Signs of the Times
The Vernal Equinox: Solar Year 2025
Also,
Saturn & Neptune Conjunction in Tropical Aries
Geopolitics, Culture & Global Economy
And,
Saturn To Transit Aries:
Is The United Kingdom on Brink of Civil War?
Featuring,
RUSSIA, UKRAINE & NATO
THE FUTURE OF EUROPE
GLOBAL ASTROLOGY
by Theodore White, mundane Astrolog.sci
“Come gather ‘round people…
And admit that the waters around you have grown
And accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone
And if your breath to you is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’ ” ~ Bob Dylan
In this edition of Global Astrology, I analyze the new Solar Year of 2025 with the arrival of the Vernal Equinox of 20th March and what the year has to offer for those who want to achieve positive growth, advancement and success as we enter the mid-2020s.
I also examine the historic Saturn-Neptune conjunction in Tropical Aries and the wide-ranging effects it will have on nations worldwide and people in particular.
I cover the current and past influences that Saturn in Aries has had on nations like the United Kingdom; which in my mundane astrological forecast is heading toward heightened internal conflict and possibly civil war.
We also look the state of the Russia-Ukraine war into 2025, as well as the roles the United States, European Union and NATO may play in bringing about peace.
In Applied Astrology, the Vernal Equinox is when the Sun is exactly above the Equator as day and night are of equal length.
It marks the beginning of spring in the northern hemisphere and fall in the southern hemisphere and occurs around the 20th or 21st of March.
The northward Vernal Equinox take place on Thursday, 20th March at precisely 09:00 UTC (4:00 a.m. EDT) as the the Sun crosses the celestial equator.
It marks an equal day and night to the Earth and is the start of spring in the Northern Hemisphere and autumn (fall) in the Southern Hemisphere.
Mundane Astrologer Theodore White's Comments On The Year Ahead
In my analysis of Solar Year 2025, I have discovered that the months from mid-March 2025 to mid-March 2026 call for new beginnings, new starts and renewals.
The planetary year of 2025 will be a transformative one that will come to shape humanity’s trajectory into the late 2030s.
As I navigated world transits what I witnessed were significance shifts that could lead to civil conflicts within nations and potential war among nations. This means that forethought, good intentions and resilience will be important to face and address the opportunities and challenges.
By understanding these global planetary transits, individuals, groups, organizations, populations and their and governments can better prepare for a future that yields positive results from astrological knowledge and foresight.
The planetary transits with the Vernal Equinox this solar year reveal that major adjustments, shifts and new starts will take place - especially for those unaware of the significance of 2025 which begins the middle years of the 2020s.
As the world emerged out of the global pandemic and into these post-pandemic years, populations worldwide have had to make adjustments to the sudden changes in their lives.
While some have succeeded in adjusting, it may have been at the expense of others, and this will have dire consequences for those who did so.
The new solar year of 2025 calls for renewal in many ways.
Planetary transits will act greatly as the major conjunction of the year will be the developing Saturn-Neptune conjunction; along with significant squares and sextiles among the superior planets.
Matters relating to cultural, economic, domestic, personal, professional, political and social will all be highlighted at various levels of importance for a great many people worldwide.
What is happening is that times are changing
As for the good reader who wants to start fresh in 2025, know that what you accomplish during the mid-2020s may have implications into the next decade of the 2030s, so choose and decide well.
Know your own nativity, transits and secondary progressions as the world transits and their influences on your own personal nativity, as it will show the most successful road to take to meet your own goals.
To discover this, contact me at astro730@gmail.com with your birthday, time of birth and place of birth. Include brief comments and/or questions on what you would like to accomplish in 2025 in particular and over the next 3-5 years in general.
The best path to take in 2025 is to utilize the solar year well with good intentions to meet your personal, professional and domestic aspirations, goals and plans.
SIGNS OF THE TIMES
Vernal Equinox: Solar Year 2025
by Theodore White, mundane Astrolog.sci
The Vernal Equinox occurs on 20 March 2025 at precisely 09:00 UTC (4:00 a.m. EDT), marking the official start of spring in the Northern Hemisphere.
During this time, the Sun crosses the celestial equator, bringing equal amounts of day and night to every part of the planet.
As this seasonal shift unfolds, the stars associated with winter are gradually sinking into the western horizon after dark, making way for the new constellation arrivals that signal spring.
One of the most exciting aspects of this time of year is the changing sky, as familiar constellations begin to fade while others rise.
Notable constellations to observe include Leo, Boötes, and Virgo. These constellations are particularly prominent during the northern hemisphere's spring months, and they will slowly take their place in the sky as Orion, the iconic winter constellation, sinks into the horizon.
One of the most exciting celestial phenomena to look forward to this week is the potential for enhanced aurora borealis displays.
Around the time of the vernal equinox, Earth’s axis aligns in such a way that the magnetic fields of Earth and the solar wind briefly become aligned, resulting in more intense and widespread auroras.
Geomagnetic activity is higher in spring and fall season than in winter and summer, that means that northern lights sightings are typically more abundant.
As we enter the new solar year of 2025, the Vernal Equinox from the Middle East looks active and malefic with the transits near the Aries Point. There will need to be calm, cool and prudent hearts and minds considering the Mundane Ingress Chart for the region.
Vernal Equinox
Thursday, 20 March 2025
Jerusalem, Israel
As the Vernal Equinox arrives on 20 March 20, 2025, the chart for Jerusalem, Israel, indicates a historic year for the Middle East with the focus on administration and internal political conflict in the wake of the 7 October 2023 attack by Hamas.
The political strife by anti-Benjamin Netanyahu opposition groups will more than likely see hotheaded activity in and around Jerusalem calling for the return of the Hamas hostages and an end to the war.
Wednesday, 19 March 2025
Israelis protest outside the Knesset.
Just as Vernal Equinox 2025 was primed to take place, events in the Middle took center stage again as the leader of Israel's coalition party on Wednesday, 19th March returned to Israel's government as national security minister, this, after it carried out a wave of heavy strikes that killed over 400 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Itamar Ben-Gvir had left Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition in January to protest the ceasefire with Hamas, which was shattered by Israel's bombardment the previous Tuesday.
Netanyahu said the attack was “only the beginning” and that Israel would press ahead until it achieves all of its war aims - destroying Hamas and freeing all hostages held by the militant group since its 7 October 2023 attack on Israel started the fighting.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said Tuesday's strikes killed at least 409 people, including 173 children and 88 women. Zaher al-Waheidi, head of the ministry’s records department, described it as the deadliest day in Gaza since the start of the war.
The Gaza Health Ministry says an Israeli strike has wounded five international United Nations' workers.
It says they were taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital in central Gaza after their headquarters was struck on Wednesday, 19 March 2025.
It was not clear which U.N. body they were affiliated with. There was no immediate comment from U.N. spokespeople or the Israeli military.
Israel launched a wave of airstrike across Gaza on Tuesday, 18th March, killing over 400 Palestinians, according to the ministry. Israel says it targeted Hamas militants.
Thousands of Israelis marched in Jerusalem on the very next day to protest a resumption of the war in the Gaza Strip, fearing it could further endanger some two dozen hostages held by Hamas.
A sea of Israeli flags could be seen outside the Israeli parliament a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shattered a fragile ceasefire by launching heavy strikes on Gaza.
Families and supporters of the hostages fear renewed fighting could be a death sentence for their loved ones in captivity. The hostages “are waiting for us to take them out and to bring them home, but war will not do it. Only negotiations will do it,” a protester said.
Hamas is still holding 59 hostages, including 24 individuals who are believed to be alive.
The demonstrators are also protesting Netanyahu’s plan to fire the head of Israel’s internal security agency, the latest in a series of moves that his critics view as an assault on Israeli democracy.
A government statement on Wednesday said Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of the ultranationalist Jewish Power party, regained his portfolio as national security minister. He left the coalition in January to protest the ceasefire with Hamas.
His return strengthens Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition ahead of a crucial budget vote this month and improves its chances of surviving until the next scheduled elections in October 2026.
Ben-Gvir supports the full resumption of the war with the aim of annihilating Hamas, depopulating Gaza through what he refers to as the voluntary migration of Palestinians and rebuilding Jewish settlements there.
