friday bite: 24 april 2020 scandals, scientiﬁc ... · turning retrograde. then, in early june, a...

FRIDAY BITE: 24 APRIL 2020

My aim in these Friday Bites is to review events of the preceding week and examine them through an astrological lens. Over the years I’ve covered royal weddings, tsunamis, general elections, scandals, scientific breakthroughs et al, but since January 2020 there’s been one event that has dominated all else: the coronavirus pandemic.

This Friday I’m going to turn my attention to the dis-information spreading across the world as fast as the coronavirus itself. At best these purveyors of deception are themselves misinformed but at worst they are accelerating the spread of the virus, increasing the death toll, and making vast amounts of money in the process.

This past week, several people - well-informed, intelligent people - have sent me links to websites, videos, podcasts and articles, which have variously claimed that the flu vaccine combined with 5G technology is a means for governments to be able to check on and control us - ergo a vaccine for covoid-19 is to be avoided at all costs; I’ve been told Dr Anthony Fauci developed the coronavirus as a biological weapon which fell into the hands of the Chinese government; I’ve seen videos made by directors of research institutes, claiming they were imprisoned for their research, and their work prevented by Dr Fauci from seeing the light of day; and endless reports questioning why hydroxychloroquine is not being used as a treatment for the virus: it’s a filthy deep state plot to kill the weak, the vulnerable and the unwanted. In one video an impassioned surgeon urged us to believe that the spread and lethality of the coronavirus is a myth and TV footage of emergency rooms and distressed exhausted medical staff is fabricated, some footage being shown over and over again.

Since I am a great believer in research, I took the time to investigate all these claims, and without exception they are being touted by individuals who are not what they claim to be. Just because a video has 2 million views doesn’t make it legitimate.

The trouble is these specious claims are falling on receptive minds. It is only human to want to blame something or someone for the unacceptable circumstances that have been thrust upon you. In the months we have been living with the coronavirus the only measure experts have established that will keep the numbers of the ill and dying down is hand-washing, social distancing and lockdown. Three months on, faith in the experts is getting thinner by the day.

Copyright Penny Thornton and Astrolutely.com 2020

The alignment tracing the coronavirus pandemic, the worst global crisis since World War II, is the Saturn-Pluto-Jupiter triple conjunction in Capricorn. Although the exact conjunction of Saturn and Pluto occurred on the 12th January and the exact conjunction of Jupiter and Pluto on the 5th April, these three planets are connected throughout 2020. Saturn and Pluto combos reflect our worst fears and inspire our darkest emotions. Everyone is fearful. It seems like the end of the world. And Jupiter, instead of bringing his jolly influence to bear is fanning the flames of fear. We’re having a mass panic attack!

And then there’s Neptune. The proliferation of conspiracy theories is a distinctly Neptunian phenomenon, and Neptune is caught up in the aforementioned configuration. At around 20 degrees of Pisces, Neptune is sextiling Pluto, and by association Saturn and Jupiter, and although this 60-degree aspect is considered one of harmony, the natures of Pluto and Neptune remain dissonant. To be accurate Neptune and Pluto have been in-sextile on and off for the last seventy-plus years, but these are decades when the power of film, television, broadcasting and the media has held sway, supplying the narrative of the times. And sometimes that narrative is skewed and full of distortions.

This pandemic is riddled with unknowns; experts in all relevant fields are racing against time to find vaccines and treatments; leaders and governments are struggling to protect their people and provide for them, and in many cases they’re failing. But they’re not failing on purpose. And, of course, there will be leaders whose motives leave much to be desired. And there are bad doctors and bad advisors. In the main, however, people in power want this pandemic to end every bit as much as we the people.

We’re on this journey together. We have common sense even if we don’t have patience and trust. The astrology indicates at least another nine months of trial and tribulation, so there’s no point frothing at the mouth, blaming the government and demanding our freedom. It is what it is.

Maybe science doesn’t have all the answers but right now it’s all we’ve got.

Friday Bite: 17 April 2020

Establishing the positive aspects of living in the time of coronavirus is akin to finding a needle in a haystack, but weirdly enough, the more I looked the more I found.

