Brave New World

Post by Jane Lewis

The spring equinox on 21^st March heralds important new beginnings especially as it occurs at the time of a new moon in Aries.  At the same time Pluto enters Aquarius for a few months before retrograding and then going direct once again next February.   

In the last days of Pluto in Capricorn in mid-March we witnessed the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank followed by a growing crisis at Credit Suisse, both events giving financial markets the jitters and reminding astrologers of the financial crash of 2008 which coincided exactly with Pluto’s Capricorn ingress.  The period leading up to February 2024 is likely to be a time when the consequences of still-unlearned lessons by governments and financial institutions will be felt with a sting in the tail. 

As ruler of Scorpio, Pluto has a close relationship with its opposite sign Taurus and its ruler Venus.  Together these govern money, banks and investments on one level, and power and control on another.  Part of the fixed cross, their themes relate to material resources (Taurus) which have to be transformed into a higher power (Scorpio).  This is a particularly good time to reflect upon money as spiritual energy and make some far-reaching changes in society.  Pluto brings opportunities for the dark, hidden underbelly to be exposed to the light by means of turmoil and disaster being experienced in the outer, material affairs of man.  Things often come crashing down in a heap, leaving a trail of chaos and destruction on the outer level in order that something radically new of a higher order might rise phoenix-like out of the ashes.

Just days away from the Pluto Aquarius ingress, it’s interesting that one of these banks, SVB, is linked with technology – Silicon Valley, Aquarius being very much about science and technology.  A horoscope for the bank (cast for midnight on 17 October 1983, San Jose California) shows that its collapse on 10^th

March occurred when transiting Pluto squared radix Pluto, triggered by the Moon as it transited the bank’s radix Sun-Pluto conjunction; and Saturn, newly in Pisces, transited its radix 8^th house Pisces Moon.  Converse midheaven had also reached conjunction with that radix Moon, hinting that this was the time for karmic redress of some sort.

We’re living through very turbulent times when humanity needs to be brave in the face of so many complex problems as we transition into a new world shaped and increasingly controlled by science and technology.  The phrase ‘brave new world’ came into popular parlance through Aldous Huxley’s novel published in 1932, co-incidentally at the same time as the White Eagle Lodge itself was coming into being on the outer plane of life.  As a work of science fiction, the novel took its name from Miranda’s ironic speech in Shakespeare’s play The Tempest: ‘ O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here!  How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in’t’.  The novel imagines a bleak dystopian future world, and as humanity today struggles to establish a better world we are having to face real challenges to make sure that the aberrations envisaged in the novel don’t become reality.

Huxley’s horoscope clearly shows him to be a writer and philosopher with strong Aquarian interests: his 3^rd house Leo Sun describes a creative writer; Jupiter on his Gemini ascendant with Pluto and Neptune shows his ability to get published as a philosophical writer and give voice to generational themes and concerns; he has a grand air trine formed by Jupiter, Saturn and Aquarius midheaven, the energy of this pattern finding constructive outlet from Saturn into its opposition with 11^th house Mars in Aries. He wrote Brave New World in 1931 when Uranus transited this brave-new-world Mars.  Thirty years on in 1962 he wrote a counterpart novel called Island in which the former dystopian world view had been elevated to become a utopian one, this under the influence of Uranus opposing his midheaven.

Down the ages philosophical writers have envisaged utopian societies and described them in early novels including Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) and Sir Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis

(1626).  Some of White Eagle’s descriptions of what the coming Aquarian Age will be like read rather like passages from a utopian novel, but are accompanied with instructions as to how to turn the ideal into reality, which is the whole purpose of his Wisdom teachings and the White Eagle Lodge itself.  Within the Lodge, astrology also aims to serve that high purpose through increasing self-knowledge and helping the sun-spirit locked within the human body to rise triumphant over the little self, and so to illumine the mind and direct the whole life.  The energy of the new moon in Aries can help the soul to transmute the fire of self-will into the clear flame of selfless love, which is the basis of an ideal world that is not simply a nice idea but actually attainable in practice.  For this we need to be brave and have the courage to light the solar fire within ourselves and keep it burning brightly.