Meanwhile, the United States and Russia are preparing to meet in the Middle East to conduct negotiations that will hopefully end the invasion of Ukraine.
American President Donald Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin for almost two hours on a Tuesday, 18 March phone call that U.S. and Russia leaders hoped end the war.
Despite push from globalists to continue the war, it has become apparent that the ideology to force the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) onto Russia's borders is not popular in either the U.S., or Russia.
The European Union, in its opposition to President Trump, has found it useless to convince anyone in their argument that the U.S. should continue its billions of dollars to support the EU, which does business with Russia.
"The leaders agreed that the movement to peace will begin with an energy and infrastructure ceasefire, as well as technical negotiations on implementation of a maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea, full ceasefire and permanent peace.
These negotiations will begin immediately in the Middle East."
Russia has surged further into Ukrainian territory and reclaimed tracts of the occupied Kursk region.
This Vernal Equinox is special, as it will also announce the coming of the historic Saturn-Neptune conjunction in tropical Aries.
That will fully take place in February 2026; however, all through 2025 both planets will touch on the 0-degree of tropical Aries and in retrograde motion, slip back into the late degrees of tropical Pisces
The planetary transits of 2025 indicate to me that an eventful and historic era lasting through 2026 as well is in order. Most of the significant planetary transits and their aspects call for a major year on nearly all fronts as lives will change; some for the better, and others, not so well.
Among 2025's significant transits are:
· 20 MARCH 2025 - VERNAL EQUINOX - SUN ENTERS 0-ARIES
· March 29, 2025 - PARTIAL SOLAR ECLIPSE AT 9-ARIES
This will be a partial solar eclipse for everyone in the Moon’s shadow.
The curved, yellow lines on this map show the percentage of the Sun that will be covered by the Moon during the maximum of the eclipse at those locations.
The green lines show when the maximum eclipse will occur at locations along those lines.
Times are in UTC or Coordinated Universal Time. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) is 4 hours behind UTC, so 10:30 UTC is 6:30 a.m. EDT.
The orange loops are sunrise and sunset lines. The loop at the western (left) end of the path is the sunrise line.
The left half of that loop shows where the eclipse ends at sunrise, while the right half shows where the eclipse begins at sunrise.
On the eastern loop, the left side shows where the eclipse ends at sunset, and the right half shows where the eclipse begins at sunset. The blue lines show where maximum eclipse occurs at sunrise or sunset.
Geopolitical events are noted in Europe, as the nations and cities under Aries in Mundane Astrology are:
Britain, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Lesser Poland (Upper Silesia) France, Burgundy, Israel, Palestine, Syria, and has influence over Judea overall, also Italy, Naples, Capua, Florence, Verona, Padua, Brunswick, Marseilles, Cracow, Saragossa, and Utrecht in Holland.
With clear skies, observers will see the partial solar eclipse in sections of North America, Europe, Africa, northern Asia, small parts of South America, throughout Greenland and Iceland, as well as much of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans.
In western Europe and northwestern Africa, the eclipse will begin in the mid- to late morning. In eastern Europe and northern Asia, most or all of the eclipse will occur in the afternoon or early evening.
In much of the Americas, including the northeastern United States, the partial solar eclipse will already be in progress as the Sun is rising in the morning.
The solar eclipse point is angular on the very eastern coastlines of North America, i.e., where the Sun and Moon will be rising on 29 March 2025.
PARTIAL SOLAR ECLIPSE, Saturday 29 March 2025
NEW YORK, N.Y., USA
Astrologer Peter Stockinger writes:
"The map below shows the eclipse’s path of angularity, where one can see that the eclipse line (eclipse point conjunct the Meridian) runs through Poland, which falls under the rulership of Mars.
Also noteworthy is the fact that the eclipse point is angular in New York, Montreal, and La Paz, which suggests the possibility of an immediate effect:
"The Sun is placed in the first Decanate of Aries, ruled by Mars. Therefore we have to look at Mars as sole eclipse ruler. William Lilly writes in his Annus Tenebrosus, that this placement:
'… portends the frequent Motion of Armies, and rumours of Wars, continuall expeditions, assaults, and batteries, yea and Wars, with much noise and tumult; Seditions, Controversies, and intemperancy of the ayr verging principally unto drinesse.'
Lilly also writes that Mars as sole eclipse ruler stirs up seditions and tumults. In some cases, it can indicate the onset of acute diseases, infirmities by breaking or stretching the veins.
He states that the rulership of Mars inclines rulers and influential people unto tyranny, violence, injuries, and injustice. There is also the possibility of sudden storms, and violent shipwrecks. This eclipse can also excite men’s minds to great rashness and foolhardiness.
There are also two fixed star connections which are noteworthy. First, eclipse ruler Mars is conjunct fixed star Pollux, an orange star, situated on the head of the Southern Twin.
According to its martial nature, this star suggests brutality, tyranny, as well as violence and cruelty when conjunct a malefic. It can also indicate cruel twists of fate.
Robson writes in his Fixed Stars & Constellations in Astrology, that “… with Mars [it indicates] Violent, murderer or murdered, high position, but final ruin, violent death by suffocation, drowning or assassination, especially if the Moon be there also”.
Second, Sun and Moon are conjunct fixed star Algenib, situated at the tip of the wing of Pegasus. It is associated with notoriety, dishonour, violence, misfortune.
Its nature is that of Mars and Mercury. With the Sun, it suggests “… mental disturbances, fevers and ill-health, some danger of accidents”, according to Robson. With the Moon is indicates “… dishonour, loss by scandal, exiled or forced to flee, ill-health, trouble through writings”, also according to Robson."
I agree with Stockinger; considering how Tropical Aries is quite active throughout 2025 as transiting Saturn and Neptune revolve close to the ecliptic point of Aries.
And, the nature of its ruler, Mars, which has been in Tropical Cancer for months since December 2024 and retrograde among the stars of Castor and Pollux, call for prudence just as the new solar year of 2025 gets underway.
As the partial solar eclipse of 29 March in Aries follows the Vernal Equinox of 20th March and Venus' shift to 'morning star' phase on 22nd March; it is a good time to keep matters in preparation for adjustments and changes going into early April 2025 as Mercury turns south in declination and then stations direct on 7th April.
The retrogrades of both Mercury and Venus will end respectively on 7 April (Mercury) and 12-13th April (Venus) which will assist those looking to make new starts which will open gradually through the rest of April and into May and June 2025.
