by The AstroTwins and Matthew Swann February 2022
Astrostyle revisits Saturn in Aquarius and our 2022 predictions —forecasted in 2020— on the eve of the historic U.S. Pluto return. (Excerpts adapted from The AstroTwins 2021 Horoscope guide.)
Saturn is back in Aquarius after its 2020 preview
Back by unpopular demand, it’s border cop Saturn patrolling the graffiti-lined streets of Aquarius Land. From March 21 to July 1, 2020, we got a glimpse of what happens when the planet of restrictions tours one of the zodiac’s most social and revolutionary signs.
Humans distanced. We sheltered in place. We quarantined. And yes (no drumroll needed), we socially restricted ourselves—a synonym for “Saturn in Aquarius” if ever there were!
We found new ways to connect through technology. We signed up for webinars. We kicked ourselves for not buying stock in Zoom. We picked up Chromebooks from the school district and played amateur teachers while our education professionals struggled with the limitations of Google Classroom. We enrolled in TikTok University and made awkward attempts to crush the “Savage” challenge led by Aquarius Megan Thee Stallion.
We marched for social justice. We protested. We wore our masks or rebelled against them. We parsed through conspiracy theories (or were they?) about germ warfare, 5G networks, deep state Satanic cults, and oligarch-funded vaccines. We set up Autonomous Zones and encampments in major cities. We jumped in our trucks and showed up with our guns.
We empathized. We militarized. We polarized.
We entered 2021 with global societies so fractured that “all the King’s horses and all the King’s men” were not putting this beast back together again. And maybe that’s the point of this exercise.
Aquarius is the utopian idealist of the zodiac
Aquarius is a sign that thrives on equity, community and the principles of “One Love” espoused by Bob Marley, a legendary Water Bearer. Kings have no place when Aquarius is at the helm…unless they’re being moved across a chessboard. Besides, grandfather Saturn in Aquarius doesn’t do chess. In 2021, he’d rather play Go, the world’s oldest strategy game, which was invented in China 2,500 years ago and remains wildly popular today.
Over the past five years, transiting planets strengthened the powers and bank accounts of the billionaire class, a trend that we saw continuing through 2021 despite loud calls for financial oversight. Ever since staunch Saturn transited through its own homecoming parade in its native sign of Capricorn, from December 19, 2017, to December 17, 2020, all systems ruled by Saturn and Capricorn were fortified for much of this journey: “the patriarchy,” governments, corporations and the economy.
Then along came January 12, 2020 —Crash! Boom! And just like that, on the arrival of a rare 22° super aspect—a tight conjunction of Sun, Pluto, Saturn and Mercury at 22° Capricorn—long-standing social hierarchies and their structures went completely off the rails as the pandemic seized our collective psyche. Our own forecast of a “Black Swan event” on this date, which appeared in the 2019 edition of our annual horoscope guide prior to the pandemic, came hauntingly true.
Saturn tours Aquarius until March 7, 2023
While Saturn tours Aquarius we will all be navigating the paradoxical nature of the sky. How can we smash through the rules while adhering to time-tested principles? Unleash our rebellious individualism while fostering communities based on equity and accessibility? We have two years to unpack this riddle—which is bound to bring more incendiary uprising and backlash than we’ve already seen.
Saturn-Uranus Squares in 2021
Global Disruption and the Digitization of Reality
If there was palpable tension in 2021, much of it will be supplied by a standoff between structured Saturn and changemaker Uranus—the co-rulers of Aquarius. These planets may be next-door neighbors, but they’re the Hatfield and McCoy of the solar system. Each possesses a valid claim over the Water Bearer’s realm while enforcing contrary agendas (think “square peg, round hole”) providing for many of our most vexing, intractable problems. And three times in 2021, they’ll lock into a stressful square (a 90-degree angle), grappling for the upper hand.
Before Uranus was discovered in 1781, Saturn was considered the galactic guardian of Aquarius (Uranus is its “modern ruler”). That means Water Bearers have two celestial sentinels: quirky, side-spinning Uranus and disciplined Saturn. Quite the contrasting energies! Perhaps that’s why Aquarians possess such range, flipping from metaphysical wizards to science-bound empiricists.