All things change in time. And with most of the world in some kind of lockdown for the past three months, change is in the wind. Several countries are beginning to reopen businesses and so reignite their economies, and health systems that once threatened to collapse under the weight of coronavirus cases appear to be withstanding the onslaught. And with these tiny shards of light in an otherwise dark and desperate nightscape markets are showing signs of recovery.

Now, it seems, we are looking beyond the first phase of the pandemic, we have absorbed the impact of covid19, and are looking toward a future, not without the virus, but one managing it.

Germany, Austria, Italy, Denmark and Spain are some of the countries easing their lockdowns, although not every nation feels it has reached a point where it can change the status quo and several, including France and the United Kingdom, have extended their lockdowns.

The work to discover a vaccine goes on all over the world and during the past week encouraging results were reported from an ongoing clinical trial at a University of Chicago hospital of a drug to treat covid19 - Remdesivir.


Nonetheless, until there is a cure or a vaccine, the prospect of a smooth transition from standstill to some semblance of movement is tentative at best.

President Trump has made no secret of his desire to get America back to work, and within days of his putting together the Opening Our Country Council released an 18-page, three-phase programme intended to do just that. The problem is, as scientists continue to impress, unless there are strong testing and tracing systems in place, any influx of people back into the workplace is likely to spawn a second wave of the virus.

And the astrology would support the notion of an undulating wave from now until February 2021 - a wave driven by alternating bouts of lockdown and release. The virus isn’t going to disappear by the end of May.

It appears that Trump’s desire to get America and the economy back to work has from time to time overridden concerns about the health and safety of the American people. During his tenure he has seen record employment and a buoyant economy replaced by record unemployment and a stagnant economy, and all in a matter of weeks and due to an invisible enemy. It’s all been a terrible shock. However, even though he may have been blindsided by the speed and extent of the damage to his presidency, he has been able to pull off quite the coup in directing the country’s return to work without putting himself in any danger of blame should it all go terribly wrong.

By giving each state the ability to make its own decision about how and when lockdowns are eased, governors and mayors will carry the responsibility for any resurgence of the virus. The deaths of countless citizens will be on their hands. Not Mr Trump’s. And without tests, which Trump insists is each state’s duty to organize, not the federal government’s, their hands are effectively tied. And you have to ask yourself, is this a predicament a President worthy of the estate, would place the country’s governors and states in.

As I write, we are within six days of a New Moon in Taurus - always a good time to begin a new phase - however, that new moon is conjunct Uranus, and Mercury is squaring both Saturn and Pluto - the latter poised to turn stationary retrograde - which suggests there are shocks and reverberations to come. Then again, lest we forget, the prospect of a treatment for covid19 is an entirely Uranian affair.

May and June are both troubling months: the full moon in Scorpio on the 7th May is likely to negatively impact markets again, especially as it is followed by Saturn, Jupiter and Venus all turning retrograde. Then, in early June, a lunar eclipse on the Gemini-Sagittarius axis will connect with Trump’s natal Uranus, which will put him in the line of fire. And this eclipse is the forerunner to December’s total solar eclipse which conjoins his natal moon and opposes his Sun. An eclipse that mirrors the one upon which he was born. (As you may know, the timeline of an eclipse stretches forward and backward some weeks.) Whether this bodes a victory in the election is debatable, but what I can say is that events from mid-to-late May through June will play a pivotal part in his re-election or defeat.

What has been so heart-warming in these endless weeks, aside from the heroism of the medical teams and those who continue to ensure their fellow citizens have the supplies they need, are the acts of ordinary people to brighten and ease our self-isolation. I’m thinking of the teacher who daily delivers on-foot dozens of school lunches to pupils in the outlying reaches of Grimsby, and 99-year-old retired army captain, Tom Moore, who has thus far raised £14 million for the National Health Service by walking 25 metres around his garden 100 times. And then there are the countless other groups and individuals who have sung, danced, clowned and cheered us on. If we can bottle this spirit we’ll never be scared, lonely, bereft and despairing again.


We have a lot to be proud of.

Friday Bite 10 April

On the 22nd/23rd January (ten days after the Saturn-Pluto conjunction and on the new moon in Aquarius square Uranus) the World Health Organization held an emergency meeting to discuss the outbreak of novel coronavirus. The committee reached the conclusion it was not a PHEIC (Public Health Emergency of International Concern).