Solar Year 2025's Significant Transits
· 22 MARCH 2025 - VENUS TURNS MORNING STAR
· 30 March 2025 - NEPTUNE ENTERS TROPICAL ARIES
· April 3, 2025 – MERCURY TURNS SOUTH IN DECLINATION
April 4, 2025 – SATURN SEXTILE URANUS (1st of three sextile aspects)
· April 7, 2025 – MERCURY STATIONS DIRECT AT 26-PISCES
· April 13, 2025 – VENUS STATIONS DIRECT AT 24-PISCES
· April 17, 2025 – JUPITER SESQUI QUADRATE PLUTO
· April 23, 2025 – MERCURY TURNS NORTH IN DECLINATION
· 30 APRIL 2025 - VENUS RE-ENTERS 0-ARIES
· May 4, 2025 – PLUTO STATIONS RETROGRADE AT 3-AQUARIUS
25 MAY 2025 - SATURN ENTERS TROPICAL ARIES
· June 4, 2025 – JUPITER SEMI-SEXTILE URANUS
· 9 JUNE 2025 - JUPITER ENTERS TROPICAL CANCER
· June 15, 2025 – JUPITER SQUARE SATURN (3rd and final world square)
· June 19, 2025 – JUPITER SQUARE NEPTUNE
· June 24, 2025 – JUPITER QUINCUNX PLUTO
4 July 2025 - NEPTUNE STATIONS RETROGRADE at 2-ARIES
12-13 July 2025 - SATURN STATIONS RETROGRADE at 1-ARIES
18 July 2025 - MERCURY RETROGRADE (until 11 August 2025)
8 August 2025 - MARS TURNS SOUTH IN DECLINATION
12 August 2025 - SATURN SEXTILE URANUS (2nd sextile aspect)
23 August 2025 - JUPITER SEMI-SQUARE URANUS
29 August 2025 - URANUS SEXTILE NEPTUNE
6 September 2025 - URANUS STATIONS RETROGRADE
7 September 2025 - TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE AT 15-PISCES
19 September 2025 - MERCURY TURNS SOUTH IN DECLINATION
21 September 2025 - PARTIAL SOLAR ECLIPSE AT 29-VIRGO
13-14 October 2025 - PLUTO TURNS DIRECT
16 October 2025 - VENUS TURNS SOUTH IN DECLINATION
9 November 2025 - MERCURY RETROGRADE (until 29 November 2025)
11 November 2025 - JUPITER RETROGRADE (until 10-11 March 2026)
20 November 2025 - URANUS SEXTILE NEPTUNE
28 November 2025 - SATURN TURNS DIRECT
10 December 2025 - NEPTUNE TURNS DIRECT
20 January 2026 - SATURN SEXTILE URANUS (3rd & last world sextile)
4 February 2026 - URANUS TURNS DIRECT
17 February 2026 - ANNULAR SOLAR ECLIPSE
20 February 2026 - SATURN CONJUNCT NEPTUNE (at 0-degrees tropical Aries)
26 February 2026 - MERCURY RETROGRADE
8 March 2026 - VENUS TURNS NORTH IN DECLINATION
11 March 2026 - JUPITER TURNS DIRECT (15-degrees Tropical Cancer)
20 March 2026 - VERNAL EQUINOX - SUN ENTERS TROPICAL ARIES
20 MARCH 2026 - MERCURY TURNS DIRECT
26 March 2026 - SATURN TURNS NORTH IN DECLINATION
28 March 2026 - SATURN SEXTILE PLUTO
12 April 2026 - MARS TURNS NORTH IN DECLINATION
19 April 2026 - MERCURY TURNS NORTH IN DECLINATION
24 April 2026 - NEPTUNE TURNS NORTH IN DECLINATION
So, the Sun entering 0-degree tropical Aries on 20th March 2025 announces the Saturn-Neptune conjunction at that degree to come, on and off, throughout 2025 before both planets make ingress in Aries for good in February 2026.
The Saturn-Neptune conjunction occurs every 36.4 years.
My analysis of this historic planetary conjunction relative to Earth and on the ecliptic point of 0-degrees Tropical Aries surely signifies that the mid-2020s opens a kind of 'new era,' that will leave its imprint on many lives globally into the later years of the 2020s, and all through the decade of the 2030s.
Saturn & Neptune Conjunction in Tropical Aries
History in the Making
What It Means For The World & You
by Theodore White, mundane Astrolog.sci
In Mundane Astrology, the planetary transits of the superior, outer planets relative to Earth is a major branch of the Judicial Tree of Mundane Astrology.
As A.J Pearce wrote in 1881, “The familiarity of the inhabited regions of the Earth with the various signs of the zodiac was described by the mundane astrologer Claudius Ptolemy in his classic, ‘Tetrabiblos.’
It is a remarkable fact that Britain and Germany are ever found to be influenced by the transits of the superior planets through Aries; in like manner, France and Italy are still found to be affected by Leo, India and Greece by Capricorn.
Coincidences repeated through many centuries (history repeating itself) impress the mind, and lead to the conviction that there is some mysterious connection between them.
No country prospers during the period of Saturn’s stays in its ruling sign; while, on the other hand, the transits of Jupiter coincide with fortunate events.
The relationship of the several signs of the Zodiac with the countries and chief cities of the world is thus stated by mundane astrologers:
For instance, Tropical Aries influences Britain, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Lesser Poland (Upper Silesia) France, Burgundy, Israel, Palestine, Syria, and has influence over Judea overall, also Italy, Naples, Capua, Florence, Verona, Padua, Brunswick, Marseilles, Cracow, Saragossa, and Utrecht in Holland.
At this time, transiting Saturn, along with the planet Neptune, are forming conjunctions to one another near the Tropical Sign of Aries, a cardinal, fire Sign.
An astrological ‘Fall’ is the sign positioned directly opposite a planet’s sign of exaltation; it is considered to be its fall.
As the exaltation is a place of awareness for the planet, as Saturn in Libra is; but its 'fall' is a position of debilitation (weakness) concerning the function of the planet, including everything else the planet represents - and so it will be for world transit Saturn in Aries (2026-2028) and Neptune in Aries (2026-2039)
THE UNITED KINGDOM & SATURN IN TROPICAL ARIES
'DIFFICULT TIMES AHEAD'
It is my forecast that the coming years of the mid-to-late 2020s, and then (via Neptune's slow transit in Aries for 14 years) that the United Kingdom will undergo a series of debilitating events on unfavorable immigration policies that will lead to cultural and internal clashes within Britain itself.
This includes most of northern Europe itself as well.
The issue is what Europeans, and British, call an 'invasion' of immigrants that have taken over towns, cities and villages in the wake of 10 years of what populations called 'woke immigration.'
Violence broke out in several towns and cities across England after three young girls were killed in a knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance party in the seaside town of Southport in northwest England in summer 2024.
Protesters congregated in city and town centers across the UK, many of them apparently intent on clashing with police and causing havoc.
The gatherings ostensibly began as anti-immigration marches, organized on social media platforms like X and on WhatsApp and Telegram groups. They quickly turned disorderly and violent.
British residents say that anti-migrant rhetoric has become increasingly widespread in the United Kingdom over seven years as immigrants have not assimilated themselves into British culture and society.
Starmer's government is facing a wide array of issues. While the U.K. is one of the richest nations in the world, its public health service is deeply troubled and faces a cost-of-living crisis.
Damningly, the sixth-largest economy in the world has the highest levels of child poverty among richest countries, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund.
The riots are an important reminder that a small minority of people are prepared to attack property and police in the name of “protecting our kids” from religious and ethnic minorities, a British politics professor said.
“They are, and I can’t stress this enough, a tiny minority of a population of 67 million,” he added. “In short, the riots may be no joke, but civil war most definitely is.”
Starmer and his government will have to grapple with claims propagated by the far-right that at the root of many of the U.K.’s problems are migrants and ethnic minorities.
Money expert Martin Lewis has shared his initial analysis of Labor’s newly announced changes to the British welfare system, calling them “fraught with challenges."
The reforms were announced by work and pensions secretary on 19 March 2025, with the measures amounting to £5 billion in cuts to welfare. This was mostly concentrated on scaling back health and disability-related benefits as part of Labour’s ‘Pathways to Work’ Green Paper.
Writing on the social media platform X in a rare intervention, Lewis said:
“PIP (Personal Independence Payment) is often an individual's lifeline, the difference between an unsustainable life and a manageable one. The Labor government says those in 'genuine need' will be protected, yet that all boils down to matter of definition.”
Nigel Farage, the leader of the increasingly popular Reform Party said that “deeper long-term problems remain,” criticizing what he deemed the “soft policing" of previous anti-racism riots and the “fracturing of our communities as a result of mass, uncontrolled migration.”
Saturn in Aries:
The United Kingdom on Brink of Civil War?
It is my forecast that the transit of Saturn in tropical Aries from 2026-2028 will see serious hue-and-cries which may be enough to tip the UK into a near civil war - and history backs me up.
If the good reader will look to the transits of Saturn through Tropical Aries over the past 700+ hundred years, you will note that there have been frequent coincidences of adverse events to England during Saturn's transit here.
For instance:
- In the year 1290, transiting Saturn was in Aries; there was the desperate war with the Scots waged by Edward III., as the English army was defeated at Roslin near Edinburgh.
- In 1319, Saturn revolves back into Aries again, and there took place the rebellion under the Earls of Lancaster and Hereford.
- In the year 1349, with Saturn in Aries, the Black Prince was defeated in France, and died to the great mourning of Britain.
- In 1378, Saturn in Aries, there took place the rebellion headed by Wat Tyler.
- In 1437, as Saturn returned again into tropical Aries, the English forces met with repeated defeats in France, losing all but Calais.
- Saturn, back in tropical Aries in 1466, the English civil war was raging, headed by Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick.
- In the year 1555, during Queen Mary’s reign, 277 people were burned at the stake.
- In 1584, a plot was discovered to assassinate Queen Elizabeth as fourteen individuals were hanged for the conspiracy.
