It won’t be called that in the history books of course. Maybe the Cyber-war (from cybernetics) or the Social Media War or the Propaganda War. But Neptune in its various meanings very well represents this war. Neptune or Neptune inspired things seem very important at this time in history. While there has always been an important place for propaganda in the midst of war — consider stories of Huns raping Nuns in Germany in World War I — the use of propaganda in this war is magnified because there are now many high tech means of creating and transmitting it.

The famous American astrologer Rob Hand tells how the astrologers of the Thirties, who were mostly Republicans — unlike today’s astrologers — could not believe the accepted chart for FDR because he had Uranus in the twelfth house and those astrologers could not believe that such a extreme radical as FDR didn’t have Uranus in the first house where it would be much more prominent. One may think that since astrologers reject the standard narrative that astrology is a pseudoscience they would be more likely to contest other standard narratives — such that FDR was a radical — than most people, but human nature does not always work like that.

A more recent example of this blindness is the 2016 election where most astrologers thought that Hilary Clinton would be elected President even though a couple of fairly standard methods for predicting the winner showed Donald Trump elected. See for example the book Astrology: Worlds Visible and Invisible by Everett Blackman for a discussion of one method of determining the President.

Below is a chart for the speech by Vladimir Putin announcing the invasion (or special operation) of Ukraine. The actual invasion happened a short time later. This was called Operation Z, the Russian name for the invasion of Ukraine, though you can’t call it that in Russia. This was the beginning of Putin’s speech (at 6 in the morning) announcing the upcoming invasion. I don’t find it very compelling for the start of an event that will change the world and may even destroy it. At the start of the Covid Panic we had a Saturn-Pluto conjunction, which time after time has indicated something important happening.

Just look at the Saturn Pluto opposition at both the start of the Spanish-American war and 9/11. And both of those opposition were on the Ascendant-Descendant axis of the United States, indicating that both events would impact the U.S. In this chart for Operation Z we have not even a minor aspect between Saturn and Pluto. We have a tight semisquare between Jupiter and Pluto, and a square between Mars and the hypothetical planet Zeus, which can suggest an outbreak of hostilities but still is not world shaking. That square does suggest the invasion — the meaning given is “military technique, officer, firearm” — but I was hoping for a lot more. There is also a conjunction of Venus and Mars in the first house near the Ascendant which suggests that the Russians feel passionate about this war.

And then I realized that that was not the true start of the war. Getting the correct birth time is important to astrology. Once a German doctor measured several events, such as crowning, first breath, and cutting the umbilical, to find which birth time gave the best chart. This is discussed in the book Recent Advances in Natal Astrology. The first breath was the winner. We must do the same thing with world events.

When did this war start? It could have been when a recently formed CIA decided to train ex-Nazi Ukrainians to combat the Soviet Union; it could have been when in 1991 representatives for America said to Gorbachev that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward” if East and West Germany could reunite and join NATO, but that promise wasn’t in writing so it didn’t count. By 1998 other countries joined NATO and by now there have been fourteen additional countries in NATO that have certainly pushed the organization more than an inch towards Russia; we will discuss the chart of NATO in the next post. Experts such as George Kennan, who could be said to have started the Cold War with just one telegram (though it was a Long one) warned about this expansion of NATO just before he died at 101. He thought expansion of NATO a really bad idea.

No the war started in 2014 as evidenced by this chart.

In late April of that year the following formation occurred: a grand cross with Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, and Pluto. It was part of the Uranus Pluto square of that period in the early teens. Notice how tight this grand cross is: each orb is less than 20 minutes of arc — this is almost perfect. This was the dominant astrological formation of the year (or any other year for that matter).

Charts with distinct patterns can be significant. For example a man named David who lived 3000 years ago had a chart with a six pointed star, which was difficult to do before the outer planets were discovered. Back then they used wider orbs than I do. The grand trine between the Moon, Mercury and Jupiter is clear, but also imagine another grand trine between Venus, Mars and Saturn. He put that star on his shield to warn his competitors of his awesome chart. That star still appears in many places currently and even appears in the flag of a country. The formation is even named for the man who had that star originally.