Eight days later, on the 31st January (Mars square Neptune) the WHO declared coronavirus to be a global emergency.

On the same day, in a television interview with Fox Business News, US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, suggested the deadly virus in China could be positive for the US economy: “it will help return jobs to North America.”

Ten weeks later (10th April) 2.9 billion people worldwide are under lockdown. The United States has reported 468,895 coronavirus cases and 16,697 deaths; and more than 16 million US citizens have filed for unemployment.

Italy, Spain and France have been the hardest hit countries in Europe with Great Britain expected to join or even exceed them while China is beginning to emerge from lockdown.

Easter is going to be a little different this year.

As the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic draws to an end in China, the rest of the world watches and waits to see how the next phase goes - from crisis to management stage. Yet this is no return to life as normal. Wuhan’s new normal means:

No movement without tracking apps.

Temperature checks.

Mandatory mask-wearing.

Restaurants closed.

As cases decline in Italy the government is considering reopening a few factories in late April. The country has been in lock-down for eleven weeks and in the less wealthy south of Italy the strain of living in siege-like conditions is already beginning to show - there have been incidents of looting. Thus, once the health crisis is under control, it is feared an even greater problem will emerge - economic and social turmoil.

What is clear is that a return to life as it once was is not realistic.

No one knows as yet whether you can be re-infected with the virus, and with the real solution to the problem - a vaccine - still some months away, it is more than likely the virus will regain momentum as more people head out into the towns and cities. So some measure of lock-down will have to be retained.

Thus, the astrological guidelines that I have given here in my Friday Bites and on YouTube are looking more and more feasible. It’s going to take until Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto complete their


shadow cycles (mid-December 2020 - end January 2021) for the end of the pandemic to be in sight. But as we consider the next stage of the crisis - it’s economic and social fall-out - we need to look at late May through early July 2020 as a period of great instability, especially in parts of Europe and America.

It is interesting to note too that as Saturn - the planet of restriction and constriction - entered Aquarius - the sign of brotherhood and the most socially-oriented sign - lockdowns spread globally - self-isolation being the buzzword.

But as with all things astrological, there is a purpose and a benefit. When our freedoms are removed, we discover new aspects of our existence, new resources within ourselves, that we may well decide to incorporate in a future without the same restrictions. Lockdowns are a necessary evil - just like Saturn.

Lockdowns are not a new measure to prevent the spread of disease. Back in 1630-31 Florence successfully managed an outbreak of the bubonic plague by keeping its citizens indoors. The authorities also employed a strategy used very successfully in the current coronavirus pandemic: they endeavoured to find the first person to bring the plague to the city and track down all his contacts who were subsequently confined to their homes for forty days. During the lockdown, the Florentians stood on their rooves and balconies singing to one another. Who says history doesn’t repeat itself.

This outbreak of the black plague began, incidentally, as Saturn in Scorpio conjoined Neptune, and it continued to rage as Saturn opposed Pluto in Taurus. Yet more echoes, this time of an astrological nature.

One of the happier outcomes of this past week was Boris Johnson’s recovery from covid-19. While he is more truly on the mend, as opposed to being over it, when news broke that he had been taken into intensive care at St. Thomas’s Hospital in London, many feared the worse. These were the days prior to the full moon in Libra which gave us pause for thought: would that full moon mark the peak of the crisis and a waning of the disease or would it make his condition far, far worse. In the event, he came through, and it must be said that many people who thought little of Boris prior to his becoming prime minister are finding he has some redeeming qualities. We may even have come to love him a little.

A small shaft of light in an otherwise dark and difficult time.

Friday Bite 3 April 2020

During the course of another week in the coronavirus crisis, I found myself reflecting on the importance of great leadership. How some people step forward, and with their words and bearing carry with them the hopes and belief of the people while others fail dismally to encourage, inspire and reassure.

You’ve probably guessed who I mean. Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo and Dr Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. These two men continue to provide clarity, strength and direction amid a very, very frightening new world.


For the past week, my window on the world has been provided by CNN, and for part of this past week I have sat transfixed in front of the TV watching Governor Cuomo give his daily briefings about the state of covid-19 in the state of New York. In a sea of mumbling vagaries laced with outrageous optimism uttered by leaders whose character cannot meet the times, his is a true voice; clear, direct, brutally honest and never once pointing a finger at anyone. He talked about what was needed and what needed to be done.

