by David A. Wheatley

​At the time of this writing, the oil tankers that were filled for delivery and cleared the Strait of Hormuz before the war began will be arriving to unload at various ports around the world.  Also at this time, transiting Mars is catching up to transiting Saturn in Aries. This transit is powerful, especially in Aries, as Mars, energized by being in its home sign, Aries, passes through. A week prior to the exact conjunction and four or five days afterward, transiting Saturn and Mars will merge, peaking around April 20. It will be difficult to make a peace that sticks during these times, to back away from a tendency to rely on force and to return to the status quo that existed before the war began. That’s Mars. Saturn is sewing karmic debts, and we will all pay them.
Another importance of April 20th is that this date marks the commencement of a new policy raising the age of enlistment in the US to 42, from the previous limit of 35. Starting in December 2026, eligible men aged 18–25 will be automatically registered for the draft.  Also removed from policy is the requirement for a waiver for recruits who have a single marijuana-related note in their records. No longer a hurdle.
As that war goes on and people in Iran dig out, the rest of us continue with our lives in most societies of the world, experiencing the inconvenience of higher costs of living.  We continue with our daily activities as though there were no oil crisis, economic crisis, or bombs dropping. Everything looks the same out my window.
Iran cannot compete with the US air force, so they strike with the best weapon they have, closing the traffic route for petrochemicals to be delivered from the Middle East Gulf region. They shut down most transit in the Straight of Hormuz, and in retaliation, the US, liking the idea, puts up a blockade too. It’s described as a complete blockade, except for the ships they let through delivering oil to China, India, and Pakistan. This is an angry, war-like Mars action with the restrictions of Saturn binding up the former flow of oil and fertilizers, as well as products intended for the markets of Iran. 

Every time in the last century that Saturn conjuncted Neptune in any sign, there’s been an oil crisis of some kind. All these crises created circumstances that affected humanity for much longer than the conjunction of a few weeks, impacting humanity for years. This is a reminder of how a transit from the outer planets is strong enough to come along and alter lives for years after the conjunction, in this case, has passed. There is a cyclic nature between the meeting of Saturn and Neptune anywhere in the zodiac with a nearly perfect 36-year cycle from one conjunction to the next, and other aspects such as squares and sextiles, etc., stimulating related themed events in between their conjunctions.
Barrels of oil become a transformative power through which the drama of the outer planet manifests. Everything is energy, atoms and molecules that compose themselves into one form or another. The energy in barrels of oil is not just for making plastics or fueling cars, but also for fueling social and political upheaval because of the values our civilization has invested in the electrical-grid society. Environmental regulations, which emerged from environmental catastrophes related to oil spills, are another example of how we channel these dramas into structures in our world. Wars are toxic for the planet and all life on it. Wars over oil are the intersection of toxicity and economic tumult.
The biggest casualties and costs of war are to life on this planet. Environmental consciousness around oil and energy dependence is being reminded to us again, as well as being reminded about environmental unconsciousness.
As the USA pulls back from alternative energy investment, China excels at owning the future because of its dedication to developing it. 

Mars in Aries is looking for a fight as a mode of expression. Energy in Aries wants to plow not just the fields of Spring in the northern hemisphere, but with the congestion of planets in Aries this April, Mars also wants to plow the established rules of the road out of its path. Mars’ attitude is:  join me or get out of my way.  But Mars is not a senior determining god of the astrological psyche; it doesn’t do anything long-term. It doesn’t plan. Mars is brute force, which is at times very useful, but it’s the outer planets that create and administer the foundations of structure and the tapestry of existence from the psyche's broader dimension to this platform of 3D life on Earth. The inner planets channel things into daily life. Mars in Aries has its moment of banner-waving hurrah before it runs out of gas and folds back into the tangents of the slower-moving, more powerful outer planets. The grand display falls back into the weight of the more powerful outer- planet tapestry, taking the initiative with Mars’ outgoing behavior and channeling it into the eternally evolving structure.
Along with oil shipments arriving amid a global supply decline, hoarding and rationing of petroleum products are taking place in Asia, for example. Chemicals that also come through the Straight of Hormuz for use in fertilizers in springtime farming will be in shortened supply at a critical time in the northern hemisphere’s peak growing season. Disruption in their scheduled delivery will incur an added cost.  At the same time, the chokehold imposed by limits and tariffs on fertilizers and potash from Canada to US farmers already in place is another hurdle to clear, with costs to be paid later in the growing season.
The following link details the story of fertilizer shortages this season.
https://medium.com/@hrnews1/experts-warn-global-mass-starvation-is-coming-by-summer-9d336d03c97f
Add to this information the arrival of what is being described as a Super El Niño this summer and fall. There is already a drought afflicting the US western breadbasket, as well as other continents in the Northern Hemisphere. These are all Neptune-related manifestations in nature, conjuncted by the limiting tendencies of Saturn. 

