Astro­log­i­cal Mus­ings — 2024, A look ahead Part 3 – More Nation­al Charts and World Leaders

(If you wish to lis­ten to the show instead, here is the link on BlogTalk or Apple Pod­casts)

Today I would like to exam­ine the charts of coun­tries and world lead­ers that we did not cov­er in the last two shows, and if we have enough time I may cir­cle back to the USA and look at the His­to­ry of the USA through the lens of its series of Pro­gressed New Moons as I men­tioned briefly in our last show.

Per­son­al Astrol­o­gy exam­ines the char­ac­ter and life of indi­vid­ual peo­ple. Mun­dane Astrol­o­gy, which we are work­ing with today, uses many of the same tech­niques but applies them to the world of nations, orga­ni­za­tions, and their lead­ers. In our last show, we looked at the chart of the USA with regards to 2024, and also exam­ined the charts of Joe Biden and Don­ald Trump. We then exam­ined the Astro­log­i­cal indi­ca­tions for the charts of Ukraine and Rus­sia, along with Zelen­sky and Putin. We also exam­ined Chi­na and Xi Jin­ping, North Korea, and Kim Jong Un, and Israel and Ben­jamin Netanyahu.

I will cer­tain­ly come back to con­sid­er the USA chart through­out this year, as well as Joe Biden and Trump, along with Ukraine, Rus­sia, and Israel, but I thought that it would be good to look at some oth­er major play­ers on the stage of world his­to­ry here in 2024.

Iran
Since we end­ed our tour of oth­er nations last time with Israel, let us con­tin­ue with the con­di­tions of the Mid­dle East and start with Iran and its leader Ali Khamenei. Iran was expe­ri­enc­ing in 2023 a major tran­sit of the plan­et Nep­tune, a con­junc­tion over both its Mars and Mer­cury, and in 2024 Nep­tune con­tin­ues to con­junct Mercury.

Mars in a nation’s chart rules the ener­gy-form of the actions that hold a nation togeth­er or dri­ve it apart, and equal­ly the char­ac­ter­is­tic man­ner in which it meets up with oth­er state and non-state actors on the world stage. Iran has its Mars in Pisces, which means it would hold itself togeth­er by Faith (or Fear), and that it would “defend” and define itself as being in a strug­gle to pre­serve and extend its faith, to some­times act as a mar­tyr, and to act some­times with sub­terfuge or decep­tion. With Nep­tune, the ruler of Pisces on Mars in 2023, Iran would cer­tain­ly have leaned into these actions with even greater inten­si­ty, so that its inter­nal mea­sures of cohe­sion and exter­nal mea­sures of defense or aggres­sion would have been extreme as well, with obscure or hid­den means to main­tain inter­nal con­trol and out­ward defens­es or offen­sive actions.

Mer­cury rules all forms of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and net­work­ing in a nation whether that be trans­porta­tion phys­i­cal­ly or mes­sag­ing sys­tems, so it is like the ner­vous sys­tem as well as the “mind” of a nation, and there­fore indi­cates edu­ca­tion, lit­er­a­ture, intel­lec­tu­al mat­ters, and schools. With Nep­tune con­junct Mer­cury for 2023 and 2024, Iran’s mes­sag­ing could have seen more than its nor­mal lev­el of mis­di­rec­tion and subterfuge.

In addi­tion, all through 2023 Iran had Plu­to oppo­site its Jupiter. Jupiter rules a nation’s com­mon val­ues, beliefs, and truths; it rules its ide­olo­gies and reli­gion or reli­gions. Of course, giv­en that Iran is a state defined by one reli­gion, Shi­itism, it is also the means to polit­i­cal con­trol as well as the gov­ern­ing prin­ci­ple of Iran’s rela­tion­ship to the rest of the world. With Plu­to going over Jupiter, Iran would on the one hand see itself under tremen­dous pres­sure from the oth­er world actors, need­ing to rein­force their defense against the threat of being dimin­ished or defeat­ed in a bat­tle of faith, and equal­ly feel the need to increase their attempts to spread their “truth”, to sup­port oth­er Shia com­mu­ni­ties and to con­vert oth­ers. Now with Plu­to mov­ing beyond Jupiter, I would expect Iran to pull back some­what in its attempt to expand its influ­ence for now.