Later in the week when his brother, Chris, was diagnosed with coronavirus and went into self-isolation in the basement of his New York home, we saw the human side of the governor. We saw the man behind the mask. We saw affection, kindness and humour.

Dr Fauci is another hero becoming familiar to those of us watching US news programmes. This diminutive infectious disease expert is a giant when it comes to facts, figures and direction in this increasingly scary pandemic. If he doesn’t know the answer, he’ll say so. His forecasts are stark, yet he conveys a sense that the disease can be managed and ultimately conquered. He is eminently trustable.

Of course, I had to look at the astrology. What makes these two men so formidable in a crisis. I had a hunch Scorpio was in there somewhere.


Andrew Cuomo was born on 2 December 1957. He is a Sun Sagittarian with the Moon in Gemini. We have no time of birth for Mr Cuomo, but we do have an accurate chart for his father, former governor, Mario Cuomo, and we have a birthdate for brother Chris, currently self-isolating.

Father Cuomo was born with the Moon in Scorpio, Mars in Taurus and Jupiter rising in Leo. Chris Cuomo has Moon in Scorpio and Saturn in Taurus and a Sun-Mars conjunction in Leo. So, the family’s astrological DNA is heavily Fixed and reveals a strong Mars, Leo and Scorpio bias.

Governor Cuomo has a Fixed appearance, which suggests, since he is a Mutable Sagittarian that he might have one of the Fixed signs rising - Leo, Aquarius, Taurus or Scorpio. I plumped for Scorpio, taking as my guide, that intense, penetrating gaze and his pugnacious nature. His history reveals he is a formidable friend and an equally formidable foe. Once he gets his teeth into something, he doesn’t let go until he’s done. He is a fierce fighter and uncompromising protagonist. During his term as New York’s Governor (he took office in 2011) he has overseen the passage of the same-sex marriage law and is behind the creation of the United States Climate Alliance. He was formerly New York’s Attorney General.

At 5:30 in the morning of 6 December, Mars had just risen in Scorpio, placing Pluto on the Mid-heaven in Virgo. Not only is Cuomo an engaging and articulate communicator, an author too - typical of his Moon in Gemini - but his Mercury in Capricorn is trining the elevated Pluto in Virgo revealing great attention to detail and a reliance on facts and figures. As for that optimistic Sagittarian Sun it is conjunct disciplined, constructive and controlling Saturn.

Saturn has been nudging his natal Venus since the start of the coronavirus outbreak and it will continue to do so until the end of 2020. And, of course, Pluto is none too far from that same point and squaring his natal Jupiter.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man.

We do not have a time for Dr Fauci either. What we do know is that he is a Sun Capricorn and - you guessed it! - he has a Moon in Scorpio and Mars in Scorpio. Natal Uranus opposes that Mars, revealing a preparedness to look outside the box for solutions. Fauci also has a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in Taurus, currently being activated by Uranus - hence his elevation into the public arena. I hate to overegg the pudding, but his height belies his power.


These two men may have little in common in terms of their background; they may not share the same passions, but they are hewn out of the same astrological rock, which makes them leaders who will guide with calmness and deliberation. They will be there with us every step of the way. They’re not going to give up. They’re going to keep going 23 hours out of every 24 until we come out the other side of it.

But humanity is complicated and it is capricious. Perhaps not so much in Dr Fauci’s case, who will return no doubt with relief to the quiet and anonymous corridors of research, but Governor Cuomo is almost certainly going to follow the fate of so many other great leaders - Winston Churchill comes to mind - and he will be roundly rejected by his once adoring public. I am reminded too of Rudi Giuliani, former Mayor of New York, who not only transformed the city during his tenure but was universally admired for his leadership in the aftermath of the 9-11 terrorist attacks. He cuts a sad and diminished figure twenty years on.

We need Dr Fauci and Governor Cuomo for now, but in the fullness of time, like all great heroes, we will surely seek out the dents in their armour.

Friday Bite 27 March

There is only one story. COVID-19.

