2011: Springtime of the Peoples

Set during the Paris uprising of 1848,
Flaubert's novel Sentimental Education
explores lessons in love and friendship.
It was published some 20 years after the events.

I've been thinking about the planet Neptune's ingress into Pisces a lot over the past year.  This will happen in March.

It's a biggie – as important as Pluto entering Capricorn, which signalled the collapse of the banking system in 2008.

Neptune is a slow-moving planet. Last time he moved into Pisces was February 1848.

That year, when Neptune moved back and forth over the last degrees of Aquarius and into Pisces, is known by historians as the Year of Revolutions or more poetically, the Springtime of the Peoples. Why?

The barricades in Prague 1848

Because a wave of popular uprising swept across Europe bringing change and turmoil to the following countries.

• France
• The Italian States
• The German States
• Poland
• Denmark
• Schleswig
• Most of the Habsburg Empire which stretched from Poland to Romania, including Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, Slovakia. That is all of what we now call Eastern Europe.

Does this sound familiar?

Barricades in Cairo 2011.

Most of these uprisings were quashed and at the time, it seemed as if the aspirations of the people – for independence, self-expression, democracy – would come to nothing. But in fact, it turned out that 1848 was a turning point for Europe. The people had started down the road to universal suffrage  and there was no turning back.

Now astrologers always associate Uranus with revolution and rebellion – and this certainly works astrologically. (For examples, look at the charts of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro.) Currently, Uranus in Pisces is semi-sextile to Neptune in Aquarius. These two slow planets are in each otther's signs, and working in concert in other words. Together, they will bring about change

Uranus is especially significant in Tunisia's Jasmine Revolution (click to see my last post on this), but the for the Egyptian Uprising (click to see my previous post), Neptune is the key planet. Now why would that be?

We also know that Neptune represents idealism and the dreams of the collective. 

Astrologers disagree about whether Neptune is a higher octave of Venus or the Moon; in other words, which inner planet it behaves like on an impersonal level. The outer planets always deal with mass consciousness. I'd suggest in this instance Neptune is behaving like the Moon, which as we know represents the masses in mundane charts. It's like a super-Moon, indicating a mass movement. Unlike many other revolutions – the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 for example – this is not a rebellion by a small group acting out for the benefit or otherwise of the masses. This it the masses speaking for themselves. 

There is a very special spring holiday in Egypt called Sham en nisim, which means something like Enjoy the Zephyr. It's an ancient festival, dating from pharoanic times and it's one of the few celebrated by everyone, Christians, Muslims, agnostics and everyone in between. It's a day to welcome the spring.