If we look to the chart of the leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, (for which we have no time of birth, so one has to be a more cir­cum­spect in delin­eations), it is prob­a­bly not sur­pris­ing, but cer­tain­ly reaf­firm­ing, that both the tran­sit­ing Nep­tune and Plu­to were very active in his chart in 2023 too. Nep­tune was con­junct his Jupiter, the plan­et of truth and belief, and so he was going through a rather chal­leng­ing year of ques­tion­ing and con­fu­sion, less con­fi­dent and uncer­tain as regards his under­stand­ing and moti­va­tions. More­over, this tran­sit, espe­cial­ly for an old­er per­son, often­times indi­cates a health issue regard­ing the liv­er or pan­creas. Mean­while, Plu­to was squar­ing his Sun, so he most cer­tain­ly felt the need to pro­tect his pow­er and bound­aries, and per­haps push back quite strong­ly against any real or imag­ined threats to his pow­er. Both these tran­sits are fad­ing away, again pos­si­bly indi­cat­ing a more sub­dued leader and Iran.

Sau­di Arabia
For Sau­di Ara­bia in 2023, the main tran­sits were Nep­tune con­junct the Moon and Sat­urn con­junct Venus. The Moon in a nation’s chart rep­re­sents the mass­es, what we call the com­mon peo­ple and also the entire pop­u­la­tion. It is the ves­sel of pop­u­lar opin­ion and mass move­ments. With Nep­tune on the Moon, the peo­ple of Sau­di Ara­bia were expe­ri­enc­ing a dis­solv­ing of their pre­vi­ous sense of them­selves as they dreamed and won­dered about who they are and who they are becom­ing. The mood of the pub­lic was shift­ing from one under­stand­ing into anoth­er. Venus in a nation’s chart is the val­ue of the nation, sort of “the glue” that holds a peo­ple togeth­er to form a state or nation. The likes and loves of a peo­ple hold them to one anoth­er and to their state with­out force but by affec­tion, as real­ized in the arts, enter­tain­ment, and oth­er shared plea­sures. With Sat­urn con­junct Venus, the peo­ple of Sau­di Ara­bia, and maybe even more the women of Iran, (as Venus can be seen as rul­ing espe­cial­ly too), were “not feel­ing the love” in 2023. Whether the dis­sat­is­fac­tions were formed inter­nal­ly by some loss of val­ue includ­ing eco­nom­ic con­di­tions, or by a weak­en­ing or break­ing down of rela­tion­ships exter­nal­ly, and so equal­ly form­ing a test of agree­ments with oth­er nations or oth­er world actors. I cer­tain­ly could see the cri­sis in Gaza, Israel, and the rela­tion­ships with both of them and oth­er states in the Mid­dle East, that this would cer­tain­ly have been a major source of the loss of val­ue for Sau­di Arabia.

And in 2024, Nep­tune is squar­ing Nep­tune, while Uranus is trin­ing the Sun and Jupiter. Nep­tune in a nation’s chart is the vehi­cle for the visions, dreams, and ideals of a bet­ter future. Whether a return to a gold­en age, or dreams of a new age, Nep­tune inspires but can also lead to delu­sions, decep­tions, and dis­il­lu­sion­ments. With Nep­tune on Nep­tune, Sau­di Ara­bia is in the midst of won­der­ing and wan­der­ing regard­ing what is “the good”, or what is our nation­al dream, for 2024. The Sun in a nation’s chart rules its char­ac­ter and core ener­gy-form and will often indi­cate the supreme author­i­ty or leader too, whether they be pres­i­dent, prime min­is­ter, king, or queen. It often shows the cen­tral char­ac­ter or per­sona of a nation, the sto­ry or myth that it projects to the world. The influ­ence of Uranus brings change, hope­ful­ly cho­sen and not imposed, to move towards a more expan­sive and truer expres­sion of the enti­ty in ques­tion. It can bring shocks, sur­pris­es, and upsets, but the whole pur­pose behind Uranus is to lead to lib­er­a­tion and free­dom. But if mis­un­der­stood and mis­ap­plied it can lead to rebel­lious­ness and extremes of con­trari­ness and defi­ance. Here with a trine, there is a much high­er like­li­hood of a growth in the Sun nature, so that Sau­di Ara­bia (and its ruler) will be more inclined to move in a direc­tion of inge­nu­ity, inno­va­tion, and open­ness to change, and that this will also be seen with regards to its approach to its truths and teach­ings with Uranus on Jupiter.