In the past two weeks the pandemic has claimed almost 25,000 lives and its spread has reached across continents. And given the planetary alignments to come, COVID-19 isn’t going to disappear any day soon. We are going to have to learn to live in fear, and to overcome our fears. We’re going to have to learn to live in a rapidly shrinking world in terms of the way we used to live. We are all going to be profoundly changed by this pandemic.

As you scroll down, you will see two other Friday Bite’s on the coronavirus, which makes interesting reading as we go deeper into the crisis. I looked at previous pandemics and epidemics, and it seems COVID-19 in terms of its infectiousness and fatalities bears the closest resemblance to the “Spanish Flu” of 1918-1920. And one of the astrological signatures on that pandemic was the Jupiter-Pluto conjunction in Cancer. Now, with Jupiter currently approaching a conjunction to Pluto in Capricorn (set to occur three times this year: 5th April, 30th June and 12th November), there is a clear resonance with the pandemic of 100 years ago.

I am not saying Jupiter and Pluto cause a pandemic but that this conjunction coincides with a mass experience, whatever the underlying cause. Our keyword principles of Jupiter (growth and expansion) and Pluto (elimination and transformation) match the global experience we are undergoing.

If we listen to Mr Trump, we are given to understand that keeping the world going in terms of business and the economy is the priority. “We can’t let the cure be worse than the disease.” He would love to have America “opened up and just raring to go by Easter… we have to get our country back to work. Our country wants to be back to work.” And in a Fox News interview, he asserted it would be “absolutely possible” to resurrect the economy by Easter.

It’s great to have a president who is glowing with optimism, but, given the present spread of the virus (not yet at a peak) in the United States, or in most European countries, Asia and Australia, his predictions are patently wishful thinking.


It is a difficult call. If the world grinds to a halt in terms of business and the economy, when the virus is eventually overcome getting the world going again is going to take years of pain - the Age of Austerity will look like a picnic. And if keeping business and the economy going leads to millions upon millions of deaths, who will be left to do the work of getting the world back on course.

The Jupiter-Pluto conjunction in Cancer of 1930 presided over the start of the Great Depression which lasted a decade. In this case, the cause was not a pandemic, but mass unemployment in the wake of a banking crash. In 2020, the Jupiter-Pluto conjunction is not alone; it is part of a triple conjunction with Saturn. Thus, the prospects for a speedy economic recovery once the coronavirus is overcome are even bleaker than they were during the Great Depression.

COVOID-19 is an experience we are all going to have to live through. We can’t rewind the tape and take actions that would have halted its spread. We have to work with what we’ve got. We will all suffer in one way or another, but that suffering is purposeful because we will all discover our priorities, we will all learn that the world is one, and we need to consider our neighbours. It may well have taken this pandemic to prevent humanity from hurtling to its own destruction.

Friday Bite 13 March

So, now we know. It’s official. The Covid-19 outbreak is a pandemic.

The past week has seen stock markets across the world plunge vertiginously. Markets don’t like uncertainty and their downward fall is driven by fear. Italy has shut down. In the US, Trump, in an effort to calm markets and “save” the economy, blamed Europe for introducing the virus to America, and in so doing inspired the exact opposite result. Norway and Denmark, among many countries, have closed schools and universities, Australia cancelled its Grand Prix, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned families to prepare “to lose loved ones before their time”. And we have the planetary alignments to match. A perfect cocktail of Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto.

I’m going to keep last week’s Friday Bite up since it contains details that you might find even more interesting in light of this fast-developing global crisis. (It will folow on.) But I have had a few more thoughts on the outbreak.

Although the signature on the emergence of the new coronavirus is the Saturn-Pluto conjunction, what is happening in terms of the response to it is the Jupiter-Pluto conjunction - currently Jupiter is at 22 degrees of Capricorn and Pluto at 24 degrees: they will conjoin on 4th'5th April.

Jupiter is synonymous with growth and inflation; Pluto resonates with elimination and transformation. Put them together and you get what we’ve got: a mass spread of a virus, mass upheaval and mass pandemonium.

If we look back through history, there are many global events - wars, pestilences, famines and eruptions, for instance - that have taken millions of lives. The “Spanish flu” of 1918/19 killed 50 million, if not more. Periodic purges are part and parcel of Earth’s story. And you could regard Pluto and its principles of death and rebirth (transformation) as playing a preeminent role in global devastations. Devastations that cleanse the Earth in preparation for renewal.