- Saturn, again in tropical Aries in 1643, witnessed the civil war between Charles I and the Parliament.
- In 1761, Saturn returns to Aries and the Spaniards joined France in war against England.
- In 1790, there was war in India; riots at Birmingham and such great national distress as “exceeded all that had ever happened,” to use Goldsmith’s words.
- In the year 1320, Saturn again in tropical Aries, there was the trial of Queen Caroline, great national excitement, members of royalty disgraced, and all many of hue and cries.
- In 1849, England was hit by the Asiatic cholera visited this country; and Saturn in Aries here also caused a great economic depression in trade; along with war in Punjaub, India.
So, with Saturn set to transit tropical Aries in 2025, 2026, 2027 and into early 2028, I am not bullish on the United Kingdom under the planetary transits just ahead as Saturn's long history in Aries has proven time and again.
Consider this,
A professor David Betz, who teaches at King’s College London and once an advisor to the UK Ministry of Defence and intelligence services, warned in a podcast that British society is nearing a breaking point, "explosively configured" for mass unrest.
Subsequent years have brought about a “destruction of legitimacy” as a result of successive governments’ open border policy and their inability to protect children from grooming gangs, in addition to the emergence of a hypocritical, highly politicized judiciary.
If you want to create domestic turmoil in a society, then what the British government has been doing is almost textbook exactly what you would do, said Betz.
This "provides an argument for revolt on the part of the white majority (or large minority) that is rooted in stirring language of justice."
As the Saturn-Neptune conjunction in Tropical Aries gets ready to go in 2025, I found Professor Betz's observations trending in light of the seriousness of the historic planetary transit.
So, when Betz says that a serious conflict could break out in Britain within the next five years and with Saturn's historical role debilitated while in Tropical Aries, we can see why England is particularly vulnerable and why the importance of the rural/urban divide is ignored while the vulnerability of British infrastructure and the errors being made by the British government are heading toward disillusion (Neptune) and conflict (Saturn.)
Listen to the interview with Professor Betz here.
For instance, on Wednesday, 19th March, the ruling Labor party rejected claims that the British government is returning to a policy of austerity, just days ahead of Rachel Reeves’ Spring Statement where she is set to announce the biggest cuts since the George Osborne era.
In a Q&A at the Institute for Government think tank, asked about this claim, British Treasury minister Darren Jones said: “Just factually, it would be incorrect to say that we are doing what the Conservatives did after 2010.
On 26 March 2025, the chancellor is set to announce cuts to Whitehall budgets by billions in a move that could mean reductions of seven per cent for certain departments, with economists warning it could harm key public services.
Meanwhile, UK interest rates have been held at 4.5 per cent by the Bank of England (BoE) with another cut to borrowing costs unlikely, amid mounting global uncertainty.
While the interest rate is still expected to fall further over the remainder of the year, only two further cuts are now expected across 2025 amid an ongoing battle with inflation, rising costs for businesses and an uncertain wider economic outlook.
Having reportedly ruled out tax rises, Reeves is set to tell MPs her plans a week after her party slashed the welfare bill by around £5 billion.
Economics under Saturn' transit in tropical Aries during the mid-2020s will see debilitating events in British culture, finances, society and government.
British Labor Prime Minister Keir Starmer has been accused of waging “war on the countryside” after the government quietly scrapped a grant that helped local groups buy closure-threatened pubs.
The Community Ownership Fund, which launched 2021 with the aim of handing out £150m worth of grants by the end of 2025, but it was cancelled early with £135m having been allocated to date.
As the number of pubs in England and Wales sits at a record low, with more than 400 closing their doors for good in 2024 alone.
Now, there is growing concern in rural areas that the cancellation of the fund will damage communities across the country.
The conjunctions of Saturn-Neptune relative to Earth history has seen major events take place, often, events that can last for decades afterward before Neptune’s octave of longer-lasting dissolution takes place for as long as 14-years.
For instance, Saturn and Neptune were conjunction during the mid-to-later years of World War I (1916-1918) and the formation of the Soviet Union and also ushered in a pandemic to boot.
The conjunction in Leo of Saturn and Neptune witnessed the end of the Stalin regime (1951-53) in the Soviet Union.
Then, in 1989-90, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune made conjunction together in tropical Capricorn, that saw the rebellion of Tiananmen Square in China; the fall of the Berlin War, and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, which led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Saturn-Neptune conjunctions offer opportunities for a new way of being culturally, however, nations are also presented with stark challenges at the times of such conjunctions which demand evolution against the threats of future disillusion - especially when an outer planet such as Neptune is involved as Neptune will transit a single Sign of the Zodiac for 14 years.
Astrologer Donna Cunningham wrote in 2006 about the Saturn-Neptune conjunction of 1951-53:
There were “overwhelming and threatening realities we were confronting in the early 1950s. Europe was still struggling to rebuild after the devastating bombings of World War II, with 8 million in refugee camps in Germany alone.
The U.S. was immersed in the Cold War and in the fear of the Communist threat, while also at war in Korea. The testing and spread of nuclear weapons, which had been used for the first time to end World War II, made worldwide nuclear war seem not only possible but sometimes imminent.
A polio epidemic that paralyzed 57,000 children created a widespread panic. There were record-breaking floods around the world in 1951.
Pollution was first identified as a concern when ‘The Great Smog of 1952’ killed 4,000 people in London in a five-day period.
A wave of UFO sightings was making headlines, including the buzzing of Washington DC from July 19-26, 1952. Because of public paranoia about the presence of ‘flying saucers,’ a secret panel was convened by the CIA in January, 1953, which, according to documents now declassified, set a policy of publicly denying and ridiculing UFO reports."
These conjunctions of the superior planets, such as Saturn, Neptune, and others, contain a full understanding by mundane astrologers on world history and how human beings can evolve (rather than 'devolve') into a better future.
Already, just at the Vernal Equinox of 20 March 2025, there have been harsh words coming out of Britain by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer as tensions rise again in Ukraine.
As a mundane astrologer, I know that a ‘better future’ often depends on the ability of bad players to stay off the field so that others, who know what they are doing, are able to evolve in a positive manner - with history in mind - rather than the bad players who are always trying to spread their negative waves on others.
For instance, I was reporting as a journalist on the global events during the 1989-91 historic conjunctions of Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, as the Cold War was winding down - and fast.
Those planetary conjunctions, and the associated aspects to other planetary transits, brought in a decline in prosperity, failures, blockages, and hindrances to success or great expansion that can happen with Saturn's transits and aspects.
Remember, the superior, or outer planets in our solar system are known as 'transpersonal planes,' that affect large groups, cultures, society, peoples, populations.
Uranus’ electric, sudden and abruptness excites, but offers maverick results that can turn on the best hopes of others; while Neptune exacerbates things like monetary inflation, the hopes and expectations of society through perversion of ideas, wild speculation, widespread revelations of corruption and dissolution.
The declaration of sovereignty of the Russian Federation on 12 June 1990 constituted the key moment of the birth of a new State at that time still within the framework of the Soviet system.
Then, on 16 June 1990, the Congress of Russia adopted a text proclaimed the superiority of Russian laws on soviet laws.
On 6th July 1990, less than a month after Russia's declaration of sovereignty, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) saw its Secretary-General, Manfred Wörmer, travel to Russia and deliver a speech in Moscow in front of the members of the soon-to-be-dissolved Supreme Soviet of the USSR.
While working at my Knight-Ridder breaking news desk, I read that Wörmer had offered a declaration of peace and friendship and said:
“I came to Moscow with a very simple message: we offer you our friendship. I also have a very direct proposal for you : to cooperate. The time of confrontation is over.”
From that point in 1990 and into 1991, NATO then made two commitments: to change their institution from a military alliance to one that would form the basis of a new defense architecture for Europe, of which the USSR and then Russia would be part.
Secondly, NATO guaranteed the sovereignty of States and the non-use of force to resolve conflicts; including non-interference in the internal affairs of State and the inviolability of borders.
Just as 1988 was winding down, Mikhail Gorbachev announced at the general assembly of United Nations, his intent for a unilateral reduction of the conventional forces of the USSR, particularly in Eastern Europe and along the Sino-Soviet border.
From that point on, the United States had become the hyper power in the world.