Also interesting is how this grand cross fits into the US chart like a hand fits into a glove. (We’ll see in a later post that this chart fits into the charts of the other participants as well.) Jupiter is conjunct the U. S. Sun at a half a degree and all the other three planets of the grand cross are as tight or tighter to the U.S. Sun. Thirteen degrees of cardinal signs has been energized by this grand cross. Certainly something important happened within/to the US in 2014 but it wasn’t obvious (at least to me) at the time what that was. That period was half way through the second term of Obama and his viceroy for Ukraine, his vice president, was involved with that country. For example, his son had a job with a Ukrainian oil company that paid him well even though he had no experience with the oil business or with Ukraine. And Ukraine was still important under Trump: one impeachment for President Trump involved his call to Ukraine and he was slow to send weapons to that country even though his predecessor thought that would be a bad idea. Ukraine has been involved in American politics for at least eight years.

And here is a graphical ephemeris for that period and you can see clearly how all four planets cross at one point of time. Astrologers knew about this formation long before it happened. Note that it is part of the Uranus Pluto square the effected much during the start of the second decade of the Twenty-First Century, for example the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street in the United States occurred at the time. And I have a personal story about the events under that square. At the time I was in the habit of riding my bike through several towns in my valley and back again, a total distance of about 50 miles every weekend. The trips were always fairly uneventful. But the trip I took on the weekend before April 22 stands out in my memory for several events. The first was a large pickup truck parked on the bikepath three miles from my house. Later there was a minor accident. After that on the return trip I avoided another accident but got into skirmish with a pedestrian on the bike path. It was obviously memorable.

The year of 2014 was special in Ukraine. That was when an event called the Maidan Revolution, which had been forming the previous year, took place in Kiev’s Square of the same name. This followed several months of demonstrations against the then current democratically elected President of Ukraine. Some people think that the United States was involved in that protest, even though the U.S. has never done anything like that before except in South America (remember the Monroe Doctrine) and in Iran and perhaps a few other places. During the protest some US government officials – such as Victoria Nuland, who holds a high position in the Biden administration — were handing out cookies to the protestors. For Americans an analogy would be if on the insurrection of January 6 there were representative of the Duma, the Russian parliament, handing out cookies to the protestors while admitting that they thought Trump would be a better President. If that happened you can see that some people would be a tad suspicious.

After these demonstrations in the square there was a coup in Ukraine, the most obvious coup in history according to the founder of the private CIA, Stratfor. Some people think the coup was supported or even instigated by the US; the NYT thought so at the time. Nevertheless, the current President of Ukraine was replaced by someone who in a strange coincidence happened to be the person Ms. Nuland thought would be perfect for the job.

One of the most odious acts of this period is when at least 40 workers who were against the Maidan revolution were driven into a union house in Odessa by some who were called at the time Nazis and burned alive or killed if they tried to escape. This happened on May 2, 2014 a couple of months after the coup. This year the government of Ukraine has set a curfew for May 2 because they were afraid of protests or riots on that day to draw attention to the event. In certain ways that massacre of Russian citizens in Odessa can be considered the start of this war, the Kristallnacht of this war, and the astrological conditions are extreme. You will seldom see an exact grand cross involving several outer planets. And of course the Uranus-Pluto square during that three year period set up the conditions.

Now that we have established the chart for the beginning of this war that I am calling the first Neptune War, we will look at the charts of the participants next time and see how the chart for late April 2014 was involved with them. But I’ll end by noting on effect that chart had on the internal manifestation in the United States.

The Sun square Saturn in the US chart was highlighted by this grand cross since Mars is conjunct the natal Saturn. Normally Sun square Saturn would suggest an inferiority complex, a certain restriction on one’s life force. No one would say that applies to the United States. Of course, having Sun conjunct Jupiter and Venus, the “Greater Benefic” and the “Lesser Benefic” in traditional astrology certainly helps counteract this tendency. But deep down the country has an inferiority complex involving how it has treated other people, especially black and native people, but it has tried hard to ignore that square for a long time. That repressed Sun square Saturn is now coming into the fore because of the emphasis given to it by the grand cross and you can see all of this in discussions involving racism, white privilege, etc. The people and the government of the United States are acting out this square but not really dealing with it.