Let us turn to the ruler of Sau­di Ara­bia, Moham­mad Bin Salman (Al Saud), and again we do not have a time of birth, so we must pro­ceed with some greater degree of con­di­tion­al­i­ty regard­ing our obser­va­tions. In 2023 and 2024, MBS is going through a very strong series of align­ments of Uranus to sev­er­al plan­ets in his chart. For 2023, he had Uranus squar­ing his Mer­cury and oppos­ing his Sat­urn, and in 2024 he has Uranus squar­ing his Mars. 2023 was going to shake up Bin Salman’s mind and thoughts (Mer­cury) and chal­lenge his under­stand­ing and expe­ri­ence of real­i­ty (Sat­urn). But through the chal­lenge to his Mer­cury, he would have had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to, or had to, open his mind, and con­sid­er oth­er data points and points of view. In the end, he would have hope­ful­ly expe­ri­enced the shock as free­ing him from a more lim­it­ed under­stand­ing so that he would have been able to grasp and work with new approach­es and solu­tions to the chal­lenges he faced. And with Uranus on Sat­urn, he would have had the expe­ri­ence of his old real­i­ty, his set of cer­tain­ties and struc­tures of his world, that they were chal­lenged and some­times bro­ken or thrown down. He might have seen this as a great loss dur­ing part of this peri­od but may have come around to real­ize that the old real­i­ty was not enough, and it was time to reset and cre­ate a new real­i­ty struc­ture in his life. I most def­i­nite­ly believe that the earth­quake in the mid­dle east ini­ti­at­ed by Hamas, and the ongo­ing cri­sis there was a major com­po­nent of this shift in real­i­ty for him.

For 2024, the tran­sit of Uranus over Mars holds even greater pos­si­bil­i­ties but equal­ly greater dan­gers too. MBS may be a Vir­go by his Sun type, but his Venus, Mer­cury and Mars are all in Leo. So, he wants to be a Leo with Venus, he thinks like a Leo through Mer­cury, and he acts like a Leo by Mars, and that Mars is the plan­et lead­ing his Sun around his chart, so it forms a very defin­ing and promi­nent fea­ture of his char­ac­ter. Mars is the plan­et of desire, of action, of our “thrust” in this life. A Leo Mars will forge a pur­pose­ful and strong type of lead­er­ship, but if mis­aligned or mis­un­der­stood can make a per­son pride­ful and arro­gant too. Mars in Leo will lead MBS to be a per­son who believes that he acts with respect and hon­or, and that he deserves to be hon­ored as well. But if he feels that he is being dis­ap­proved of or dis­re­spect­ed, well he could become very angry.

Uranus brings shocks, forc­ing a break but also elic­it­ing strong actions and reac­tions with Mars. It can man­i­fest as unfore­seen upsets or obsta­cles block­ing his aims and actions, and he might react with anger, and he may lash out, (which of course may only make things worse). Or he may respond to Uranus with under­stand­ing, hold him­self more in a man­ner of pos­i­tive self-asser­tion and lead­er­ship rather than aggres­sion. He may real­ize the time has come to pur­sue a new goal, or a new way to a goal, and if he does then he can be an agent of free­dom for him­self and for others.

