At the start of the new year, it is a good idea to look back on 2021 and the C-word cannot be avoided. At the moment there is an explosion of infections and a booster campaign is launched very swiftly, the US and Europe seem to be affected most, other parts of the world are better off. It all started in December 2019 in Wuhan and there had been predictions in the astrological world that a crisis could be expected, mainly based on the cycles of the outer planets especially on the conjunctions of Pluto with Saturn and Jupiter.
Certainly, this shows us something but the most important conjunction was the classical Great Conjunction (“GC”) of Saturn and Jupiter and its effects have been underestimated, also by classical astrologers. A lot of attention is given to the outer planets in mundane astrology which tends to hide the fact that the cycle of the Great Conjunctions and Great Oppositions are the absolute and simple back-bone of mundane astrology. The principle is that we will have a crisis in the year before they are made. It is almost too simple to be true and other techniques will be necessary, but it gives the essence.
At this start of 2022 we have two years of Corona crisis behind us, with world-wide 5 million people killed and a totally disrupted economy. If you realise that the GC’s went over into a new element in December 2020 for the first time in 200 years, it will be clear that this prolonged crisis fits the cyclical moment given by the GC’s very much. The last time we had such a change, Napoleon was raging through Europe and we may be glad that a war has not broken out, that it is only a pandemic. The fact the December 2020 GC was such a special one explains why this is such a serious crisis and why it lasts so long. It should also be a lesson for the astrological world to give the GC cycle a more central place in mundane astrology.
If we take a look at the GC made for Brussels as the European capital, it is amazing how clearly the problem can be seen. Lord 1 the Sun is on cusp 6 of illness and combusts Lord 3 of routine movements : lock-down. Lord 6 is on the Descendant and from there it harms Europe (Asc) strongly. Of course, this is a chart for 20 years and it does NOT mean we will have 20 years of Corona but it does show the susceptibility for this kind of problems. This 2020 GC is more relaxed than the previous one in 2000. BUT this is a much bigger crisis moment because of the element change of the GC’s. This GC can also serve as the basis to calculate solar (and lunar!) returns, showing what is happening in Europe and we will be regularly coming back to this in 2022.