Did Trump Just Play His Zugzwang Move?
I feel today as though we lead our lives as pawns within a massive game of chess; that is unless you happen to be hugely wealthy and powerful within the technocratic elite hierarchy. So, did Trump just find himself in a Zugzwang situation or has he, as I think is more likely, forced his opponents into one? The term Zugzwang is a situation found in chess and other turn-based games where one player is put at a disadvantage. It means 'compulsion to move'. In chess players cannot skip a turn and may find themselves in a situation where every possible move available will lead to a worse outcome than if they could simply pass their turn. But understanding Zugzwang is crucial for endgame strategy, and we know Trump’s particular skill revolves around ‘the art of the deal’. He is both showman and businessman. By recognizing and exploiting Zugzwangpositions, a player can force their opponent into a bad position and win the game.
It seems that, having had high tariffs placed on their countries, other countries find themselves forced to do the same in a tit for tat action. Highly likely the end result will be the piling on of the pressure for the poorer within society and somehow more wealth will transfer upwards, just because that seems the name of the game today.
From an astrological perspective March was always going to be a challenging month, containing two eclipses and the beginning of the new astrological year when the Sun entered Aries at the Spring equinox on March 20th. This was followed on March 29th by a partial Solar Eclipse that was just still in range of that zero degrees Aries point - a particularly important degree because astrologically it has an impact on the whole world. Bringing further stress to this point, on March 30th, Neptune began his dance into Aries, kicking off the beginnings of what is likely to be an incredibly impactful Saturn/Neptune conjunction as well as a new 165-year cycle for Neptune. Saturn will follow into Aries on May 25th to begin his own new 30-year cycle.
Saturn/Neptune conjunctions occur roughly every 36 years, so they are not exactly rare. What is extremely rare though is that this exact meeting happens on the world point of zero degrees of Aries. That is incrediblyrare. On April 2nd, just 5 days after an Aries Solar Eclipse in range of the world point and 4 days after Neptune reached that world point the world was left reeling by Trump’s actions. The big question I guess is where will the world be when Saturn makes his entry?
Saturn and Neptune are very different animals. Saturn likes order, control, authority and delineated hard borders. Neptune likes to float, to dream, to live without borders, to be hugely ideological, ebbing and flowing according to how the mood takes. Saturn/Neptune conjunctions mark geo-political change, sometimes with a particular relevance to situations involving Russia, but often impacting financial systems and geo-political stability. In 1861 Neptune began his last new cycle in Aries, reflecting a civil war in the USA. In 1989 the last Saturn/Neptune conjunction, this time in Capricorn, coincided with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. There was also a strong recession in the UK. Saturn/Neptune conjunctions are times when deep and long held traditions (Saturn) may be dissolved (Neptune), and power balances across the globe change because of this.
New ideologies (Neptune) may well come to the fore, as particular leaders and countries struggle (Saturn) to continue in power. Neptune’s powerful dissolving action, cloaked in confusion and deception, will surely have their way. Neptune, as ruler of Pisces, is known for his compassion and spiritual beliefs. However, on the shadow side, he is also well known for his deceitful behaviour, his ability to confuse and his lies. Indeed a painting by Jean Leon Gerome depicts the moral story about Truth and Lies. The picture shows Truth coming out of a well, naked but armed with her whip to chastise mankind. The story goes that Truth and Lies spent a day together and decided to take a dip in the well. Lies, however, jumped out of the well, put on Truth’s clothes and ran away. Truth ran naked in her search to find both Lies and her clothes, but instead she found a world that could not cope with ‘the naked Truth’ – a world that turned its back on her with contempt and rage. Truth returned to the well in shame and disappeared forever, whilst Lies, disguised in Truth’s clothes, proceeded to satisfy the needs of a world that could no longer face up to the truth, particularly the naked truth.
Since 2012 Neptune has been in his own sign of Pisces. This move had been trumpeted by many astrologers as the point where great compassion would rule. Instead Neptune’s shadow side of confusion, deception, illusion, lies and lack of boundaries has perhaps been more evident. Agendas stated enough times become doctrines and are repeated in line with cognitive dissonance – they become Lies in Truth’s clothing. The world that turned its back when it saw Truth naked has become even less able to deal with the painful realities of the real truth.
