Low Life | 20 September 2008

I can feel a tremendous draught of change affecting me,’ said Dave, waggling his fingers at us as if playing a chest-high piano. ‘It’s the strongest, most noticeable draught I’ve felt for 20 years. You can feel the draught, can’t you?’

The meeting, last Friday night, was entitled ‘The Saturn-Uranus Oppositions of 2008–9 and the Eclipses of 2008’. We’d met in Dave’s study. Listening to Dave describe the planetary draughts he was experiencing, besides myself, were three women called Mara, Hara and Zhiva. Somewhere upstairs in his big old house, teenagers were galumphing about and shouting.

I’d seen the meeting advertised on a café noticeboard. Not knowing much about astrology, but impressed by the title, I’d called the number to find out if the talk was suitable for those who don’t know a quincunx from a conjunction. Dave said to come along and I’d be made most welcome. And I was. Here’s the gist of what he told us in the course of an hour and a half.

Astrologers have been hopping up and down with excitement for years about the forthcoming Saturn-Uranus opposition. Saturn is the planet that holds things together. It’s the planet of the status quo, order and government. It resists change. Uranus is the planet of change, chaos and revolution. In ancient mythology, Saturn castrated Uranus and dropped his testicles into the sea. So there’s no love lost between these two.

The last time these powerful planets were locked in direct opposition was in the mid-Sixties. Look what happened then. John Lennon becomes spokesman for a generation. The time before that was in 1920. Look what happened then. The National Socialist German Workers’ Party and the Communist International. And the time before that was in 1873.