The Saturn-Uranus-Neptune conjunction all through 1989-90 and into 1991 manifested the stark dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the subsequent expansion of NATO, which was against the promises and assurances given to Mikhail Gorbachev by American leaders at that time.
It leads us to the question in 2025 of what Saturn-Neptune will bring to this geopolitical table.
The writer Ejaz Haider ponders this:
"Like every year, Russia has wrapped itself in nationalistic pageantry, celebrating Germany’s surrender. But this year is not just about the defeat of Nazi forces 80 years ago. Today, Russia is also celebrating the success of its special military operation against Ukraine.
Arrayed before the podium are 10,000 troops in their regimental tunics, including 2,000 veterans of the Russo-Ukraine war and a regiment of female and youth cadets.
The massed military bands play the anthem and the marching tune. On the podium stand Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and, yes, Donald Trump, President of the United States of America.
As battalions march by and military hardware rumbles over the cobblestones, Putin leans closer to Trump and guides him on the traditions of the marching regiments and hardware, including Russia’s multi-warhead intercontinental missiles.
Overhead, Sukhoi fighter jets flyby, trailing white, red and blue smoke denoting the Russian flag.
Earlier, Trump had listened carefully to Putin’s speech. Putin had spoken about Russia rising from its ashes and driving Nazi forces all the way back to Germany’s ruined capital, Berlin, where the Soviet Union raised its hammer and sickle flag:
“The Volgograd Tractor Plant in Stalingrad was the symbol of the spirit of the Russian people. We cannot be defeated,” Putin said. Trump thought to himself: “I did the right thing to get Zelensky to fall in line.”
So what is Trump’s policy? And what is he thinking?
These questions are significant, especially in view of the dumpster fire at the Oval Office, where Trump and Vice-President J.D. Vance were ambushed by Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in his very bad state brinksmanship.
IS THERE A POLICY HERE?
Image by/ AFP
There is no easy answer to this question.
Going by American traditional policy framework, Trump has (a) upended decades of evolved approaches to Russia, or (b) strained transatlantic relations to near-breaking point and (c) by doing so is leading the US into uncharted waters. To put it another way, the US under Trump is making a shipwreck.
President Trump doesn’t agree and asks a simple question: if not peace, then what?
Very good question by President Trump.
We know he is a rapacious practitioner of backroom deals who told the reader in his 'The Art of the Deal' to “protect the downside and the upside will take care of itself.”
His approach has put America’s European allies and Ukraine in a black mood but, in a manner of speaking, President Trump is also being pragmatic:
“I am a businessman,” he told Zelensky. “You don’t have the cards right now. With us, you have the cards. Make a deal or we are out.”
But more than this, there was another important moment that seems to have gone mostly unnoticed. Trump said to Zelensky, “You are gambling with World War III.” He repeated the sentence.
Image by/AFP
That should give some idea of Trump’s thinking:
If Ukraine is not winning and can’t take back lost territory, the U.S. is throwing good money after bad and risking getting dragged into a war with Russia which is not winnable, given the nuclear arsenals on both sides.
Corollary: let’s make a deal. Give Putin what he has got and get him to agree to not ask for more.
But to do that, Kyiv has to first agree that it is prepared to negotiate. This was the essence of Zelensky's bust-up at the Oval Office.
To be precise, at this stage, Trump by his own admission says he doesn’t know the minutiae of such a deal. But he wanted (and wants) Zelensky to agree to the imperative of a cessation of hostilities without upfront preconditions.
The impression is that Trump’s deal with Ukraine is not about the Russo-Ukraine War; it’s about how Ukraine can pay back what it “owes” to the United States.
In other words, Trump is looking for a deal with Russia and that deal is separate from the war against Ukraine. There’s a war, for sure. But that war is between Russia and Ukraine, not Russia and the US.
For Trump, the presence of the U.S. in the middle of that war is a policy blunder by Joe Biden, an “incompetent” president who was played by Zelensky.
He would continue talking to Russia and bring Putin back into the room.
The US has already voted against the Ukrainian and European resolutions at the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council, marking a dramatic shift from the past US policy.
With talks proceeding with Russia, easing of US sanctions, exchange of ambassadors etc, the trajectory is mostly clear.
Meanwhile, Trump’s broader plan for Ukraine is working.
Even as European states scurry around holding emergency meetings and finding the money for Europe’s defense to try to fill the gap left by Trump’s volte-face, Zelensky knows that, without the United States, that Ukraine doesn’t stand much of a chance.
At his State of the Union Address, President Trump informed Congress that Zelensky had written him a letter and that he wanted to mend the rupture.
Earlier, posting on social media, Zelensky had written that their clash was “regrettable” and that he wanted “to make things right.”
Zelensky’s recent peace proposal, as posted on X, envisages, as first steps, “the release of prisoners and truce in the sky - ban on missiles, long-range drones, [bombing of] energy and other civilian infrastructure - and truce in the sea immediately, if Russia will do the same.”
That fell short of what Trump expected Zelensky to do and he ramped up the pressure by ordering that intelligence cooperation with Ukraine be halted, in addition to military aid.
He knows that Ukraine’s war effort requires intelligence input for locating Russian troop movement and force and logistics concentrations for targeting.
At the Jeddah meeting between the American-Ukraine official teams to mend fences and start the process gives a peek into what Trump wants to do - an immediate, 30-day ceasefire and talks to extend it.
The joint statement mentions that this ceasefire “is subject to acceptance and concurrent implementation by the Russian Federation.
The United States will communicate to Russia that Russian reciprocity is the key to achieving peace” [emphasis added].
The US, per the statement, “will [also] immediately lift the pause on intelligence sharing and resume security assistance to Ukraine.”
Russia had not responded to Zelensky’s proposal and, until the time of writing this, we did not have Russia’s response to the monthlong ceasefire, which could be extended.
As Mikhail Alexseev, a professor of political science at San Diego State University, said, Zelensky’s proposal “is specific and a great way to see if Russia seriously wants a negotiated settlement that may last and allow Ukraine to exist as an independent state.”
Does it?
The US approach is more about little probes, to see where it goes.
A day before the Jeddah meeting, American Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters:
“The most important thing that we have to leave here with is a strong sense that Ukraine is prepared to do difficult things, like the Russians are going to have to do difficult things, to end this conflict or at last pause it in some way.”
In a way it is a three-body problem which, to use a term from mathematics, has no closed form solution.
The US wants hostilities to end so it can improve relations with Russia and get Ukraine’s mineral deal; Ukraine wants security guarantees; Russia has its own set of conditions, some of which are maximalist.
Then there’s history influencing current events and the motives and motivations of Russia and Ukraine.
'HISTORY STEPS IN'
Some 7 months before Russia’s 24 February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Putin penned an article titled, ‘On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,’ to inform his readers of how a “wall… has emerged in recent years between Russia and Ukraine, between the parts of what is essentially the same historical and spiritual space…”
According to Putin’s nostalgic reasoning, this “great common misfortune and tragedy [is] the consequence of our own mistakes made at different periods of time.”
In the 6,908-word article, Putin also informs the reader that:
“I am confident that true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia” - not with “Western authors of the anti-Russia project, [which has] set up the Ukrainian political system in such a way that presidents, members of parliament and ministers would change but the attitude of separation from and enmity with Russia would remain.”
While Putin briefly touches upon Kiev’s closer ties with NATO in one paragraph, the article is basically history as Putin sees it.
And that history has three aspects: Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians as descendants of Ancient Rus.
Mistakes that have led to the rupture; external forces that in recent times have, step by step, dragged Kyiv “into a dangerous geopolitical game aimed at turning Ukraine into a barrier between Europe and Russia, a springboard against Russia.”
But then there’s a different version of history. For instance, Ukraine’s history.
Serhii Plokhy, professor of history at Harvard, tells the reader of how it began with the Polish uprising of 1830-31.
That fissure needed healing and Count Sergei Uvarov, deputy minister of education, proposed to Tsar Nicholas I in the year 1832 a tripartite formula that could serve as the keystone of a new Russian identity to be forged by the educational system: Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality.
But while the “history textbooks written under Uvorov’s supervision legitimised the creation of one Russian nation”, there was a slight problem.