​This April, Aries hosts a cluster of outer and inner planets, including the two inner planets famous for acting as catalysts for the major themes brought by the outer planets' conjunctions, oppositions, and other aspects. The trans-Jupiter planets orchestrate big, sprawling themes that are aided in manifesting in human consciousness by the interactions among Mercury, Venus, Mars, the Sun, and the Moon. These spheres all play a role in connecting the energies of the outer planets to our conscious experience and resulting awareness. Mars and Mercury are both in Aries now. Venus passed through earlier and is moving on to meet up with Uranus in the last week of April, as Uranus is about to slip out of Taurus into Gemini. Uranus will eventually do some very innovative, remarkable things, many of which will be uplifting in Gemini. No lack of ideas will be offered with Uranus in Gemini, but the distinction between brilliance and idiocy isn’t so clear. We have to be wise.  Surprises from Uranus often take the form of clever adaptations to events we didn’t expect or want. We find the silver lining with Uranus, facing the need to problem-solve. 

Uranus entering the Air sign Gemini is a major change from its subdued time in the Earth sign Taurus. As it enters Gemini, Uranus will be moving into a trine aspect with Pluto over in Aquarius. I see this as the birthing of a new way of life rolled out over four to six years.
Yes, to new technology, but new means technology that isn’t common now. It might be old or unfamiliar technology. Space-age or survivalist technology qualifies as new. Foreign, even alien-inspired technology. Some astrology-conscious people assume that Pluto in Aquarius (Uranus’s ruling sign), trine to Uranus in Gemini (two Air signs), means Star Trek technology available at Walmart. New advancements also mean adapting to them and moving away from the old.
Drone warfare is replacing the investment in large, expensive, bulky hardware on battlefields. Ukraine’s soldiers are waging war remotely and not exposing themselves to the enemy's rifles. They are taking Russian prisoners with robots on the battlefield.
Pluto is the holder of past experiences brought into the present. Pluto can bring back old technology that fills gaps where new technology fails in the event of something knocking out our electricity. An EMP/nuclear detonation overhead without destroying a city, or even a solar flare could knock out established hi-tech. We would then need to use old-style rotary phones, for example. 

Venus will transit into a meeting with Uranus in the last week of April as they both change signs from Taurus to Gemini. Uranus is the dominant planet in this shift; Venus adds some complexion to the picture. We will be reminded of what is important. What we care about. What we would like to distinguish as special. Our feelings about what is valuable (Venus) and what makes us special (Uranus) combine, probably because of something happening that forces reflection. A sudden event, a surprise. Lots of talking to follow, some of it might seem crazy. 

