Italy and the Scorpio New Moon

There is a New Moon once a month, when the Sun is in the same position as the Moon, and this creates one of the most basic cycles in astrology. A New Moon doesn’t show you the major currents passing through someone’s life – you have to look to the outer planets for that – but it does show you events and phases within those larger cycles.

The chart for Italy has the Moon at 4.5 degrees Scorpio. The New Moon on 26th October took place at 3 Scorpio, while Italy’s Progressed Midheaven was at 4 Scorpio.

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Italy has an unserviceable debt, and austerity measures in these circumstances are usually counter-productive, slowing the economy down and making repayment harder. Greece was small enough to be bailed out, sort of, by the larger economies. Not so Italy, and the European Central Bank isn’t even trying. Events are going to move very fast over the next couple of weeks as Italy fails to borrow the money needed to keep going and pay off old loans.

In a way it was unfortunate for Greece to be small enough for a protracted pseudo-rescue. Boils need lancing, unwelcome realities have to be faced, and this is Scorpio’s territory. The Moon in the chart is the people, and the current New Moon cycle indicates that the Italian default is probably about to occur. Scorpio is associated with surgery and healing, and this is what it will be for the Italian people, who have had this amazing triple conjunction of natal Moon, New Moon and progressed MC. The MC is the institutions of government, suggesting not just a new leader (which we all know about) but a new type of government. This is reflected in the larger, outer planet cycle, in which Neptune will next year oppose Italy’s natal MC at 1 Virgo.

There is a Full Moon half way through every New Moon cycle, when the events concerned reach some sort peak. The Full Moon at 18 Taurus/Scorpio was on 10th November, coinciding with Berlusconi announcing he would stand down as leader. It ran along Italy’s Asc-Desc axis at 19 Scorpio/Taurus, while the Full Moon Mars at 29 Leo was less than a degree off the natal MC. This remarkable set of line-ups shows the significance of the events. And there is so much Scorpio involved: it is about purging and ultimately about healing.

(The natal Moon in 12th House Scorpio, square to Pluto, is also the Mafia and the widespread corruption which no doubt has contributed to the present state of affairs.)

So Berlusconi has agreed to stand down once a load of austerity measures have passed through both houses of Parliament. It has pacified the markets, giving some hope that the politicians are in control of events. But no-one in the markets really thinks that any more. As Uranus slows down to a standstill over the next few weeks, intensifying his influence, so will the crisis deepen further (if that is possible), and the game will change.

Without any pretence at rescue occurring, there is going to be a major train wreck very shortly. I’d say before the next New Moon, on 25th November. This New Moon, in early Sag, will be a degree off the ascendant in Rome. In a way it shows a liberation, a new optimism, albeit in very difficult circumstances.

We are seeing a series of New Moons in the early cardinal signs at present, meaning they are hard-aspecting Uranus and Pluto. The Cardinal Ingresses are also doing this, which is why world events have been so dramatic – remember we had the US debt crisis immediately before the European one. This is a good example of using inner planet events to predict points of change and crisis within outer planet transits. I thought events were going to ease off in the autumn due to Uranus and Pluto separating for a while, but if I’d looked at the New Moons and Ingresses I would have thought otherwise.

And after the Italian train wreck, what next? More train wrecks, maybe even bigger ones. Maybe France at some point. In a way it is exciting, it is high drama. I encounter some people who are enthusiastic about it because they are rightly so fed up with the old system. But we really don’t know what is coming afterwards, we are right at the beginning of the avalanche that Uranus-Pluto is ushering in. That is my point here: people assuming that the world will be moving in a direction they want it to move in, that because the ‘bad’ is self-destructing through its own contradictions and excesses, that whatever comes after will be in some way better. This way of thinking is much wider than the 2012 movement. Well the ‘good’ also has a way of coming to an end under Uranus-Pluto. I don’t think we can assume anything. Look what came out of the last square: the Great Depression followed by WWII.

As astrologers, we watch in a hopefully detached way and we detect patterns that are reflected in the heavens and we can to some extent predict. We can probe quite deeply into the nature of events, using planetary symbolism. But there is too much chaos and complexity with world events, certainly at present, to be able to predict much. Later in the Uranus-Pluto transit, maybe, but right now we are at the chaotic, destructive start. The future really isn’t written in the heavens, it really could go in a number of directions.