In the 1840s, Kyivan intellectuals such as Mykola Kostomarov and Taras Shevchenko “formed a clandestine organisation that claimed the existence of a distinct Ukrainian nation.”
The focus on Ukrainian language, lore and culture became the taproot of national identity and birthed the “modern Ukrainian national project.”
Since Ukraine’s declaration of independence, Kyiv has embarked on a process of 'de-Russification' of Ukraine.
This, incidentally, is a very sore point with Putin and Russia.
For instance, Zelensky’s first language is Russian. But as he told Lex Fridman on the latter’s podcast in January this year, he preferred to speak Ukrainian because “we have lost all respect for Russian” since Moscow’s aggression.
That may be so, but the downgrading of the Russian language and the politico-linguistic polarisation surrounding the language goes back to the country’s 1996 constitution.
That document, while guaranteeing the “free development, use and protection of Russian, and other languages of national minorities of Ukraine,” nonetheless declared Ukrainian as the sole state language even as 34.1% of the population speaks Russian as its first language.
Critics have described laws meant to 'Ukrainise' the country as an attempt to suppress ethnic Russian and Russian-speaking Ukrainians and to move the country away from 'Russification.'
This is where history mixes up with current events.
Many analysts have spoken about NATO expansion as the main driver of events in this conflict.
Yes and no.
It is a driver but the situation is not monocausal. Russia is no innocent actor but its actions must be looked at from the perspective of responding to a threat.
Some analysts such as historian Sumantra Maitra argue that Russia uses military force when it perceives a threat but returns to status quo when the threat is neutralised or it subsides.
In that sense, Maitra avers that Russia is a security, not a power maximiser.
This argument skates on thin ice since Russia has used ethnonationalist fault-lines in Transnistria (Moldova) Georgia (August 2008) and Ukraine (2014/2022) to actively aggress outside its borders and occupy sovereign, foreign territory.
That, strictly speaking, is about power maximisation, not just increasing security for itself.
For instance, it is instructive to remember that, much before the NATO expansion idea was mooted and while Ukraine was negotiating relinquishing its nuclear arsenal, the Russian parliament passed a resolution in July 1993 and declared Russia’s sovereignty over the Ukrainian strategic port city of Sevastopol.
Going by Putin’s own statements and actions over the years, it’s clear that he resents Russia’s steady loss of power since the break-up of the Soviet Union.
His sense of insecurity increased with NATO's eastward expansion and Ukraine’s pivot to the EU and NATO.
It does not take much intelligence to realize that Putin’s Russia would do whatever it can to reverse the perceived decline, or at least increase the cost for its adversaries of encircling it and shrinking its near-abroad.
Belarus is Russia’s buffer; Ukraine decided to move west and shun Russia.
That’s when Putin decided to strike, beginning with Crimea and fomenting trouble in the Donbas.
In that sense, the present links up with Russia’s national consciousness and Nato expansion becomes one of the factors, certainly not the primary one.
Depending on which side of the conflict one stands on and how one interprets historical developments, analysts have made a case for Russia’s invasion; equally, if not more, a strong case can be made for Ukraine’s fight back and resistance.
International law and its foundational principles back Kyiv as a sovereign entity with agency.
But the issue has gone beyond jus ad bellum [right to war] to how the war has gone for the warring sides.
That’s the practical side of this unfortunate tale grounded in history and geography.
'THE WAR'
Russia’s military has come a long way since its failed main operation in the opening days of the war, the two-axes advance on Kyiv from Belarus.
Military analysts agree that, despite losses of men and materiel, the Russian force is now considerably larger, more experienced and better equipped.
Historically, Russia begins badly, but learns on the job. This time too, Russia decided to play on its strength: artillery.
Not as a supporting arm but as the primary arm of lethality, striking targets both in the deep and close battles. Other arms position themselves in order for artillery to use its destructive firepower.
As one assessment put it: “Russian forces maneuver to fire, Western forces fire to maneuver.”
Without going into technical details of Russia’s operational doctrine, it’s important to note that barring Ukraine no European force (as also US forces) at this point possesses more battlefield experience than Russia’s.
Ukraine has also learnt. And it innovates, just like Russians do. The problem, however, is simple: in a positional war of attrition, quantity provides quality.
Put another way, numbers matter - artillery pieces, tanks, APCs, drones, fighter jets and, of course, manpower. This brings in the issue of sustainment. Sustainment requires numbers and replenishment.
To quote from a 1942 US Naval College report titled, 'Sound Military Decisions:'
“Success is won, not by personnel and material in prime condition, but by the debris of an organization worn by the strain of campaign and shaken by the shock of battle.
The objective is attained, in war, under conditions which often impose extreme disadvantages” [emphasis added].
That’s where Russia has the advantage. Without external support - US/NATO - Ukraine could not have sustained the war.
That was also Trump’s message to Zelensky at the now-infamous 28th February Oval Office meeting.
Russia has aggressed against Ukraine. That is a fact. But Ukraine is not winning since Russia is not losing and Zelensky knows that.
He also knows, now more than before, that external help is not interminable. He is amenable to talking peace, but insists on security guarantees - i.e., that Russia will not invade Ukraine again.
Question is, what’s the quid for the quo?
Let’s circle back to Trump.
'WHAT NEXT?'
U.S. President Donald Trump (right) and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (left) at a contentious meeting in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington D.C. on 28 February 2025.
Image by/AFP
Speaking virtually at the World Economic Forum at Davos on May 23, 2022 the late Dr. Henry Kissinger made two important points about the ongoing Russo-Ukraine war:
It is time to think of a diplomatic solution to end the war, and such solution will likely involve territorial concessions to Russia, even though “ideally, the dividing line should be a return to the status quo ante.”
He added: “Pursuing the war beyond that point would not be about the freedom of Ukraine, but a new war against Russia itself.”
He was roundly condemned then. But for all his faults, Kissinger understood realpolitik. Trump is no Kissinger. But as a real estate businessman looking for sweet deals, he understands that wars don’t work for him.
There’s also another difference between Kissinger and Trump. Kissinger wouldn’t have reached out to Russia without the US’ traditional allies. Trump believes they are an impediment.
He has now chalked a course which seems to lead him in the opposite direction from traditional US policy and alliances.
How that world might shape up is largely unknown, though some of its contours have begun to emerge.
Whether Europe can support Ukraine sans the US at the backend is beyond the scope of this article. But one thing is clear: currently, it can’t without stretching and stressing its inventories.
'SCENARIOS'
The ideal is for Russia to agree, in the first phase, to a ceasefire along the current frontlines and stop further attacks against Ukraine.
Then, agree to a demilitarised zone (DMZ) possibly manned by a UN-mandated force; and agree to a “binding” non-aggression pact that contains both negative and positive security guarantees for Ukraine.
The last is crucial from Kyiv’s point of view, given Russia’s subsequent claim that the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances was not an agreement but merely constituted unilateral commitments of the UK, USA and Russia.
As quid for this quo, Ukraine would stay out of NATO and membership of the European Union.
But this ideal scenario is very unlikely to come about, especially the part about a binding non-aggression pact and security guarantees.
From Russia’s perspective, the best outcome would be to get to keep what it has conquered and annexed and to agree to an armistice that allows it to keep any future options open.
The irony is that, just like in 1992 when the US prioritised cooperation with Russia and needed a joint front with Moscow to get Kyiv to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.
This time too, the US under Trump appears more concerned about normalizing with Russia and getting a ceasefire than a comprehensive peace agreement that takes care of Ukraine’s Russia threat through security guarantees.
It is unlikely that Trump knows the complex process that led to the Budapest Memorandum or the deliberate ambiguities built into that “agreement” to get a compromise.
He wants the war to end. It is unclear how. Equally, Trump wants a minerals deal and believes that the presence of US prospecting companies would be enough guarantee against further Russian aggression.
That may be so in the immediate future, but it doesn’t solve Ukraine’s problem in the longer run, even as a ceasefire would certainly bring immediate reprieve for Kyiv.
Nor does the cessation of hostilities take care of the ‘war’ itself which, given the history and current animosities, is likely to erupt again in the future.
However, at this point, Ukraine has all but come to accept that there’s no immediate going back to pre-2022 or 2014 status quo ante.
From my own discussions with Ukrainian policy experts, it is clear that Kyiv would be content with the ceasefire status quo if the Russian occupation of its territory remains non-recognised and legally-determined to be occupied territory.