Turkey
2023 was a chal­leng­ing year for Turkey, with a dev­ast­ing earth­quake in Feb­ru­ary, fol­lowed by less­er quakes, then tor­ren­tial rains and floods in those same earth­quake regions in March. I pre­fer to look at cycles and process­es and peri­ods of time, rather than any one moment in any chart. But it should be not­ed that Plu­to (the ruler of birth, death, rebirth) aligned with Turkey’s Uranus, (the ruler of earth­quakes) at the time of the Feb­ru­ary quake. Some­times a par­tic­u­lar moment and event does matter…

The major tran­sit for Turkey in 2023 was the favor­able Sat­urn trine to its Sun. Since the Sun rules the char­ac­ter of a nation and often­times the ruler, it indi­cates a peri­od where great progress can be made as a nation, and often by its ruler. That is quite inter­est­ing as in Erdogan’s chart he had Sat­urn mak­ing a con­junc­tion to his Sun all year and that would also favor an indi­vid­ual with regards to a major moment in their life. Many observers had pro­ject­ed that Erdo­gan would have faced a dif­fi­cult reelec­tion in 2023 after the Feb­ru­ary earth­quake exposed much of the shod­dy con­struc­tion that led to so many deaths, but with Sat­urn on his Sun exact­ly at the time of elec­tion, and with Sat­urn trin­ing the nation’s Sun, Erdo­gan won easily.

For 2024, Turkey is encoun­ter­ing a sig­nif­i­cant dou­ble-tran­sit. Nep­tune is squar­ing the Moon for 2024 and 2025, and Uranus is oppos­ing Jupiter. The Moon rules the pop­u­lace, and with Nep­tune, the uni­ver­sal sol­vent, the plan­et that dis­solves bound­aries in order to allow for trans­for­ma­tion and awak­en­ing, the mood and char­ac­ter of the peo­ple of Turkey will be great­ly changed by this expe­ri­ence. Rang­ing from the most sub­lime inspi­ra­tions of spir­it to the most illu­so­ry or delu­sion­al, Neptune’s touch will and does lead to the most uplift­ing expe­ri­ences and equal­ly the most dis­turb­ing. Cer­tain­ly, the peo­ple of Turkey will be deeply reex­am­in­ing the ques­tion, “what is the dream for our peo­ple”, yet equal­ly won­der­ing what kind of peo­ple or peo­ples are we? A cau­tion­ary note must be made, as the last time Nep­tune passed over Turkey’ Moon was in 1984, which is when the PKK, the Kur­dis­tan Work­ers Par­ty, a Marx­ist-Lenin­ist rev­o­lu­tion­ary move­ment began a cam­paign of ter­ror in south­ern Turkey. It is not a coin­ci­dence that Nep­tune rules social­ist and com­mu­nist move­ments, and though his­to­ry nev­er repeats itself, there are res­o­nances and echoes that ring through the halls of time. Mean­while, Jupiter, the plan­et that rules the com­mon val­ues and truths and faiths of a nation, is being opposed by Uranus, the plan­et that brings about a chal­lenge to the sta­tus quo by assert­ing the prin­ci­pal of free­dom and inde­pen­dence. That might cer­tain­ly tie into the Nep­tune tran­sit, com­bin­ing a move­ment with dreams for greater free­dom tak­ing action that shocks the peo­ple. But the dri­ve towards greater self-real­iza­tion and free­dom will swing both ways, and it should be not­ed that the two pre­vi­ous tran­sits of Uranus to Turkey’s Jupiter were in 1980, when the mil­i­tary seized pow­er in the third coup in Turkey’s his­to­ry. Civ­il lib­er­ties were cur­tailed as the mil­i­tary pushed back against both far-right and far-left move­ments and banned the Kur­dish lan­guage; and then in 2001, as the reli­gious par­ties were ris­ing to the point of tak­ing major­i­ty pow­er in Turkey, the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Court banned the pro-Islam­ic Virtue Par­ty in 2001. Then, in Novem­ber 2002, the Islamist-based Jus­tice and Devel­op­ment Par­ty (AKP) won in a land­slide election.