This year, the contradictory push-pull will express itself in every zodiac sign’s life and also in world events. Can change happen without a collapse of key infrastructures? Can order be kept without suppressing the voice of “the people”? Saturn and Uranus square each other roughly every 14 years. Historically, these tumultuous standoffs can force deep structural changes in society, often involving widespread disruption and destruction.
As suppressive Saturn tightens its authoritarian grip on freedom-fighter Uranus, a war between chaos and control erupts. Like an earthquake, the stable ground beneath us is left shaken. Later, we must rebuild from the rubble. Put plainly, Saturn wants law and order; Uranus wants change at any cost. We’ve been feeling this since the two planets began their dance in January 2020, bringing everything from economic shakeups to the global COVID-19 pandemic to sweeping Black Lives Matter protests. As the Saturn-Uranus tension reaches a head in 2021, society is embroiled in heated efforts to change “the system” (Saturn) through (Uranian) protests, citizen uprisings and attempts to redistribute rights and resources through the greater population.
The Economy: America 2.0
Disclaimer: The information in this book/post should not be considered professional financial advice. All writings on this site are purely based on the authors’ astrological opinions and are intended for entertainment purposes only. Please consult a certified professional financial advisor when considering any investment or financial decision.
Saturn and Uranus were square from 1929-31, during the initial stages of the Great Depression. Shortly after the 1929 U.S. Stock Market crash, when stocks lost 90 percent of their value, Saturn and Uranus began squaring each other in lockstep for two years. At the 2008 Great Recession, another time of profound economic turbulence, these two outer planets were embroiled in an opposition.
When 2021 began, Saturn and Uranus are back in a square aspect, a conflict intensified by their positions in the staunch “fixed” signs of Aquarius and Taurus. It’s conceivable that an avalanche of negative events and sentiment could pierce the current Wall Street “Everything Bubble,” echoing the great ’29 crash by eventually consuming every index and currency market on the planet.
When Pluto makes its grand return to 27 degrees Capricorn in the U.S. natal chart on February 20, 2022, Saturn and Uranus will still be square—a double impact we’ll feel through all of next year. As Lord Pluto completes a 248-year revolution around the Sun, his arrival could catalyze this domino-like collapse, unleashing a national disaster that includes armed civil conflict between various polarized social groups vying for social dominance.
There is also the possibility of a larger conflict featuring the superpowers and disputed conflict regions. Watch for the interplay between Uranus transiting Taurus and Saturn in Aquarius beginning with the Pluto return period in the winter of 2022.
Our locational astrology highlights the triggering effects of Uranus as it continues to transit over the eastern Middle East region and Mediterranean, which encompasses the geography between the Black Sea regions to the north and Sudan in the south, Iran in the East, and Egypt and Libya to the West.
Interestingly, the word “disaster” originates from the 16th-century Italian word disastro, which means an “ill-starred event.” Dis- “apart from” and astro “star” (from Latin astrum). The etymological omen: to forecast crisis, observe the position of the stars.
In this cosmic unfolding, which will extend through 2022 and accelerate into 2024, dynamical and mathematical forces will likely compound overlooked stress points in the economy. These could include municipal bond downturns, unavailable shipping containers, supply chain disruption, declining commercial real estate values (including REITs), corporate insolvencies and eventually, unfunded government liabilities—plus a wave of sovereign “bad actors” taking full advantage of the dystopic atmosphere.
Saturn shapes the future
The Saturnian deleveraging of the economy, set against the Uranian volatile conditions, will impact the growth of the country well beyond 2024.
There’s also the likelihood of large-scale populist strikes emerging by 2025, protesting the liquidation of America amid a fractured social and political environment in the wake of the 2024 presidential election. This continued Plutonic deterioration will be able to trace its origins to three unambiguous signals: the outbreak of the coronavirus in Wuhan, China, the Wall Street repo market collapse and the death of the WeWork unicorn in the autumn of 2019, all of which provided for the initial “Minsky Moment” shockwave of March 23, 2020, when the Dow index fell from 29,568 to 18,213, an event that Astrostyle reported upon at that time, given the gravity of the collapse. The retesting of this March 2020 low would parallel the 1929-31 second-year crash.
