Astrology of the Bird Flu Epidemic

Note: This article was adapted from a recent series in my astrology blog.

Avian influenza—bird flu—originated in Southeast Asia and has now spread to Europe and Africa with a swiftness which has startled epidemiologists. For an alarming global perspective, take a look at the Yahoo News full coverage page. At this time, avian influenza can only be transmitted to humans from birds, particularly poultry, and even then it is still relatively rare. The concern is that at some point the disease may mutate and become a pandemic in which humans infect each other.

It might be useful to first look at what the U.S. Centers for Disease Control has to say about bird flu since there is a lot of misinformation about it. As we shall see, the symptoms of the bird flu are much like those for any respiratory flu virus—except for the recovery.

The symptoms of this disease, known officially as H5N1, are the following, according to the Centers for Disease Control: “…fever, cough, sore throat, and muscle aches…eye infections, pneumonia, severe respiratory diseases (such as acute respiratory distress), and other severe and life-threatening complications.” The avian flu virus presents flu symptoms which are not amenable to any treatment and often prove fatal, although the CDC notes in the following paragraph that there may be a larger unreported population of avian flu survivors.

From the CDC website:

“Of the few avian influenza viruses that have crossed the species barrier to infect humans, H5N1 has caused the largest number of detected cases of severe disease and death in humans. In the current outbreaks in Asia and Europe more than half of those infected with the virus have died. Most cases have occurred in previously healthy children and young adults. However, it is possible that the only cases currently being reported are those in the most severely ill people, and that the full range of illness caused by the H5N1 virus has not yet been defined.

“So far, the spread of H5N1 virus from person to person has been limited and has not continued beyond one person. Nonetheless, because all influenza viruses have the ability to change, scientists are concerned that H5N1 virus one day could be able to infect humans and spread easily from one person to another. Because these viruses do not commonly infect humans, there is little or no immune protection against them in the human population. If H5N1 virus were to gain the capacity to spread easily from person to person, an influenza pandemic (worldwide outbreak of disease) could begin.” (See a recent news article, “Spread of Bird Flu Boosts Pandemic Chances”)

Mundane astrology is different from medical astrology in that we are looking not at individual cases, but at sweeping patterns which can be linked to planetary configurations.

Richard Saunders was an eminent Renaissance physician and astrologer, highly regarded by his contemporary, the great astrologer William Lilly. In his book, The Astrological Judgment and Practice of Physick, Saunders wrote an extensive astrological analysis of a plague outbreak in 1593 (while Saturn was in Cancer). He noted symptoms of the disease and related those to Saturn’s transit through a watery sign. Saunders believed, however, that plagues—the old-fashioned word for epidemics or pandemics, all of which were then deadly— were generally ruled by Jupiter. This makes sense because Jupiter would rule something widespread. It is a bit counter-intuitive, however, because Jupiter is a benefic being used to help describe a malefic event. Jupiter takes about one year to go through a zodiac sign, so annual worldwide outbreaks of the common, mutating influenza virus ("flu season") might be marked by Jupiter’s sign transits (the latter is my own theory, not Saunders’).

There has been a great deal of recent discussion within the astrological community regarding the planetary signature for a bird flu pandemic. While many claim that the Saturn-Neptune opposition is “it,” this is only part of the developing picture. I do not want to be too quick to dismiss the importance of the Saturn-Neptune cycle in the spread of the avian flu virus because it may play a role. Neptune, especially, diffuses and makes things hard to pin down. However, I believe that mundane Saturn-Neptune configurations can often symbolize malefic trance states which sweep through culture. This is what is already starting to happen with the avian flu virus.

During the Saturn-Neptune conjunction in the early part of the 1950’s, U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy helped to lead a modern witch hunt to root out Communist sympathizers. The nation was then under the spell of anti-Communist rhetoric. The most recent Saturn-Neptune oppositions (the Saturn-Neptune opposition is about to occur again) took place during the years 1936-1937 and 1971-1972. There was a mass blindness to reality during both those time periods. In 1936, Hitler staged the Berlin Olympics while continuing to court world opinion. Although the world, mired in a Great Depression, chose to look the other way, history has since exposed the world’s pre-war blindness. In 1972, Richard Nixon was re-elected American president while voters looked the other way and chose not to see behind the curtains. Nixon’s voluminous White House tapes have since laid bare the shocking degree of political cynicism behind his flag-waving 1972 re-election victory and the extent to which he bewitched the electorate. I still recall the 1974 bumper sticker, “Don’t blame me. I’m from Massachusetts”—that being the only state to have voted for Nixon’s opponent, George McGovern. The currently forming Saturn-Neptune opposition coincides with the U.S. war in

Iraq

and surging Islamic fervor which begs the question: What spell are we under this time?

The Saturn-Neptune opposition may point to the onset of a “mass psychosis”—alluded to in a recent news article about the bird flu’s entry into Europe.

The Astrology of Epidemics: Jupiter-Pluto

If Saturn-Neptune is a sort of mass trance state (and perhaps descriptive of collective reactions to a pandemic), then what is the astrology of an actual pandemic? Jupiter is “spreading” and Pluto is the god of the Underworld. Initial outbreaks of the following pandemics—wherein there were widespread deaths—were all characterized by the Jupiter-Pluto conjunction:

The Black Plague began in 1347 during the Jupiter-Pluto conjunction in Aries.
The global flu pandemic of 1918 began during the Jupiter-Pluto conjunction in Cancer.
AIDS was first identified in 1981. From Wikipedia: “The official date for the beginning of the AIDS epidemic is marked as June 18, 1981, when the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported a cluster of [illnesses] in five gay men in Los Angeles.” Five months later, the Jupiter-Pluto conjunction became exact in Libra.

See also: Pluto in Capricorn in my astrology blog, and articles on the movies Red Eye and War of the Worlds. You can also read more about the Pluto in Sagittarius generation.