The readers of this blog will know that we regularly make critical remarks about our modern colleagues. The reason is that we don’t think it is a good idea, now that so much astrological knowledge has resurfaced again through studying the old texts, just to turn away and proceed as if nothing has happened. This had led to a situation in which modern astrologers still practise on the basis of only 5% of the available knowledge. No serious astrologer can permit himself to ignore this fact any longer. It is logical that so many modern astrologer deny that is is impossible to predict, this is indeed not easy if your knowledge of methods is so limited.
However, we will leave fundamentalism to the “hellenists”, who tend to think that everything written after the year 450 must be incorrect for this reason. Of course, it does not matter at all who wrote something when, the important point is: can it be clearly shown to work? This leads us to the outer planets a purely modern innovation which I nevertheless appreciate very much. It is definitely not a good idea to base your delineations mainly on outer planet aspects, but it is also a bad idea to simply totally ignore them. They can provide valuable additional information, as long as they are used in the right way.
Mundane-astrologically, it is the conjunctions of the outer planets with the real planets that are worth attention, mainly with the the chronocrators Saturn and Jupiter. The current crisis is indicated by the transition of the Great Conjunctions to the Air signs and the 2019 ingress with Mars on Algol falling on the degree of the GC in 2000 also on Algol. This was discussed here over the last few weeks, it gives the astrological framework of the Great Lockdown. Within this framework the outer planets can be used to get more information, sometimes also about timing,
The exact conjunction of Pluto, the Lord of Hades who will suddenly and unexpectedly rise up to do his nasty thing, gives a very acceptable timing for the Corona crisis, it perfected on 12 January this year. The chart of the conjunction has the Sun and Mercury nearby and yes Mercury (combust so close to the Sun) as the planet of traffic, trade and commerce is very much involved. At the same time, we have three conjuntions of Jupiter with Pluto this year, and because we can regard Jupiter as the expansive energy of growth this is a good description of what we can see.
Nevertheless, we should not make the mistake to see the outer planets as the mundane-astrological framework itself, they may only provide some uselful additional infomation sometimes. Looking back we find Saturn-Pluto conjuntions in August 1947 and November 1982, and nothing too dramatic happened then. But the repeated Saturn-Pluto conjunctions in 1914 (October- November) and 1915 (May) can be seen as indicating the start of WW-1, although timing is not exact. If we do not exaggerate their meaning outer planets are an interesting addition and they can be used within a wider frame-work sometimes to get additional information.