​Later this year is the beginning of a Uranus Return in Gemini in the US natal chart. Every 84 or so years, Uranus returns to this place. At the birth of the USA, it brought revolution, a process of definition. Seeking and finding our uniqueness. Appropriately, in Gemini, Uranus brought about great speeches and documents, such as the Constitution and the Articles of Independence. Uranus moved on and made more aspects to its own natal USA chart placement in its 84-year cycle. It brought more rebellions and new amendments to the Constitution, and it will do it again. The USA is going to go through another extended period of reform. We’ve all seen, in recent times, areas of conduct that need to be written into law but never were. The USA will go into this election year in another struggle to define what is valuable and unique in the national identity, and because Uranus’s natal place is in Gemini, much talking and debate will ensue. The Uranus return will take us into the 2028 national election. During and immediately after this time, it will likely redefine the nation’s character and goals for the next 84-year cycle. The eventual outcome of these documents and the shape of the nation may surprise people; the struggle to do it will be contentious.
Last year, $2.2 trillion dollars was added to the national debt. This year, by spending billions of dollars per day in Iran alone, plus just the interest on the debt, we will top last year’s total.  With just one trillion dollars, every adult in America could get a new car costing around $35,000.
Or spend another trillion on a war. For now, Americans know that the bombing and possibly soon American troops fighting in a foreign country, is taking place across the sea; it isn’t here. Higher gas prices and soon elevated costs of all other related petroleum-dependent products will impact our lives as the consequences of this war impact lives in the homelands.
Americans are also learning that last year’s major government legislation is bringing back military conscription for young men primarily, up to age 40. This is a huge cultural shift that escaped open discussion and has now been made into law. These things are happening in a short period of time, and more are to come as the wheels of epochal change turn. 

Saturn will move along and eventually leave Aries in April of 2028. It will move into Taurus, where the actions of its time in Aries impact world economies in a restrictive, possibly depressing, but ultimately stabilizing way. The stability Saturn often brings is what comes when brought down to earth, facing reality and living within it. 

Neptune will remain in Aries for another 12 years. Neptune’s over-the-top capacity for transcendental expansion in Aries, contrasted with its time in anything-goes Pisces, is contained in a smaller frame in Aries and may manifest in a way I have described for a while now as the crusades of holy warriors. Idealism that settles for the mundane level of action, fueled by fervor rather than deeply thoughtful or compassionate dreaming. Pisces is intuitive, Aries is instinct. Aries is not a great place for Neptune, like a person with an extra-large hat size trying to put on a small-sized hat. Not a good fit for idealism or uplifting philosophies, which take patient wisdom gained over time.
Part of the fuel behind the fervor could easily be a consequence of what’s happening now, which I would equate culturally to watching the Dark Ages reclaim the Enlightenment. Natural or man-made disasters, terrorism, or war, throughout the world may be very different by that time. Economic austerity, world climate meltdown, food supply crisis as a result - whatever the reason is, people have to survive one way or another until Neptune, making it into Taurus, breathes easier. That will be the arrival of new dimensions of world peace following the exhausting costs of surviving Saturn and Neptune in Aries. Saturn into Taurus in two plus years is going to reveal the wreckage of its time in Aries, breaking things down. Epochal shifts don’t happen in a season and then, like a movie, blissfully end and allow you to resume the life you had. Saturn moving into Taurus is the brick walls of facing the new reality being born. By that time, we will have faced the losses that define us now.  A new shape of reality is emerging. 

​Saturn and Neptune in Aries is us – humanity - creating circumstances within which we will be forced to live in new ways, some of which are old ways. It’s not the age of Aquarius that many people talked about with Pluto entering Aquarius. The age of Aquarius, according to esteemed astrologer Rick Levine, is still technically a lifetime away, assuming an average lifetime is 70 plus years. Pluto in Aquarius is highly significant for the USA, which just passed through a return of Pluto in Capricorn during the early Covid years, to where it was immediately after the USA was founded, and during which time it defined itself. 

