Jupiter (source: Albumasar's De magnis coniunctionibus, 1490)
When the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn falls on a winter solstice
I feel compelled to write a few lines on a subject I know very little about, only because it has to do with a pattern that it should have been possible to see in the sky today, if the weather had been better. Today, the twenty-first day of December 2020, was the date of a very particular astronomical alignment between the planets Jupiter and Saturn, called the Great Conjunction. It was said that Jupiter and Saturn would draw so close to each other that they might seem to be in an embrace. Hence the ‘doodles’ for 21st December that were – and still are – displayed today on a famous search engine (which I normally do not use):
https://www.google.com/logos/doodles/2020/celebrating-winter-2020-and-the-great-conjunction-northern-hemisphere-6753651837108654.7-law.gif;Prior to reading Pierre d’Ailly’s prediction that there would be troubled times in France in 1789, I was highly dismissive of the mere concept of astrology (i.e. that future events can be predicted based on the motions of celestial objects). However, after checking the wording in a 19th century edition of his De concordia astronomiae, I warmed up a little to the idea that there might be some validity to some forms astrology. This simply because Pierre d’Ailly (a French bishop) had made his prediction almost three hundred years before the events actually took place in France! True, in doing so, he was only applying a ‘method’ devised by Arab astrologers such as Mas’halla, Al Kindi and Abu Ma’shar – for the latter, see p.24 of the Latin translation of his work on the great conjunctions (De magnis coniunctionibus), more specifically the sixth and seven lines from the top of the left-hand page, i,e. the phrase ‘de secta ad sectam apud fidem reuolutionis’.
As the winter solstice marks the shortest day of the year, growth (as expressed by the extra minute of daylight that is added with each new day) and the beginning of a new cycle are two themes usually associated with this important date in the calendar. The more so when the conjunction that occurs on 21st December is that of the Jupiter-Saturn pair, which the mediaeval Arab astrologer Abu Ma’shar explained that it would take place with a median interval of 19 years, 314 days, 14 hours, 23 minutes and several seconds [See Enzo Barilla’s article in ‘Further reading’ or pages 13-14 of De magnis coniunctionibus]...
However, what is special about this year’s Jupiter-Saturn conjunction (apart from the estimate that both planets will have been at their closest distance for some 800 years; source: ‘Jupiter and Saturn’s Great Conjunction is the best in 800 years – Here’s how to see it’, Charles Q. Choi, Scientific American, 17 Dec. 2020) is that the conjunction takes places in another zodiacal sign – air versus earth previously – and will remain so for the next two centuries.
As Aquarius (together with Gemini and Libra, the other two air signs denoting action, ideas, motion) is ruled by Saturn (limitation) and Uranus (freedom), the far-reaching changes at all levels of society which astrologers are expecting could be slow.
Let us hope that this will be the case if these changes continue to be negative for humanity, as unfortunately they have largely been so far for most of this year*, in the hope that we might have enough time to organise so as to bring them to a screeching halt and maybe even revert some of the deleterious effects they would invariably have had.
*The global response to COVID has a saturnine Aquarian feel about it. Worshipping at the altar of science, health surveillance & control systems, lockdowns, quarantines, social distancing, the constant appeals and declarations of humanitarianism.