For Recep Erdo­gan, 2023 was a very chal­leng­ing but ulti­mate­ly a rather suc­cess­ful year, due in no small part to the favor­able inter­sec­tion of Sat­urn on his Sun while trin­ing the Turkey’s Sun. But 2024 may prove to be more chal­leng­ing for him as he will expe­ri­ence Uranus square his Plu­to. Yes, the same plan­et align­ing with Jupiter in Turkey’s chart in 2001 and now in 2024 is align­ing with the plan­et that rules pow­er and con­trol in Erdogan’s chart. And who was that leader that secured the tri­umph of the reli­gious move­ment and its new­ly formed par­ty, AKP, in 2001? Of course, it was Erdo­gan who led that par­ty to vic­to­ry. And he has wield­ed pow­er and con­trol as prime min­is­ter or pres­i­dent ever since. What does that mean for 2024? With Uranus it means change is here, and if prop­er­ly chan­neled by the human actor or actors, it will bring about greater free­dom, but if mis­un­der­stood and mis­han­dled it can lead to insta­bil­i­ty, dis­rup­tions, and in this case polit­i­cal earthquakes.

Unit­ed Kingdom
Let’s turn our focus to Europe now and con­sid­er what 2023 and what 2024 will be like for the Unit­ed King­dom. The major influ­ence in 2023 was the semi-square of Nep­tune to the UK’s Mars. Mars in a nation’s chart rules the ener­gy-form of those forces that inter­nal­ly hold a nation togeth­er or dri­ve it apart by asser­tion or aggres­sion, and equal­ly the char­ac­ter­is­tic man­ner in which it asserts itself with oth­er state and non-state actors on the world stage. The UK has its Mars in Tau­rus, and its expan­sion out­ward­ly was by being a mer­can­tile and colo­nial pow­er base on trade and manufacture.

Nep­tune dis­solves bound­aries so that a par­tic­u­lar struc­ture of real­i­ty must let go of that order­ing and move beyond to a new form of man­i­fes­ta­tion. But as a result, at least for us humans, it means that we will expe­ri­ence dur­ing such times of tran­si­tion some greater degree of uncer­tain­ty, doubt, and con­fu­sion. The last time Nep­tune lined up with the UK’s Mars, it was 2003 and Tony Blair and Par­lia­ment decid­ed to join the USA in the inva­sion of Iraq. In 2023, the mount­ing series of labor strikes and the lack­lus­ter recov­ery from the Covid dis­rup­tions has so deeply wound­ed the Con­ser­v­a­tive led gov­ern­ment of Rishi Sunak that if elec­tions were held the Labor Par­ty would tri­umph in a land­slide, (and an elec­tion will be nec­es­sary by at least ear­ly 2025). For his part, for much of 2023 and con­tin­u­ing through the first quar­ter of 2024 Sunak has been expe­ri­enc­ing a very chal­leng­ing dou­ble tran­sit, as Uranus formed a con­junc­tion to both his Mer­cury and Sun. Uranus brings shocks and sur­pris­es, some­times a pleas­ant sur­prise or dis­cov­ery, but also upsets and shocks of a dis­turb­ing nature. He is being chal­lenged to open his mind and deal with many dif­fer­ent prob­lems and points of views from oth­ers, and if han­dled well it will have stim­u­lat­ed his intel­li­gence to con­sid­er prob­lems in a new light and come up with inno­v­a­tive solu­tions. But no mat­ter what, the jug­gling of so many minor and major chal­lenges can cause men­tal exhaus­tion. Mean­while, with Uranus on his Sun, it brings to bear a very per­son­al ques­tion for him­self, which is, “does this role and respon­si­bil­i­ty I have, does it ful­fill me now or not?”.