The newly formed USA emerged from European domination through rebellion, and a similar spirit of rebellion exists today.  We now must process the Uranus Return, which commences later this year and lasts into the 2028 presidential election.
Uranus’s goal is to broaden our understanding.  Uranus, or Oranos, the primordial sky god, existed in the void as an abstract ancient mythological god. His mingling with Mother Earth produced, among other things, a son, Kronos or Saturn, whose form of distinguishing himself from his formless father was to create structure, boundaries, and relative dimension. Up and down, side to side. Walls and fences. Bones to host flesh. The son rebelled against his father and, as often happens, distinguished himself in being different.
The USA distinguished itself in breaking away from the parent nations in Europe, but it didn’t totally reinvent the wheel. The legal system, forms within government…. there are many such echoes of the parents in the child still today and some of them are still evolving. Some of them have glaring dysfunctional holes that we have seen displayed and require some tweaking for the next 84-year cycle. Uranus will revisit the spirit of rebellion in its sometimes-seeming disorganized way. Uranus’s nature is to do the unexpected, to change course, to avoid the walls and trenches created by old man Saturn that, by their nature, want only to support the existing structure. The father rebels against the son. Chaos spars with disorder. So it seems, because the plot line has to dodge the obstructions put up by human psychology, those that drag their feet from change and those that need to step more carefully with less foot on the accelerator pedal.
The US is departing from a presumed role as the world’s policeman, the superpower that championed a mix of democracy and capitalism in a system of government not that different from the one it rebelled from 250 years ago, but will have to change again. Russia is diminished, and its power of influence in the world is being reduced. China faces internal problems that restrain it from becoming more dominant. Europe must step up to assume self-determination without the puppeteer’s hand, orchestrated from the US, trying to steer the car from the back seat. The world order is changing.  

​3I/Atlas passed beyond Jupiter after a remarkable trajectory that avoided falling prey to Jupiter’s gravity and kept it on the course it was on, right at the edges of where Jupiter’s enormous pull could have swayed its path. Speculation that it was technology keeping it precisely on this path after circling the Sun, and not good luck, was part of studies to determine if it was jets steering it or remarkable good fortune in having three jets equally spaced for its entire time after passing the Sun.
Seen here: https://avi-loeb.medium.com/linking-the-non-gravitational-acceleration-of-3i-atlas-to-its-symmetric-system-of-three-jets-847859455a16
And whether the studies revealed the presence of what could be nuclear-powered fuel, seen here: https://www.newsnationnow.com/space/ufo/latest-3i-atlas-mystery-signs-of-nuclear-fuel/
While 3I/Atlas is now out of the news and off the front page, it remains on a path to leave the solar system if it is a natural object in a few thousand years. It takes that long to reach the outer limits of the Oort cloud, composed of ice and rocky debris that circles the solar system. Because it is now past Jupiter, it is far from the Sun and no longer reflects enough light to be followed. Avi Loeb, the scientist who was most visibly asking if it was technology or not, concedes that it is a rare but natural event.
Astrologically, as a natural body, it remains a part of our solar system. It entered thousands of years ago and will remain within the solar system for more thousands of years. If it were a technologically generated object designed to resemble a natural object, it could reach an outer planet that is also outside the Sun’s reflective light and therefore unseen by Earth-based telescopes. We would never know. 

​Vladimir Putin’s natal Moon is about to be conjuncted by transiting Uranus. It has already begun; he is feeling it now. The restless, moody unease is just beginning for him. A series of unpleasant events tears up the plans he had made. He has to adapt, but the Moon is about habits, repeated patterns of behavior, both cultural and personal. It denies the satisfaction one seeks, presenting an unpredictable moving target. Even in his home life, Putin will feel uneasy and nervous - a minor event may make him feel as though he is being threatened in his home, or in fact, he may be threatened with an upset in his home. An insecure feeling. There is nowhere to go and nothing to do that will make this go away. Hormonal swings accompany this transit. The uncertainty of his exact birthtime makes it difficult to say what house his natal Moon is in, but the chart astrologers have been working with for many years places his natal Moon in the 8th house. If so, secrets about his accumulated wealth and family will be revealed, undermining his sense of control and stability. For a strongman leader, this looks a little like paranoia. The 8th house Moon is obsessed with everyone finding out what you have taken and hidden. In Russia today, with a sinking quality of life and economic hardships growing as the war drains the nation’s vitality, the leader isn’t helping to convince anyone that he’s still the guy they want leading them with these kinds of revelations.
For the next two plus years, transiting Saturn will run opposite Putin’s natal Saturn, Sun, Mercury, and Neptune. This is a prolonged period of feeling the walls closing in. Restriction. Obstruction. Even depression. Confusion about health, misdiagnosis. We have to remember that this man is a skilled survivor of difficulty, but he will be severely tested.
Russia’s chart shows squares from Saturn now and soon from Neptune to the natal position of the Sun, and an inconjunct to the natal Moon. The Neptune square will last for three years. This is a loss of direction, loss of faith, or faith requiring rebirth. It’s a recognition that familiar ways of doing things no longer work, and that decisions must be made to initiate change. 