In myth Neptune/Poseidon ruled the seas and the waters from whose chaotic depths it is said that the world was created and from where the Sun first rose out of the storm of the oceans. Neptune represents a world where there is no separation, where we can enter a limitless arena that gives us the potential to transcend reality, seek bliss, understand our dreams and seek some kind of encounter with the divine. Neptune is said to be the higher ‘octave’ or higher expression of Venus – the feminine, the principle of giving of our talents and of our love, and the principle of how we give and receive affection. But Venus is not necessarily all soft and squishy. At its lowest level Neptune pushes us to escape reality via artificial means such as alcohol, drugs, watching TV and living a virtual life on our smart phones. Truth tried to find her stolen clothes but instead found a world that could only cope with Lies pretending to be the Truth. What Truth had to say appeared to be impossibly shocking and shockingly impossible. All Lies had to do was get people to gang up and mock Truth’s nakedness. Lies, having cloaked himself in Truth’s clothes, was SO convincing because everything he said contained a bit of truth and they didn’t really care about hearing the truth anyway. And it was the fact that, with minds wide shut, they didn’t really care that was the biggest problem.
The reality (Saturn) is that the industrial nations of west are in trouble – but few realise how deep the crisis goes, and nearly all would prefer to escape the realities rather than face up to the truth. In the west we live in a society that has become dependent on extracting resources from outside itself rather than using its own carefully managed capital to drive economic activity. It, therefore, now has few options once the limits to resource extractions start to bite. It must keep widening the source options through war or corruption. The elite always orchestrates events such as wars, pandemics and economic collapses to mirror their tales and cement their authority. The elite don’t just predict the future they engineer it, create the chaos and finally offer up the solution – Saturn (control)/Neptune (chaos and lies). At the previous conjunction of Saturn/Neptune in 1989 we were not quite so much within a multipolar future – it was more unipolar or bipolar. However, we are now in the reality of the new global chessboard where supremacy has to be fought for.
Saturn and Neptune do not conjoin exactly until early 2026. However, we have already seen the blowback from Neptune’s entry. The gloves are already off and the conjunction is in play, so expect to see particularly the global financial reset cage being rattled from now. Controls and boundaries will be eroded but also dreams (Neptune) can be given form (Saturn) – who will be the bravest?
And we must not forget that Saturn/Neptune will also be part of ushering in a whole new paradigm. The conjunction will sit at the apex of a minor triangle shape with Uranus and Pluto. Saturn/Neptune will sextile both Uranus and Pluto who will be in trine to each other. Added into the rarity of Saturn/Neptune meeting at zero degrees of Aries, Uranus and Pluto will be at the early degrees of Gemini and Aquarius respectively, giving us a Fire and Air minor trine that merges vision and courage with mental abilities. In 577BCE and the surrounding years, the three outer planets met in Taurus, and at that point they also aspected Jupiter and Saturn, symbolising socio-economic changes. This was the time of a sudden collective awakening to new consciousness and a new ‘golden age’ of the great mystics such as Confucious, Zoroaster, Sun Tzu, Buddha, together with the greatest philosophers such as Plato, Socrates, Aristotle and the religions of Judaism and the Monotheistic. All very different but all seeking universal truths and values as well as exploring the soul and consciousness, whilst expressing archetypal processes. But this triangular aspect of four outer planets all at the beginnings of new signs is incredibly rare and symbolizes something radical and new.
We are in a time of great upheaval and great possibilities as we enter a new technological age. How will this new cycle of Saturn and Neptune affect our lives in this new paradigm? We are all actors on the stage that is our planet Earth. So, we must all play our part in influencing Earth’s future. The greatest gift we can give to the so-called elite leaders who want to orchestrate and determine this future is our compliance and our apathy. The greatest gift we can give Earth, ourselves and future generations is our participation in actively raising our conscious awareness. The next move on the board is yours.
Rather than always link my blog with the New and Full Moons and use them as the framework, this is the first blog where I no longer do this. I now have the freedom to talk about just one or two main aspects of the astrology of today in more depth. Some readers in the past have commented that the blogs are too complex for them to understand fully, so I hope this format is going to be much easier, particularly for the non-astrologers. It is exciting for me, especially now this new paradigm is so close to being born.