As I mentioned in earlier posts, 2020 is a big year in astrological terms. Both the archetypes of Saturn and Jupiter re-birthed through Pluto in early 2020, a process that is still actually occurring, and on December 21st Jupiter will conjoin with Saturn in the sky in the humanitarian future forward sign of Aquarius, indicating yet another rebirth that will affect global culture.
I have covered various aspects of the current astrological events in the following posts:
I have mixed feelings about what I see in the sky, because on the one hand the possibilities for a much better future are closer than they have been for a long time, which is exciting, but on the other hand, the core baseline root of the recent Pluto/Saturn and Pluto/Jupiter conjunctions in Capricorn tell us that whatever happens, we have to get real, take more responsibility than we ever have before, and embrace a much needed social maturation that asks of all of us ‘adults’, to step up and reach for greater personal sovereignty and self-determination. In this sense, the potential represented by the imminent Saturn/Jupiter rebirth in Aquarius, can only be made possible through a fundamental evolution in societal responsibility built at the individual level.
The questions then arise: what are we going to do as individuals to make possible the changes we want to see in the world? And what ‘truths’ do we need to come to terms with in order to redirect our energy toward changes for the benefit of all of humanity?
The familiar eco-mantra remains ever relevant to these times “Think globally; Act locally”. We need to develop a greater understanding of what is happening at the global level in order to give space within, to receive inspirations regarding how we need to act individually, at a local level within our own communities, personal lives and immediate environment.
The renewal of Jupiter with Saturn in Aquarius, beginning at the end of the year may open the way for significant social change, but for beneficial social change to occur, the old systems will have to give way to new ones. This new cycle can be summed up in just a few words “the rules need to change.”
A good example of this process and how we might see even more positive developments in the next few years is in regard to the law and the legal system.
Now ordinarily one might think these two things are one and the same, but it turns out that for almost all countries this is not strictly speaking true. Almost all of us are pretty ignorant of the law for two reasons: we are generally not law breakers, and we are not ever educated about the law at school. Saturn represents structures and systems; the existing laws and regulations that shape and influence society, and Jupiter tends to represent leadership, expansion into new potential, intuitive thinking, our sense of what is true and natural law.
Aquarius is an archetype that typically impels us to break from the past and to liberate from structures that no longer serve evolution. Will we see renewed efforts to move back to natural law?
In terms of law and order, natural law equates to what is called common law. Common law can be seen as the sum synthesis of collective knowledge and wisdom developed over the ages with regard to how to live fairly with our fellow brothers and sisters. Most of us are already intuitively aware of the essence of common law, which can be distilled down to these four aims:
Cause no harm
Cause no loss
Cause no injury
Ensure you are honourable
A highly significant evolution with regard to the law, occurred in England a few years after Pluto and Saturn had re-birthed in Leo, while Saturn and Jupiter were in opposition on 15th June 1215, called the Magna Carta. (The Saturn/Jupiter oppositions occurred over a number of years from 1215-1217 most where in Aires/Libra, and at the time of the Magna Carta the opposition was in Virgo/Pisces.)
The Magna Carta Liberatum, meaning Great Charter of Freedoms, represents an evolution in terms of human rights, because it was a consensus agreement, made common law contract, that no monarch was above the law. At the time, the ruling English king John ruled using the principle of vis et voluntas - “force and will” and he did not rule in accordance with the custom and the law, much as it appears many if not all of our governments today are also doing.
Article 39 states: No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, nor will we [the king] proceed with force against him except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.
Article 61 of the charter defines the people’s right to rebel should the government of the day be operating outside its lawful authority, and gives the people full authority to constrain if necessary by force. The Magna Carter represented a call to responsibility, and it made clear that it is our duty to step in and require the monarch (or government) to uphold their contract with the people. Sovereignty lies with the people to hold an out-of-control government to account. What’s more it can be argued that although it was made statute law in 1297, and much of it has since been repealed, parliament was not a party to the original Common Law contract and cannot repeal it lawfully; the provisions of the original remain intact. The Magna Carter became a model used in many countries around the world, and for this reason it is a significant part of the bedrock of common law values. The astrological context of the time, where Saturn was in the early ‘seeding’ stage within a Leo cycle, stimulating new improved structures related to freedoms and rights for the individual (evolution), while the ruling monarch wanted to keep ruling above the law via the principle of the Divine Right of Kings, the idea that the king answered to no one but God (resistance to evolution), led to the evolution of what it meant to be individual and upgraded our perception of personal sovereignty - at the time of the charter, Saturn had moved into the remediation/adjustment sign of Virgo.