The natal chart for Iran is cast for the 1979 revolution. Iran is an ancient nation and has had many birth charts; this is the one we have to work with now. It shows transiting Saturn conjuncting the natal Moon and Ascendant at this time. This is karma at work, challenging the way of life the nation has known since 1979. It is a test. As it would be for an individual, the test is to ask whether the present subconscious programming still fits; if not, can we initiate changes to find what feels right? Being that the natal Moon is in Aries, traditional astrology suggests that nurturing is at a minimum with this placement. The nation feels like it will never get the love and affection it wants. Or in other terms, it doesn’t have the kind of mothering it wants. An Aries Moon is expressive, but it is perhaps a little self-absorbed, and people want their lunar nurturing or mothering to be more giving.
On the other hand, this placement is what they are accustomed to. It feels appropriate; it’s what they are accustomed to.  Saturn's arrival by conjunction makes people question, through hardship and deprivation, whether what they want is present. Iran can’t receive shipments of anything by sea with the US blockade in place now, but they have many friendly borders, plus the Black Sea ports available for receiving needed food and other items. The blockade will require adjustments that they can make.
Neptune is approaching Iran’s natal Ascendant and Moon. This will be a longer-term influence on the heels of the hardships Saturn has brought to them. With Neptune approaching, there’s a wide range of possibilities for Iran’s future. There’s a religious component to it; new leadership has to provide this. It could be an awakening of wanting more than they had, or if the new leadership today provides more care, the nation may become more unified behind it. Neptune in Aries is the era of the holy warrior, much religious passion, and not much philosophical depth. The American president initially championed the Iranian population’s desire for more freedom, but he quickly turned away from that and replaced it with threats to annihilate them after heavy bombing of targets that included civilians.
Eventually, transiting Saturn is going to oppose Iran’s natal Pluto, as transiting Neptune conjuncts its natal Ascendant and Moon. I would say that is a change of government, but because of the circumstances and astrological conditions mentioned, it’s as likely that Iran embraces a more fervent religious anger that’s still burning deep inside its natal Pluto. The US has, as usual, misunderstood the culture and nurtured nothing but more anger. 

​In addition to the approach of transiting Uranus to the USA natal Uranus position, transiting Saturn is approaching an opposition to the natal placement of Saturn in the US chart. It arrives in this position close enough to count in June, makes an exact opposition in July, and will repeat and extend the depth and power of the opposition by turning retrograde later in the year and continuing its work on the US natal Saturn through next April. This is a year of difficulty. The natal US Saturn is in the 10th house, which is a position of standing among peers, how everyone else sees the health and reputation of the USA. Saturn expects discipline and adherence to guidelines. When it arrives to the opposition, with little compassion it brings about circumstances to restore what from Saturn’s point of view is the internal structure and optimum operating condition of the organism. If there’s dead weight to cut off, it does so. Decisions will be faced that are no longer choices of convenience; they are mandatory. Saturn in opposition usually brings forms of pain, which are often described as deprivation. Need to go on a diet? Saturn takes away the money to buy food, leaving only enough for necessities.
I will comment in more detail about this next time. We are still getting through Saturn and Neptune and facing the arrival of the Uranus surprise package in the coming months. 

​Comments welcome.
​David can be reached at [email protected] for a personal astrological consultation.
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