If markets follow the patterns of 2008 and 2019-20, a crisis in 2022-24 is highly likely. Into this inequity, the US will again raise the debt ceiling, increasing the money supply as new, questionable concepts about the utility of money will be circulated, in economic circles what’s known as MMT (Modern Monetary Theory). Essentially, MMT aims to replace the role of the Federal Reserve central bank to control inflation and employment with a fiscal policy steered by the government, in all likelihood featuring UBI (Universal Basic Income) to maintain money velocity for our economy.
Can we have faith that the U.S. Congress will do any better than the Fed or disengage from its endless, polarized strife to responsibly lead the global economy? MMT’s many critics point out that it’s a fiscal policy for inflating our already unmanageable national debts past the event horizon of a debt blackhole into fiscal oblivion with no hope for recovery.
From the rest of the world’s perspective, the U.S. economy is a Frankenstein monster being kept alive by Federal Reserve stimulus and corporate stock market buybacks—an illegal practice until 1982.
In such a scenario, which will extend from the present to 2022 then accelerate into 2024-25, margin call trading requirements will force many investors to sell off all their assets in a scramble to raise cash before the market hits bottom. Deep-pocketed investors and large institutional players, watching from the sidelines, will no doubt wait for this pivotal nadir before moving in, reconfirming the ancient Wall Street adage, “Buy low, sell high.” From there, we’ll see Bitcoin skyrocket, along with safe haven assets like gold and silver.
Since Pluto is associated with generational wealth, especially as it transits through Capricorn, the sign of long-held family assets, vast fortunes will be made. The take-all winners? Those who are positioned to capture the largest wealth transfer in global economic history after a massive deleveraging of the U.S. economy.
The absolute disconnect between the stock market and the rest of the economy has been a feature of the U.S. economy since at least the 2008 financial crisis, promoting calls for a reevaluation of the role between the Federal Reserve central bank and the markets, which have diverged with such force that it can prompt us to question whether we have free markets at all. Nonetheless, the Fed pumping the markets with stimulus through 2021 could—incredibly—cause a rising stock market, perhaps surpassing the psychological barrier of 30,000-plus Dow points before eventually succumbing to a market contraction.
It’s likely that this “melt up” would bring no-growth, stagflating forces to bear on the U.S. economy with inflationary pressures exerting more destabilization on the lives of consumers before a reordering of the economic system is mandated, the totality of which fully reflecting the suppressive archetype of Saturn and transformative nature of Pluto.
Remember, previous market highs were the order of the day before each catastrophic crash. Is there hope for America ahead?
Perhaps our future is also guided by Uranus, the planet of “electric” genius and the estimated $100 trillion electric vehicle market emerging globally? Given the long-term efficiencies of electric power, doubtless your purchases will be transacted with a digital currency, itself ruled by Uranus, too.
Capricorn’s influence
It should be no surprise that the eventual preeminent alternative reserve asset will be governed by hardy Capricorn. Bitcoin, which minted its genesis block on January 3, 2009, is a tough, decentralized Goat while also being ruled by the shrewd Rat, the first of the Chinese zodiac signs. Bitcoin, unlike government-issued fiat currency, is a digital currency that is not subject to central bank manipulation or devaluation. In financial parlance, Bitcoin is “hard,” which is why it’s poised to be coveted by individuals, companies and countries alike as the ultimate reserve asset in any portfolio when we find ourselves deep in the Aquarian financial winter.
In this charged financial environment, stalwart, must-have commodities plus a basket of rare earth elements, to name a few, may be so difficult to come by that they increase in price due to supply chain disruption. The term “supply and demand” will make itself known again, taking on foreboding meaning with every new lockdown from continued seasonal waves of the COVID-19 virus. This volatility could easily send fragile nation states into regional warfare, per Astrostyle’s March 2020 prediction. The current war between Armenia and Azerbaijan is one such hot zone that will typify impending conflicts spurred by the ongoing global fracturing.
As the world teeters at the precipice of imminent change, we again forecast a restructured global financial system, one that’s on par in scale with the 1944 formation of the Bretton-Woods monetary system, albeit one that incorporates emerging blockchain technology. The question: Will it be administered solely by the U.S. Federal Reserve…or a larger global entity, such as the IMF? Numerous academics have already outlined the 2030s as a period that could see a new global benchmark reserve currency.