Dreadful as such epic events may be, they serve to help humanity’s evolution. In this way, we see Pluto’s properties of creative destruction as a force for the good, or at least a necessary evil.

Eris - the dwarf planet beyond Pluto and bigger than Pluto - is another key part in the story of Covid-19. Currently placed at 23 degrees of Aries, she is closely squaring the Jupiter-Pluto conjunction, as she did in mid-January when Saturn and Pluto conjoined. Eris is the goddess of strife. She comes with a calling card of destruction, discord and chaos. Eris also has an affiliation with Mother Nature, and in her role as Gaia’s protector she must periodically go to war to prevent the excesses of human behaviour from destroying the Earth.

Jupiter and Pluto will meet three times in 2020: 5th April, 30th June (in retrograde) and finally 12th November. Currently, we are in the shadow periods of both Jupiter and Pluto. Jupiter’s shadow cycle began on 18th February and will end on 5th December while Pluto’s shadow period began on 3rd January and will end on the 24th January 2021. (For more information on shadow periods visit my YouTube channel (Virgo Full Moon in the shadow of Saturn) or my Friday Bite 21st February, available on request.)

The reason I mention these shadow periods is that the date for the start of Pluto’s shadow cycle came within days of the first alert of the emergence of a new coronavirus, and the beginning of Jupiter’s shadow period the realization we could be on the crest of a pandemic. And it may be that the peak points of each shadow cycle (retrograde and direct dates: 25th April, 14th May, 13th September and 4th October) will play significant parts in the narrative of the outbreak, and we can expect it to last until January of 2021.

What may have been forgotten in the fear and fever of this this deadly pandemic is that it offers us the opportunity to come together. United we stand, divided we fall. Whether in our own little lives, with family, friends, lovers and colleagues or on the global stage - country and country, nation and nation - by combining our resources, working together for the greater good and overcoming our fears, we shall make the world a better place.

Friday Bite 6 March 2020

So, where has all the good news gone? Buried under the weight of these challenging influences, no doubt. However, we must not forget that under these same alignments beautiful babies are being born, people are falling in love, marrying and celebrating life landmarks. And perhaps because of these very configurations, such human triumphs are all the greater, all the more precious.

The past week saw Joe Biden emerge as the front runner in the Democratic Primaries - Super Tuesday ending the presidential hopes of Pete Buttigieg, Michael Bloomberg, Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar. Turkey and Russia agreed a cease-fire in the aftermath of Turkish soldiers killing 21 Syrian troops in Idlib. And still the devastation goes on for the peoples of Northern Syria. Thousands of migrants and refugees amassed at the Turkish-Greek border in the vain hope of being allowed into Europe. And Harry and Megan performed one of their last royal duties before they are exiled to the New World! And then there was the coronavirus, Covid-19.

As we go to press, the spread of the virus is rampant, and although governments and health officials have not yet declared a pandemic, common sense would inform you this is the scenario we’re facing. Which has prompted me to dig into the past and see what, if any,


astrological markers can be found in flu pandemics. I’ll go through these shortly, but to whet your appetite Jupiter was conjunct Pluto during the 1918 “Spanish flu” and the 1968 “Hong Kong flu”, as they are indeed now with Covid-19.

Predicting flu pandemics has been the subject of worldwide research for decades, but it seems we are as far from being able to find a reliable pattern as ever. There are just too many variables, not least the source of the virus, its structure, the speed and efficacy of the spread, the symptoms and the mortality rate.

During the last one hundred or so years, there have been three devastating flu pandemics: the “Spanish flu” of 1918-1920, the “Asian flu” of 1957-1958 and the “Hong Kong flu” of 1968. There were also SARS (2002-2003) and “Swine flu” (2009). To put the human cost of these pandemics into perspective, 17-50 million people (possibly more) died from the “Spanish flu”, two million from both the “Asian and Hong Kong” flu, and 600,000 from the 2009 “Swine flu”. SARS killed 774 people.