But it wants security guarantees - much more solid than what the Budapest Memorandum had provided. This is the sticking.
The problem is that such security guarantees, to be credible enough, must include Russia.
That is unlikely.
Russia, unless Trump were really interested in backing Ukraine, would refuse to be boxed in by signing off on such an agreement.
Trump clearly is not interested in pursuing that track. Nor does he want to tie the US in with Ukraine’s security through positive guarantees that could pit the US against Russia in the future.
That leaves Europe to back Ukraine.
Whether Europe can step up the plate is of course a big ‘if’, not only because it’s not a unitary actor but also because of a number of other complicating factors that are beyond the scope of this article.
Briefly, however, as political scientist Samuel Charap at Rand has noted, Europe has to “first decide if in fact [it is] willing to commit to go to war with Russia if it invades again.
Deploying a tripwire force before deciding what the ‘wire’ would ‘trip’ makes little sense.”
Even so, if Europe does gather a “coalition of the willing” and shows resolve, it still faces the capabilities problem, including manpower.
NATO was configured deliberately so the US could stay in the lead.
The European component of NATO forces rely, for the most part, on US strategic capabilities like strategic airlift, air-to-air refuelling, intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance through national technical means and also the ‘Five Eyes’ network.
Europe could work on developing those capabilities but doing so needs time and synergies. Time is a luxury Ukraine does not have.
Corollary: the only immediate option Kyiv has, short of the war continuing and Ukraine losing more territory, is to work with Trump and see where it goes. Zelensky is in a bind.
Chess has a term for it: 'zugzwang.'
He 'has' to make a move, but making that move could worsen his situation.
What It Means For You
Saturn and Neptune converge to represent a humbling force where we must be held accountable to higher spiritual standards — it is an opportunity for governance on Earth (Saturn) to aspire to a more enlightened vision of universal order (Neptune).
In positive expression, this influence can bring morality, justice, and compassionate guidance, with role models who abide and live by knowledge, prudence and wisdom, finding the spiritual teacher within and without.
In negative octave, and with Saturn debilitated in Aries, the Neptune combination shows an erosion and malfunction of systems and leaders, where would be 'leaders' mislead others with false promises, acts of inadequacy and lack moral standards.
This can cause disorientation, misguided choices, and the failure to measure up to tasks, or in more extreme cases, moral corruption, depravity, lawlessness, acts of anarchy, absence of guilt or remorse - with psychopathic themes that should be avoided.
Close Saturn-Neptune aspects can bring out the best but also the worst in people.
While Saturn is in its 'fall' in Aries, the position of Neptune can add to Saturn's debilitation with dissolving and eroding events as 90% of what Neptune offers does not come about.
We may, on the one hand, embrace a more universal, all- encompassing perspective to living, overcoming rigidity for greater compassion; on the other hand, this influence can derail into carefree/irresponsible attitudes, neglect, the erosion of moral references, and the loss of resilience.”
The planet Neptune rules the sign of Pisces and Pisces is the ruler of the 12th house. Thus Neptune signifies matters, themes, and actions that are associated with Pisces and the 12th house in astrology such as subconscious instincts, dreams and visions, secrets and the hidden, spirituality and sacrifice, deception and illusions, divine love, the eternal yearning for love and soulmates, etc.
Some things the planet Neptune can represent or is a significator of are:
Connection to the Divine (God, the Universe)
Divine Love or Love of the Divine
Connecting to a higher power or the Eternal
The Akashic Records, access to the knowledge of the Universe
The “Sleeping Prophet” Edgar Cayce, who had Moon Conjunct Neptune in his 10th house, was able to access the Akashic Records
- Prayers
- Meditation
- Monasteries and Monks/Nuns
- Seclusion and Isolation
Healers and doctors, nurses have a Neptunian element - giving comfort to those in need or in pain.
A deep longing for something greater than yourself or a longing for something that you cannot explain. These are major Neptunian themes, which conveys Neptunian qualities, or captures the energy of Neptune.
Geopolitics, Culture & Global Economy
My analysis of the historic Saturn-Neptune series of conjunctions in 2025 show that the U.S.-China-Russia rivalry, while dominating international relations, will also include the United States, The European Union, Asia, Australia and Latin American nations.
Planetary transits show that some nations will undergo internal changes due to internal power struggles that are really about generational change as the baby boomer generation (1939-1953) leaves the establishment in the mid-2020s.
The pandemic-induced economic disruption led to profound shifts in global trade and financial systems, and 2025 will be a year of consolidation and innovation.
New Trends
- Regional supply chains will dominate to reduce dependency on global trade routes.
- Cryptocurrency and CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies) will become integral to financial systems.
- Challenges: Emerging markets face inflationary pressures and debt crises.
Growth Opportunities
- Technology and healthcare sectors are likely to drive recovery.
- New global trade agreements could foster inclusivity and resilience.
- Solar year 2025 represents a turning point for creating a resilient, technology-driven global economy.
- Some of the areas of conflict will include trade; the proper and altruistic use of technology, such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing and semiconductor technologies.
- Diplomacy could suffer due to Saturn's 'fall' and debilitation in tropical Aries.
- The formation and reconstructing of alliances will come under the Saturn-Neptune conjunctions in 2025; causing smaller nations to feel pressured to align with various national powers amid global trade pressures and economic decouplings.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
More difficult will be any personalized learning platforms powered by AI that offer to cater to individual needs, making education easier to access for the poor, but also threaten to alter the roles of traditional education and learning.
Job Displacement: While AI automates repetitive tasks, it also creates opportunities for new roles in AI ethics, data analysis, and machine learning.
Concerns: Ethical dilemmas around privacy and bias in AI systems demand global regulations.
Quantum computing is expected to go beyond theoretical applications by 2025, transforming industries worldwide.
Key Milestones
- Breakthroughs in quantum cryptography will redefine data security.
- Pharmaceutical research will accelerate drug discovery through quantum simulations.
- Logistics, finance, and supply chain industries will achieve unprecedented efficiencies.
- Geopolitical Concerns: Nations will race to achieve quantum supremacy, intensifying competition in technological leadership.
- Takeaway: Quantum computing in 2025 will redefine the future of industries and technology.
- Takeaway: AI’s rapid advancement in 2025 will bring both opportunities and challenges, forcing nations to navigate uncharted territory.
Medical science
Key Innovations
- mRNA technology will be applied to combat diseases like cancer and HIV.
- CRISPR gene-editing tools will lead to cures for rare genetic disorders.
- Impacts on Society:
- Increased access to affordable healthcare.
- Ethical debates around genetic modification and accessibility of advanced treatments.
- Will healthcare innovation in 2025 significantly improve life expectancy and quality of life?
GLOBAL COOLING & SOLAR CYCLE #25
The climate crisis of global cooling will force tens of millions of people to migrate in search of safety, making 2025 a pivotal year to prepare for the zero-sunspot decade of the 2030s.
Key Statistics:
- Coastal flooding alone could displace over 30+ million people globally.
- Policy challenges: Nations must balance internal security concerns with humanitarian responsibilities.
Impact on Nations:
- Strain on local, regional and national resources & infrastructure.
- Potential for political unrest in regions unable to handle influxes of migrants.
- Takeaway: Managing the global cooling refugee crisis will require a worldwide effort and humane policies.
SATURN-NEPTUNE & THE CULTURAL RENAISSANCE
Key Trends:
- Virtual reality-powered global cultural festivals.
- Cross-cultural films, music, and literature gaining popularity.
- Impact: Strengthened cultural ties will create a shared sense of global identity amidst political divisions.
- Takeaway: Culture in 2025 will serve as the glue binding humanity together, transcending borders.
- Spirituality or the spiritual and devotional aspects of organized religions such as Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc.
Feeling the Love of God
Feeling one with God and the Universe
Sufism and whirling dervishes
Kabbalah
Jesus Christ carrying the cross and sacrificing himself for humanity is a Neptunian theme of selflessness and love.
Each one is major concept associated with Neptune is the idea of “oneness” - the knowledge that each of us is connected to every other sentient being on this planet because we each carry and share the same divine spark.