It is interesting to note that when the Magna Carta was made statutory law in 1297, a similar alignment of Pluto/Saturn and Jupiter in Capricorn had occurred just twelve years before, albeit of milder intensity (Jupiter although in Capricorn was not in a close conjunction with Pluto or Saturn). When one considers the larger time scales of rare alignments, one can appreciate that their affects influence larger spans of time that go beyond decades. The Capricorn nature of these alignments deeply shapes the structures of society, which can be felt for hundreds of years.
Having established the Magna Carter as part of common law, it becomes relevant to distinguish common law from statutory law, which is the most prevalent law process. I am by no means an expert, but present the following ideas as worthy of consideration given the nature of these changing times.
Common law always applies to a man or woman; to a real human being. It is aligned with natural law, and the concept of justice/balance for wrongdoings e.g. harm done, loss incurred, injury received by another person. Common law is carried out by the people for the people, using a jury system. It is sometimes referred to as the law of the land.
Statutory law is enacted by the state, which because it is a corporation, is essentially commercial law. All institutions such as governments, police services and health services are set up as corporations, and to participate in a commercial law process, one has to give consent to become a corporation as well. How do we do this? Well unbeknownst to most of us, we become a corporation the moment we are registered at birth for a birth certificate, and any subsequent driver’s license or ID cards also represent not who we are as real living people, but as a fictitious corporate entity - but only if we consent to being one. Conveniently the system has assumed a position whereby if one doesn’t object, it is accepted that consent has been given. In the absence of transparency, most of us unwittingly give consent to be governed by statutory law, which is law set aside for commercial undertakings with its own language (nick-named legalese), and own rules that differ greatly from common law values. In short, statutory law is more about money and less about justice, and invariably encourages us to employ an agent such as a lawyer to represent us. The moment we do this however, we automatically declare that we are incompetent and lose most of our common law rights. A simple example is a parking ticket. If we consent to being a corporate entity, we usually end up paying the fine, even though through the lens of common law, no one has really been harmed, injured and no losses have been incurred. In fact we haven’t technically broken the law; instead we have disregarded an accepted rule or corporate policy. The real issue about parking tickets and speeding fines is revenue for the corporations i.e. the police force and the government.
In recent years, there has been a gradual awakening to the arguably unlawful deception put upon the common people, whereby without their consent, they are given a fictitious corporate identity, which makes them liable to commercial law. If you are new to these ideas it may sound a bit far fetched, too good to be true, or somewhat irrelevant and meaningless, because after all as individuals, who are we to gainsay the perceived authorities backed up by the police force? We are, practically speaking, virtually powerless, and yet there are a few self-enabled and learned people establishing a track record of doing the seemingly impossible; they are advising their clients to decline consent to being a corporate entity, or employee of a governmental corporation i.e. citizen, and helping innocent people get false charges dropped. It is beyond the scope of this post to cover this in any useful detail, but I will post some interesting links at the bottom in case you are interested in following up on this notion.
The current line up of Pluto, Saturn and Jupiter in close conjunction in Capricorn is a rare event in astrology, recurring only after longer spans of time, the last time was nearly 4000 years ago, and the nature of these archetypes always generate changes in culture and society.
To re-cap: these archetypes rebirthing in Capricorn promote the evolution of the structures that give rise to societies; at these times, new seed patterns emerge that re-configure the nature of society, including rulership, money and financial systems, law and legal systems, social hierarchies and belief systems etc. 2020 saw a close conjunction in Capricorn of Pluto 23˚, Saturn 27˚ and Jupiter 17˚ (all within a 10˚ orb). The last time these planets did this was in 1894 BCE, when they were all conjoined with Pluto 29˚ Capricorn (again all within a 10˚ orb). It is interesting to note that this date coincides with the approximate date for the emergence of Babylon in ancient Mesopotamia. Are we seeing the completion of a cultural evolutionary cycle going back 4000 years (or more), and thus the possibility of birthing something completely new?
Do we the people, need to reclaim our sovereignty and re-define essential human rights, by initiating a return to common law principles suitably adjusted to the current times? If so, how are we to go about this? Do we need to educate ourselves about the law and its history of use and its structures in order to empower ourselves to co-create changes for a world we all want to live in?
In the UK there are currently initiatives to resuscitate common law courts (several have already occurred): this isn’t as hard as it sounds because apparently we all have the right to create a common law court whenever the need arises, and we don’t have to rely on the current statutory legal system for everything. As would be expected these initiatives are all works in progress, but they do represent seed movements that could gain sufficient momentum to change the fundamental structures within society that currently fail to restrain and punish wrongdoers (especially financial fraudsters, corporate criminals and warmongers).
Aquila Idha is an Evolutionary Astrologer, Self-Realisation Mentor and Tarot Consultant.
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