As a matter of interest, the source of all the above flu epidemics is believed to be China, although there is some divergence of opinion over the origins of the “Spanish flu”. The current Covid-19 is a coronavirus, as was SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome). The coronavirus is mostly found in bats and passed onto animals, such as civet cats, before getting into the human chain.

Another pandemic, possibly the equal of “Spanish flu”, has been anticipated for the past few years. Indeed, by the end of 2017, concerns were already being raised of the outbreak of a coronavirus similar to SARS.

In December 2017, "after years of searching across China, where the disease first emerged, scientists reported ... that they had found a remote cave in Yunnan province, which is home to horseshoe bats that carry a strain of a particular virus known as a coronavirus. This strain has all the genetic building blocks of the type that triggered the global outbreak of SARS in 2002." The research was performed by Shi Zheng-Li, Cui Jie and coworkers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, China, and published in PLOS Pathogens. The authors are quoted as stating that "another deadly outbreak of SARS could emerge at any time. As they point out, the cave where they discovered their strain is only a kilometre from the nearest village.” THE GUARDIAN newspaper 10 December, 2017.

In my research, I came across research linking the influenza cycle with the peaks of the El Niño and ENSO cycles, to which even my non-academic mind appeared unconvincing, however, there seems to be some merit in the notion of cycles of 40-plus years.

41 years between the flu epidemics of 1847/48 and 1889.

40 years between the “Spanish flu” and the “Asian flu”.

41 years between the “Hong Kong flu” and “Swine flu”.

45 years between “Asian flu” and SARS. (Admittedly, this is a bit of a stretch.)

In terms of patterns, the astrology also proves interesting. The cycles of the planets from Jupiter through Pluto trace the patterns of the times, whether in personal or global terms, which is why I have concentrated my efforts here on the major angles between the trans-personal planets.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLOS_Pathogens

1847: Saturn conjunct Neptune in Aquarius

1889: Saturn in Virgo square Neptune conjunct Pluto in Gemini

1918-1920 (Spanish flu): Saturn conjunct Neptune in Leo at the start of the outbreak; Jupiter conjunct Pluto in Cancer at the peak of the outbreak - it went quiet in the summer and returned with a vengeance in the autumn.

1957-1958 (Asian flu): Uranus in Leo square Neptune in Scorpio. 1968 (Hong Kong flu): Jupiter conjunct Pluto in Virgo

2003 (SARS): Tail end of the Saturn-Pluto opposition (Gemini-Sagittarius). Jupiter in Virgo opposite Uranus in Pisces.

2009 (Swine flu): Saturn in Virgo opposite Uranus in Pisces. Jupiter conjunct Neptune in Aquarius.

2020 (Covid-19): Saturn conjunct Pluto in Capricorn. Jupiter conjunct Pluto in Capricorn. While a sample of eight flu epidemics can hardly be considered a study, it is interesting that Saturn has been conjunct Neptune twice (25% probability) and Jupiter conjunct Pluto three times (38% probability). Saturn and Neptune combinations fit the deadly flu virus rather well since death occurs mostly through liquid overwhelming the lungs - the patient effectively dies by drowning. Jupiter-Pluto conjunctions say more about the mass spread of a virus and certainly the mass panic response to it.

By the way, the next Saturn-Neptune conjunction will be in Aries in 2025 and the next Jupiter-Pluto conjunction in 2033. Fortunately, they don’t occur in the same year. Nevertheless, plenty of time to stock up on hand-sanitizers, zinc and vitamin-C, and for the Chinese government to put an end to its wet markets.

As I mentioned in my Friday Bite last week, prior to the Saturn-Pluto conjunction of mid-January, my concern was that an “act of nature” would precipitate a global economic decline, and even if the virus quickly comes under control, a great deal of damage has already been done to world businesses and economies. More realistically, if the falling markets of week commencing 24th February and the collapse of the Flybe airline in Europe on 4th March are anything to go by, we are in the early stages of a deepening global recession.

We’ll certainly know a lot more by the beginning of April and the first of three Jupiter-Pluto conjunctions, and, if the past has anything to show us, Covid-19 may well decline in the summer but come back with a vengeance by the autumn and the third and final Jupiter-Pluto conjunction.

So much to look forward to.


friday bite: 24 april 2020 scandals, scientiﬁc ... · turning retrograde. then, in early june, a...

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