Of course there’s a probability that an extended no-growth period lasting a decade or more is our financial lot, too, one that mirrors the perpetual flatline of Japan and its 30-year balance sheet recession. A long period of “stagflation”—persistent high inflation paired with high unemployment rates and low or stagnant demand—is a grim possibility after the dust settles, given our catastrophic debt levels and global encumbrances.
When outer planets clash
In the second half of this decade, after the U.S. completes its Plutonic restructuring and the icy dwarf planet enters Aquarius from 2024 to 2043 (yes, nearly 20 years), changes can occur in a zeptosecond. The United States will have the opportunity to revisit and determine its core values, as we move into our high-tech future, prompted by the deglobalization occurring now. In this view, it’s likely that technology and sciences will lead us into the Age of Aquarius, where the material becomes immaterial, and technological and transcendental revolutions await.
Just as when we wrote about 2020 back in 2019, when we could not foresee how the dynamics would exactly play out (COVID, protests, lockdowns) only time will tell how these historic patterns will specifically unfold in 2021, 2022 and beyond.
Preparation is the best antidote when outer planets clash, which is why we’ve chosen to include these stark predictions. As 17th-century Enlightenment philosopher Baruch Spinoza said, “If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.” Accurate astrology is not only about seeing the future; it demands that we understand history and its cycles as well.
Planetary history also teaches us that the American Civil War erupted when Saturn was similarly squaring Uranus in 1861, troubling to note in a year where this seems like a distinct possibility. Complicating matters, Saturn is in rebellious Aquarius until March 7, 2023—the zodiac sign that’s co-ruled by Uranus!
Meantime, destabilizing Uranus is in its weakened “fall” sign as it occupies Taurus, the sign of security and finance, which, as we shared above, has already coincided with major fluctuations in the global markets. Certainly, this won’t make for an easy moment in history, but the changes we see in 2021 will likely bring awe-inspiring developments in many sectors. With Saturn in Aquarius, a “Great Reset” is in the stars for all of us.
The Federal Reserve central bank may see an opportunity in this deteriorating financial landscape, as it will allow the consolidation of power among a select group of survivor banks, eventually allowing the Federal Reserve to hold the existing notes of an entire economy, thereby making it easier to issue a new financial system, one that is cashless and controlled directly by the Fed in a blockchain offering as the world’s non-dollar currencies collapse. Are you ready to download your Fed wallet app?
Within these fiscal/monetary straights, the time-value of money is being inverted in ways never witnessed in history. This state of “plutonomics” will give rise to a virtually controlled monetary system, one where the public good of money is rendered inaccessible from behind a cryptographic veil of government controlled private blockchains.
In the mounting battle for control of the world’s reserve currency, likely between the dollar and the Chinese yuan (and Bitcoin?) will the very technology designed to free money from state control create a new techno-totalitarian grip on humanity?
This “Minsky Moment” morality play will bring a more centralized control of the economy and the ability to tax private citizens as all consumer transactions will be observable on the blockchain ledger—a big brother bank by any other meme—and harbinger of Saturn’s de-democratization of our common good(s) blended with high-tech Uranian genius. If the charter between the Fed and the government is modified, expect this scenario to play out over the ensuing years as a digital moral hazard is stepped over.
Pluto in Aquarius: The Separation of Money and State
Finally, with the ability of digital tokens to be shared and exchanged between individuals concurrent with the development of central bank digital currencies (“CBDC”), the decentralizing forces in society will oppose the centralizing forces, a standoff condition that favors formation of the next global political movement. We predict that during the Age of Aquarius, the next emancipation movement by individuals will begin taking shape with Pluto entering Aquarius in 2023, culminating in a larger global movement between 2030-2039 as individuals attempt to separate and liberate money from the state through digital tokens like Bitcoin and their attendant decentralized blockchain technologies, a demand that will gain traction throughout Pluto’s long transit through Aquarius. Enigmatic Pluto will herald changes to technology, industry and economics that will span over at least the next two decades, especially as the tiny powerhouse transits the final degrees of Capricorn and enters the Aquarian realm.
