Review of Julys zoom meeting - The March of Time with
Review of July Meeting – Barbara Giles – The March of Time
For our second Zoom online meeting our speaker was our Chairperson Barbara Giles. An amazing 27 people logged on to take part with friends from our sister groups Bolton and Phoenix joining us as well as a guy from the midlands. The host for the meeting was our treasurer Kathy Rowan who did a magnificent job and dealt very well with a couple of technical problems. Barbara began by looking at the chart of the meeting, which had Sagittarius rising with chart ruler Jupiter in the second which she felt was very positive. Barbara went through the whole of the chart in great detail and how it showed what was happening at the moment. Barbara went on to explain how in 2018 she had given a talk to us entitled The March of Time as Saturn ingressed into Capricorn and how the topic at that time was Brexit. She then went on to talk about the Saturn Pluto cycle which has a 33 – 35 year cycle, but only did they conjunct in Capricorn about every 500 years, (it’s not exact because of Pluto’s irregular orbit). They were conjunct in Capricorn in 783 CE. This was a time when King Arthur was doing trade deals with Charlemagne, ruler of the European Carolingian Empire, allowing free movement across the channel, which Barbara called ‘The First Brexit’. The next time they were conjunct in Capricorn was in 1284 when Edward the First was crowned and Wales joined up with England to become one kingdom. The next time was in 1518 when Henry the Eighth was transforming religion with his reformation. We then came to the latest conjunction in Capricorn which took place last year and coincided with the start of the Corvid 19 virus in China. As you can see each conjunction in Capricorn between these 2 malefics occurred at an important time in England’s history.
Barbara then put up the chart of the lunar eclipse that took place on 16th July last year and how the eclipse was conjunct Pluto at 24 Capricorn, which was significant as that was where Pluto was now with Jupiter and Saturn nearby. Also in that eclipse chart the Sun was in the 6th house of health and the Moon was in the 12th of confinement. Barbara added that Full Moon’s tend to expose a situation which this one clearly did when news of the virus came to light later in the year. Next Barbara turned to Saturn’s ingress into Capricorn in 2017 and how it signified a fear of not succeeding so one works harder. This was followed by the chart of Saturn and Pluto’s conjunction in Capricorn which took place on the 12th January this year. Barbara then said how Pluto had entered Capricorn in 2008, just as Barack Obama became President of the United States, the stock market crashed and there was the banking crisis. The previous Saturn Pluto conjunction had been in Libra at the start of the 80’s and Barbara felt it had been significant that many of the Prime Minsters since then had been Librans. (Thatcher, Cameron, May) Saturn being about authority and Pluto about power. The next chart was Saturn’s ingress into Aquarius on the 22nd march this year which Barbara felt heralded something new – and it certainly did – the lockdown started the next day! (Saturn as you will know is the planet of restriction) However, Saturn has retrograded back into Capricorn now and will not re-enter the sign of the Waterbearer until 17th December this year, when it will also be conjunct the Moon and Jupiter, so there was hope there, but until then things would be indecisive.
The next part of the talk focused on the charts of members of the Royal Family and the charts of events surrounding them such as Harry and Megan’s announcement of opting out of royal duties. Having concluded her talk Barbara then took questions of which there were many such as ‘Will the Queen abdicate?’ to which Barbara pointed out the Queen was struggling with those transiting planets (Pluto, Saturn and Jupiter) in her first house. This led to the chart of the UK (1801) being put up and those same planets in the UK’s 4th house and di that mean a change of government? Barbara was asked about her thoughts on Mars in Aries squaring those planets in August and she thought they would bring new negotiations and another lockdown. Another question was did she think the Saturn Pluto conjunctions were hard or soft aspects and her reply was hard and said Pluto was turning everything over and Saturn had come along to steady things. The question of Mercury being retrograde and how that was affecting things came up and Barbara put up some charts to do with that and came to the conclusion that as Mercury didn’t get back to the point where it turned retrograde until the 26th July, along with other factors, the opening up of the lockdown had happened too soon. Barbara ended with a couple of positive notes. 1) That as astrologers we understood what was going on and are not so fearful as others and 2) the Saturn Jupiter conjunction in Aquarius was exact at the Winter Solstice on the 21st December and that had to bring new hope (as the days get longer again?).
Although Barbara had difficulty at times finding the right chart to put up on the screen, I think that under the circumstances, especially that this was the first time she had done a Zoom talk, she did very well and received some very positive feedback and I’m sure we’re all very grateful to her for giving up so much of her time to share with us her knowledge.
