ARE WE ON THE EVE OF DESTRUCTION?
Sasha Fenton
Older readers may remember the evocative Barry McGuire song, “The Eve of Destruction”, which so captured the mood in the USA in 1965. I always considered this particularly powerful and poetic song far more impressive than many of the outpourings of the somewhat odious Bob Dylan – but that’s just me. So what has all this to do the way things are in 2013? Well, nothing really, apart from the fact that a particularly depressing repeat of past planetary patterns is occurring right now, and when I noticed this, the Barry McGuire song started rolling around inside my head. The disastrous planetary period that I was looking into wasn’t the 1960s,at all, but a much earlier era – namely, 542 AD.
The sixth century was a pivotal period of history, because it was a time when old orders fell away and vigorous new ones arose. The most important force in the civilized world had for many centuries been the Roman Empire, but the actual city of Rome had fallen to northern tribes during the previous century, while the centre of the Roman Empire had shifted to Constantinople (Modern day Istanbul).
In the mid-sixth century, a powerful Emperor called Justinian decided to enlarge his domain by taking back the old Western Empire, which, when added to his existing Eastern lands, would replicate the ancient Roman Empire at its greatest. So with this in mind, Justinian despatched troops all over the civilised world to make a start on his new Roman dream. This adventure cost Justinian a fortune, but it wasn’t the only drain on his exchequer, because he was also aggrandising his regime by building the church of Hagia Sofia, and several other massive churches and palaces in his city. The drain on his taxpayers was bad enough, but things were soon destined to get much worse.
In 536 AD, a massive volcano erupted in El Salvador, and while this almost wiped out the Mayans of Central America, it also sent huge amounts of debris and acid into the sky. The dust hung around in the upper atmosphere and cooled the world’s climate to the point where summers became a distant memory in many countries, and harvests just didn’t happen. One knock-on effect of the subsequent shortage of grain in the areas around Constantinople was that the local rodent population poured into the city in search of food.
Ancient Egypt had always been able to rely on three harvests during the course of each year, which had made that country the traditional breadbasket of the ancient world, and even though this productivity must have been lower after the eruption, Egypt still exported grain to many countries, including Constantinople throughout the century.
Early in 541 AD, the weird weather and increased acidity in the air seem to have triggered a biological change somewhere in Africa, and this re-invigorated a particular type of bacterium that had long been dormant. The bacterium found a food supply in the African flea, which in turn lived off the black rat, mice and other rodents. This bacterium was the cause of the bubonic plague. The plague soon worked its way northwards to Egypt, onto the grain ships and then onwards to the various ports of the ancient world.
The bubonic plague is bad enough, because with no effective treatment, it kills about 40% of the population, but after a while, this plague can mutate into a pneumonic form that affects the lungs. When it gets to this stage, it no longer needs flea bites to cause an infection, since it can transfer from one person to the next as per flu. The pneumonic version causes a 100% death rate.
So the ancient world suffered food shortages at best and outright famine at worst, lousy weather and pandemic plagues, to the point where half the population of the world died. In today’ terms, we would need to lose four billion people to have the same effect!
With all this going on, you would think that Justinian would scale back his ambitions, but dictators don’t think like that. He increased the taxes that were already in force, and made those who remained alive pay the taxes on behalf of their missing neighbours as well as themselves – despite the fact there was hardly anyone left to work their own farms, and nobody at all to run their neighbours’ farms.
People began to leave Asia Minor and find other lands to live in, while the various armies that Justinian had sent to create his new Empire fell apart due to the plague or dysentery, or just walking off the job.
The people of the northern tribes didn’t live in large cities, so they escaped the worst ravages of the plague. In addition, they relied as much on hunting as farming, which meant they were able to survive the post eruption cold spell pretty well too, but the arctic conditions forced them to move their families south, which meant taking land and facilities away from others as they went. So now, Justinian was also being forced to fight running battles on his northern borders.
Most of the gains that Justinian made in the west were lost after his death. Meanwhile, new and very warlike Arabic tribes were on the move from the east. The story of Islam doesn’t start until the following century and maybe it would never have started, but for the relative weakness of the old worlds, which gave space for new ideas to form and grow.
The Astrological Picture
From an astrologer’s point of view, the aftermath of the plague, Justinian’s ongoing war, and the pressure from the north and the rise of the east, make interesting planetary reading, but why is it relevant now? Here is the picture in 542 AD and today:
- Pluto was at 17 deg. Capricorn then, and it is at 8 deg. Capricorn now.
- Neptune was at 10 deg. Pisces then, and it is at 3 deg. Pisces now.
- There are no figures for Chiron in the 6th century, but the 542 AD Neptune is sitting precisely on our present day Chiron at 10 deg. Pisces.
- Uranus was then in Virgo (health matters) and opposing Neptune (also health) but it’s now in Aries (wars and rumours of wars).
- Saturn was then at 8 deg. Scorpio, and it is at 8 deg. Scorpio now.
- Jupiter was at the end of Taurus then and in mid-Cancer now, so we don’t have any real comparison, although the ancient Jupiter would arrive in Cancer a couple of years later.
- Mars was then in Aries (war), and at 11 deg. Aries, it was bang on today’s Uranus.
- The north node was then 27 deg. Scorpio and it’s now 9 deg. Scorpio. The nodes move backwards, so it passed the 27 deg. point late in 2012.
- The inner planets (Sun, Mercury and Venus) were then in Taurus, while in a couple of months from now, they’ll be in the opposite sign of Scorpio, along with a partial solar eclipse on the third of November.
- Unusually, there were three eclipses in May 542 AD, with a partial solar eclipse on the 1st, a lunar eclipse on the 15th and a second partial solar eclipse on the 30th. The ancients feared eclipses as harbingers of bad news – especially across the Taurus/Scorpio axis.
Are we on the eve of destruction? Well Damascus isn’t far from Istanbul, Iran is nearby, Israel is twitchy, Egypt is in chaos and Russia looms over the region from the north. The USA seems to be getting ready to send in the gunships – and frankly, as a historian and an astrologer, it doesn’t feel good!
We haven’t had a really good plague for a long time, and while bubonic is now fairly easy to cure, there are at least a hundred other ailments lurking around that only need a nice war and a bit of climate change to encourage them to wake up, stretch their limbs and go in search of breakfast…
I’d love to hear some other viewpoints; perhaps someone else has also looked into this scenario. Please leave a comment, or you can contact me direct by filling in the form below. (It doesn’t add you to mail lists or anything, it just avoids my email being scavenged by the usual spammers).
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