Predictions from 2008

 First, happy 2012!!  Here's our outlook on this year.
+++

During the recent lunar eclipse on December 21, 2011, I cleaned out the closet in my office and tossed out many of the issues of Mountain Astrologer, a must have for any astrologer.

But I happened to save the February-March 2008 issue, and found it this evening when I was looking for something else. The lead story, as you can see by the cover, is about Pluto in Capricorn from 2008-2023. So I turned to that article and started reading.

Whenever astrologers are dealing with the outer, slowing moving planets, they look first to the historical references. Pluto, the snail of the zodiac, takes 250 years to move around a horoscope. Between December 24, 1515 until the end of 1532 when Pluto was in Capricorn, Europe saw the incipience of the Protestant Reformation; Megellan  set sail for the first time; Cortez conquered Cuba; the Ottoman Empire reaches its pinnacle.

Between 1762 and 1772, the last time Pluto was in Capricorn, James Watt invented the steam engine, one of the driving factors in the birth of the Industrial Revolution. During this period, we produced a lot of stuff that was released into the market. The slave trade was at its height. In 1762, Jean-Jacques Cousteau published Social Contract.  According to Wikipedia: “The social contract is an intellectual device intended to explain the appropriate relationship between individuals and their governments.”

Now, for the synchros in all this. Mountain Astrologer is published bi-monthly. This issue was the 137^th, February-March 2008.  That means the author probably wrote it in the late fall of 2007, before the economic meltdown in March 2008, before Obama was elected, before the Euro crisis, the Arab spring, the Occupy movement, the housing meltdown. Here are some of the highlights, under “Global Trends’:
-       Ecosystem breakdown: well, we had the  BP oil spill and more and more species are going extinct. http://dodosgone.blogspot.com

-       Increased tectonic movement: As the planetary empaths know, earthquakes have increased dramatically in this century, particularly since 2008. Take a look. Scroll down the page for the graph.
-       The end of cheap oil: When George W. Bush entered office, gas cost $1.43 a gallon. Today, it ranges between $3.49 to just under $4. But it has gone over four bucks a gallon at various times this century. The cost in Europe and other parts of the world may be higher.


-       Popular unrest and Global conflicts: Gee, this is daily news now. The Occupy movement and the Arab spring go into  this category.



-       Economic Crisis and reform of the monetary system: the accuracy here is eerie, and I quote: “One of the main consequences of all this is likely to be a large-scale economic crisis. The financial institutions will almost certainly gain a great deal…and will try to use the situation to increase their control over the people.”


The author, Maurice Lavenant, concludes his article with what may be a battle cry:
“As always, it is largely up to the people to decide what they consume and how it is I produced. It’s also up to the people to decide how their resources are managed and, indeed, how they themselves are managed…How much abuse we can tolerate before we take our destiny into our own hands is anybody’s guess. In this case, though, the stakes are high because we are dealing with no less than the long-term survival of the entire biosphere. Given this fact, can we afford to be complacent?”

So now that we've stepped into  2012, there are many things to consider. How can we embrace the change around us and within our own lives? Do we need to redefine ourselves professionally, personally, spiritually, emotionally? If so, how?  What do we desire for ourselves, our families and loved ones in the coming year?

I’m always looking for the absolute bottom line and for me, it’s this: If I knew I had one day to live, what would I do? How would I live? With whom would I spend my time?