The idea of humans carrying a divine spark is a belief covered in the Islamic holy book, the Quran verse 15:28 - 29, which recounts the story of the creation of mankind:
15:28 And lo! Thy Sustainer (God) said unto the angels: "Behold, I am about to create mortal man (Adam) out of sounding clay, out of dark slime transmuted
15:29 and when I have formed him (Adam) fully and breathed into him of My (God’s) spirit, fall down before him in prostration (God’s command to his Angels)
Sense of oneness and unity
Having the intention or purpose of making life better for everyone
All for one and one for all
This is where the idea of sacrifice and self-sacrifice can come in
Dreams and visions
"Dreams really do come true!"
Being dreamy or being a dreamer
Having your head in the clouds.
Unconditional love, sea of love,
Bathing in divine love, the love of the eternal, the love of the Creator
Irresponsibility
Paul Atreides from the series, Dune
Premonitions
Prophets
Messiah
Visionaries
Magic and magicians
Manifestation
Manifesting
Manifestors
Law of Attraction
Visualization
Movies and images
real life projected on a screen
Fantasy/Fantasizing
Wishes, making a wish, wishing for something
Codependency
Codependents and being codependent
Codependent relationships
Love Addicts
Dependence on other people, emotions, or things
Addiction
Addictions to drugs, alcohol, sex, love, or any other form of addiction
Alcohol and wine
Drugs and opiates
Pharmaceuticals and the pharmaceutical industry - drugs and mind altering substances
Celebrity and stars
Valuing aesthetics
Feeling drawn to or valuing beauty - both inner and outer beauty
Longing, yearning, craving and yearning for something that always feels out of reach
Yearning for something or someone
Longing for that which you do not even know
Being drawn to the idea of soulmates, twin flames, knowing someone from a past life
Fame
Popularity
"Knowing" what the people want or need
Kindness and compassion
click on image to enlarge
Being compassionate towards and caring about the poor, needy, the destitute, the homeless, the hurt and wounded, the sick, the vulnerable ones, the victims.
Empathy and Sympathy (feeling the emotions of others or understanding what they are feeling)
Delusions or being deluded, illusions
Easily fooled or tricked or easily fooling and tricking others
Lies - lying to others or being lied to by others
Selling people a false reality or fake image
Easily believing the lies or manipulations of others
Sacrifice
Self-sacrifice
Sacrificing in the name of love
Empaths and empathy
Mystery or being mysterious
Love of humanity
Feeling connected to humanity
Being tapped into social media
Virtual Reality (VR)
Simulations and simulated reality
Devotion
Devotional love
ex: the poet Rumi and his poems on love and devotion to a lover or to God,
Wistfulness
Nostalgia
Regret
Hopeless romantics
Things that are "Hidden"
Hidden Knowledge, unsolved mysteries, secrets
Hidden meanings
Evading/Evasions
Escapism
Running away from problems
Avoiding conflicts or things/people that causes you discomfort, stress, pain or fear
Floating away/drifting away
Drifters and hobos
Ethereal
Otherworldliness: Feeling like you are not a part of this world - feeling like you don’t belong in this world,
Issues around sleep and sleep cycles
Sleeping too much or too little
Insomnia
Hypersomnia
"Everything means everything"
Connection
Psychic abilities or psychic powers such as
Clairsentience,
Clairvoyance,
Telepathy
Intuition
Being intuitive
Knowing without knowing how you know
Psychics
Psychic sponges
Psychic bonds with others
Procrastination: you can procrastinate doing tasks that stress you out and make you anxious or tasks that you feel are unpleasant
Artistic ability and artistry
Emotionality/Deep emotions
Sensitive and sentimentalism
mediumistic
Wandering/wanderlust
Anything elusive
Subtlety
Deceptiveness
Subversiveness
Imaginative or imaginary
Connected to music and rhythms
Neptune rules Drugs of all types:
alcohol, beer, and liquor
Tobacco (cigarettes or vaping),
Heroin or morphine
pills such as pain pills like Vicodin, Oxy, etc.
Hard drugs like c*caine, meth, crack, LSD, MDMA, molly, etc.
Anaesthesia
Gas lighting
Being gaslighted or gaslighting others
Emotional, verbal, mental, psychological, spiritual gaslighting
Water and plumbing/pipes
Many people with strong Neptunian influences in their birth charts live in homes that can experience problems with the plumbing system or water system in some way such as having pipe leaks, clogged pipes, drainage issues, etc.
Some astrologers believe that whatever planet or house your Neptune is in or aspects signifies "where you carry your cross and where you will be called upon to make a sacrifice".
Practicing ‘loving-kindness meditation’: sending waves of love to others not only benefits them, but it benefits us too.
Neptune in Vedic Astrology
Neptune is the 2nd of the outer planets in Vedic astrology.
Neptune might often be too difficult to understand.
It is ever so confusing and elusive, and most people fail to see its real nature.
Neptune is thus deception, but also spirituality.
It affects different people in different ways, and the placement of other planets is important to see how Neptune in will affect a given person.
It is said that Neptune represents the ability of intuition.
If Neptune is seated in 1st house, 3rd house, 8th house, 5th house, 9th house or 12th house of someone’s horoscope, then the person may be intuitive.
Neptune may trigger extraordinary events and developments in life.
Neptune to some extent resembles the planet Mars.
Neptune Can Bestow Immense Fame
In the natal horoscope, if Neptune is seated with benefic planets and in the 1st, 5th, and 9th houses, then the native will achieve great success, heights, and popularity.
If Neptune is seated in one of the signs whose lord is very powerful, then the native will always be in the limelight.
Neptune represents our Inner Self
Neptune is also a significator of our internal mind, thoughts, creativity,
Neptune represents:
- Research & development
- Gambling & Speculation.
- The Stock markets.
- International business
- Seagoing vessels & submarines.
- Gas, oil & chemical refineries.
- Antibiotic medicines.
- The Navy.
- Pesticides.Products from the oceans.
- Mineral mines.
- Deadly effects of gases & poisonous chemicals.
Neptune and its associations with life-giving energy is neither created nor destroyed.
Rather, energy is transferred from one object or 'form' to another. When applied to Neptune could explain why Neptune is so illusory: it is bc Neptune represents the energetic changes that may shift from one form to another.
Imagine the word “form” as representing a person in your life such as your lover, friend, spouse OR a thing in your life such as your job, profession, home, goals in life, your habits or preferences, etc.
Many times in life, the 'form' we associate with hope, love, and happiness does not remain stagnant and the person/thing we love or feel joy with changes or shifts to become another “form”.
Those who are able to go along with this shift in “form” can attain greater happiness and satisfaction in life.
Because, in this way, they are “preserved” by going with the flow of change and not resisting the change or shift of the “form” in their lives.
The others who remain fixed on the form they settled on and ignore the energy will “perish”, as they are unable to rise above the shallow “form” and understand the greater underlying reality that change is essential to preservation.
For example, say you get married to the love of your life and you are determined to stay married until death do you part.
With the influence of Saturn-Neptune, think of your marriage as the 'form of love and duty.'
Initially, your spouse brings you great joy and fulfillment as both of you are in energetic alignment and you have the same goals and feelings about each other and your lives together.
However, after 20 years or so, it is possible that you and your spouse have changed - you guys are no longer the same people as you were when newlyweds.
Perhaps, one or both of you no longer feel happy or fulfilled in the relationship or have different needs and desires compared to the start of your marriage. Perhaps, your goals or feelings for each other have changed.
You can try to ignore, suppress, and avoid making any changes to your marriage (the form) but this can lead to a very unhappy, stressful, traumatic, or toxic relationship/life experiences.
Or you can attempt to go along with any new changes and accept a change, which could mean a divorce or perhaps just adjusting into the fresh dynamics and rules of your marriage.
Since Neptune keeps changing forms, it is thus a manifestation of desires, disillusionment or revelation.
Those who take a narrow view of things and do not see beyond the apparent form of everything, can become hemmed by disillusion and even become despondent.
Neptune is what drives a person to see and act above the illusions and work practically and prudently on the reality.
All in all, the Saturn-Neptune conjunction will be historic and leave its indelible mark on the world.
Copyright © 2007-2025 Theodore White
Excerpts may be republished with attribution in the body of the material.
Please include the Global Astrology link to your site.
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