For 2024, the Unit­ed King­dom will be expe­ri­enc­ing two major tran­sits, Uranus squar­ing Sat­urn, and for 2024 and 2025 Plu­to oppo­site Jupiter. Sat­urn in a nation’s chart is the hold­er of the State itself, the insti­tu­tions of the nation and the nature or degree to which the State and the Nation bal­ances order with free­dom, so it also rules the legal sys­tem, the civ­il ser­vice, and oth­er pre­serv­ing orga­ni­za­tions. With Uranus the dis­rupter and agent of free­dom going over Sat­urn, we should expect a gen­er­al shake­up in the State itself, (like a change in lead­er­ship, and remem­ber the con­ser­v­a­tives have been in pow­er since 2010, which means 14 years, basi­cal­ly half of a Sat­urn cycle). We should also expect that the con­tin­u­ing dis­rup­tions in labor unrest in the civ­il ser­vice, like in the Nation­al Health Ser­vice and oth­ers, will con­tin­ue but hope­ful­ly lead to new and inven­tive ways of pro­vid­ing such services.

The Plu­to oppo­si­tion to Jupiter is a deep­er chal­lenge. Remem­ber, Jupiter rules the com­mon val­ues and beliefs which hold a peo­ple or nation togeth­er, whether by cul­ture, reli­gion, sci­ence, or spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. Plu­to brings the pow­er of the will to bear, rais­ing the issue of con­trol and self-con­trol, and often leads to strong cathar­tic changes which may ulti­mate­ly bring about a rebirth. The last time Plu­to aligned with the UK’s Jupiter was 1984, which wit­nessed one of the most sig­nif­i­cant labor strug­gles in its his­to­ry, the coal miner’s strike. Prime Min­is­ter Mar­garet Thatch­er had pre­pared for this strug­gle and the state brought many pres­sures to bear upon the min­ers. Thatch­er pre­vailed and forced the union to con­cede in 1985, and pow­er of unions and the labor par­ty was broken.

For 2024–25, we can­not know in what form or in what area a strug­gle may arise forc­ing a break­down and renew­al of what holds the UK togeth­er, but we should expect that just as the UK moved from being shaped by pow­er­ful unions before 1984, some­thing sim­i­lar today that holds the peo­ple of the UK togeth­er will be test­ed and transformed.

For Sunak in 2024, the major tran­sit is Uranus oppo­site Uranus, while it equal­ly is squar­ing his dharma/karma lunar nodes. Uranus oppo­site Uranus is one of the mark­ers of mov­ing through what is com­mon­ly known as the mid-life cri­sis, which I like to call the mid-life time of oppor­tu­ni­ty. The Uranus-to-Uranus por­tion of this asks the indi­vid­ual to con­sid­er the last 20 or so years of their life and to see where they are now, and ask them­selves this, “are you ful­filled with this path, are you hap­py with your life, are you ‘being you’”?  It is a moment to look back and con­sid­er whether one wants to con­tin­ue on this path for the next 20 years or not.

So, Sunak is going to look at him­self, his life, his posi­tion and either decide to con­tin­ue or change his path. And, at the same time, the con­tact with Uranus to the nodes means that fate is forc­ing upon him a change in direc­tion. He may be influ­enced by meet­ing a new group or a per­son, and his life changes. He will cer­tain­ly expe­ri­ence shocks and upsets, but some of which may be quite lib­er­at­ing. No mat­ter what, there is change ahead for the Unit­ed King­dom, both as a nation as a whole, and most prob­a­bly in its leadership.

Well, I see that our time is down to when I would begin to respond to callers’ ques­tions, so I guess that is all we will cov­er for today. I do want to con­tin­ue at some point look­ing through this lens of Mun­dane Astrol­o­gy, and not only with regards to his­to­ry and cur­rent events, but also with regards to the very nature of peo­ples and nations and what is going on in the world, such as the world-wide phe­nom­e­non of the rise of author­i­tar­i­an groups, regions, par­ties and nations and why that is and what that means for the world at large and for us here in the USA. So per­haps that might be a good seed for the next show.