiter upping the emotional ante, the hubbub surrounding the chaos makes it hard to identify reality. Even the size of the leak remained elusive, slippery, uncertain.
It would be way too much of a stretch to say that each individual one of us is in the same position with the regard to the universe–battling chaos, uncertainty, misplaced faith, and forces beyond our control. Not every single individual is saying ‘how did we/I get into this mess?’ But collectively, we are in a mess. Collectively, we have gotten in over our heads.
Collectively, we don’t know what we are doing. At the time of the initial explosions, no one in the entire world actually knew how to stop that gusher in a timely manner. No one.
We had pushed beyond our Saturn limits into uncharted territory.
Uranus and Pluto and Jupiter and Neptune and Saturn don’t line themselves up for disaster just for their own amusement, although it may seem that way at the time. They align themselves these ways because the alignments simply reflect the truth. If you get in over your head, unleash forces you don’t understand how to harness, you will experience harrowing consequences. The alignments bring to our attention the times when we have to up our game.
The simple truth, I suppose, is that we got into this mess as a result of choices we made earlier. BP is paying for its choices. The government is paying for its choices. All of us are paying for our long-standing choices to favor new oil exploration and technology over boring old things like conservation and reduced consumption. And sort of like a rogue wave, Uranus’s ocean explosion is sweeping up and destroying a lot of people along the Gulf who are victims of circumstances they can’t control. These alignments are like that. They are absolutely, positively not fair.
On the other hand, these alignments also represent turning points and tipping points. Painfully and slowly, we get the message. We figure out that we have to do better. We stop putting up with problems that we should have addressed long ago. The tide turns. We go in a new direction because we have to. We stop letting Uranus in Pisces kick our collective butts and we eventually get to work, building a better system.
That’s the idea anyway. Let’s hope it happens.
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