And thoughts on the sidereal vs tropical zodiac.
The impact of conjunctions in Mundane and Personal astrology.
I was asked the other day, and it seems to be on people’s minds these days, “what are conjunctions and what do they do?” I think it is on people’s minds because the great conjunction between Saturn and Jupiter is occurring on the 21st of December. When you hear in the news about the importance of the conjunction as a marker of time, you start wondering what the great conjunctions in your natal chart might signify. We, as humans, also are always looking for ways to know what the future holds.
What are Saturn and Jupiter up to. Saturn and Jupiter conjunct in the same degree about once every twenty years.
I like Mundane astrology as a method of interpreting historical cycles of human cultural transformation. Mundane astrology can be and is very predictive, but getting the details of a prediction is very hard before hand. The generalities are not as hard. As a method of historical analysis astrology becomes a rich part of symbolic interpretation of the cultural and psychological narratives that human society that we go through. The patterns of conjunctions become markers of time. During these markers there are historical societal shifts which occur. This is especially true for the 20 year Jupiter and Saturn conjunction, which is referred to as the “great conjunction.” It is my opinion that this conjunction marks an energetic tonality that colors twenty year cycles. This energy can be described by the elemental modality that the conjunction occurs in.
Now here I surprised myself, and now must diverge and point out that there are arguments to be made that in the case of the great conjunction we should be looking at the Sidereal Zodiac rather than the Tropical. I started out thinking I would write about the conjunction at 0 degrees Aquarius, but when I looked at the timeline of conjunctions, I switched to interpreting the Sidereal Zodiac. Why is this so you may ask? The reason is that if we look at the history of the last century we find that it has been ruled by fire and war. The combustion engine and the explosive weapons of war caused world wide cultural realignment and environmental devastation. The result is the globe and ecosystem are becoming warmer. This should be expected after a century of conjunctions occurring in Fire signs, which they did in the Sidereal chart.
As the last centuries timeline unfolded we witnessed tremendous war in the world. We witnessed war from 1961 to 81 When the conjunction happened in the fire sign Sagittarius. This also brought about a kind of first generation of “spiritual awakening” amongst westerners who adopted new philosophies during the late 60’s. If one goes further back, one will notices that most of this century has been ruled by fire, and most of the great conjunctions have been in Fire signs by sidereal zodiac.
I further like this line of thinking because if you go out and look at the current conjunction it will be in the constellation of Capricorn. The conjunction occurring in Capricorn then would describe a period entrenching stabilization of the worlds political and social dynamic, plus a turn towards of humanity seeing itself as responsible for the earth it lives on. To me the tropical zodiac is genius at working with the fixed world of mental archetypes, but mundane cycles might be better understood from the sidereal zodiacal perspective. In which case we are not entering the age of Aquarius, rather we are transitioning into the earth sign trigon, after it was first visited in the 1980’s.
Where as fire expands and consumes, earth unifies and centers. Capricorn is receptive, and we are likely to see an emphasis on scarcity of resources in a drying world and understand our responsibility in that. As well, the carbon we burned over the last century of fire sign conjunctions, geo engineers will be trying to put back into the earth. Earth is more controlling, so I would expect governments to have firmer boundaries with their citizens as well as other nations. To me this is a marker that a century of tremendous upheaval and war is coming to an end. During earth trigons there is a global unification that occurs. For instance, the Khans unified the eastern and western world during a cycle of earth trigons. Likewise during the 80’s which was also a great conjunction in a sidereal earth trigon, there was a movement towards world unification. The soviet union and the bipolar political world came to an end.
I put this out there for consideration as to why it is better to use Sidereal interpretations for the mundane astrological cycles of the Saturn Jupiter conjunction. While we are learning a lot about the cycles of the conjunctions from studying historical astrologers, I think there is still a good deal to learn. For any astrologer considering commenting on it publicly a lot of study should be undertaken so that the astrologer has well developed opinions. Start with the question of whether it is best for you to interpret from a Tropical or Sidereal Zodiacal perspective. Most astrologers come at this question with a huge amount of priors, seeking to confirm their own opinion or what they have read by their current favorite authors. This is like trying to follow a path blind.
Now some may say that Masha’ allah said that sterility of the earth and harsh cold is what will occur from a great conjunction in a fire sign. To which I say, this does not make sense from an elemental perspective. A conjunction in a trigon fire sign by all logic should produce heat, warmth, expansiveness and disruption. With a little work I think modern Mundane Astrologers could far excel past the boundaries of knowledge possessed by the great historical astrologers, because we have so much more historical data to observe trends from than any generation before us. But to do so, we must be willing to question our assumptions as, as well as the historical assumptions of the great astrologers who came before. Please don’t get me wrong, their works survived because they were really good and useful, so I am not arguing against the study of their works.
After some observation
After some observation it is clear to me that the themes of this conjunction are clearly Aquarius rather than Capricorn. The dominance of digital currency, the massive move to the corporatization of space, the social isolation and distancing as well as the connectedness through the internet are all themes that are very distinctly Aquarian. One must not just speculate in astrology based upon what one has read, but one must observe the actual phenomena that is occurring.
However, from a personal perspective. That is a perspective of working with the psychology of one’s own mind, or a clients mind. I would interpret the great conjunction from the perspective of a Tropical Zodiac. This is because the Tropical Zodiac represents fixed archetypes or symbols of psychology that are influenced by the temperament of the changing seasons. I would look to the house Aquarius falls into in the natives zodiac, and base my positive transformational psychological and predictive advice for the client on that placement. When working with clients, we are working with the subjective psychology of their experience, even when making hard predictions. This is different when we are doing mundane predictions and we are forecasting historical cycles.
Be well.
