If you were expecting some kind of sun sign nonsense, forget about it. This is real astrology for the real world, not some mystical mumbo-jumbo word salad. If it's real astrology for yourself that you want, you can get it by phone or in print. And if you need help deciphering the astrological glyphs in the graphics accompanying this article, see Astroglyphs: Astrological Symbols Guide. Please note: this forecast is expressed in terms of Universal Time (UT, aka GMT). Also please be aware that, while I never change a forecast once it's published, I do post errata to acknowledge typographical errors and the like.

PLEASE NOTE: I apologize for the delay in posting this free (and greatly abbreviated) version of my 2013 World Forecast Highlights). First and foremost, his was due to the fact that orders for the full version of the 2013 World Forecast Highlights were more numerous than ever before. Despite the many orders, every one of the pre-paid copies went out to my clients on December 31. There were so many orders (and so many every day since), that there just hasn’t been time to publish the complimentary online excerpted version until now. Nor has there been time to prepare the usual longer excerpt. Thanks for your patience and understanding! Meanwhile, if you’d like your own copy of the full 2013 Forecast Highlights, it’s available in hard copy by mail ($75) or as a PDF document by email ($50). Orders may be phoned in (toll-free from anywhere in North America to 800-527-8761) and charged to any major credit or debit card. PayPal orders may be placed direct from your own PayPal account page to rnolle@astropro.com – or by using the astropro PayPal order page.

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
--Winston Churchill
 

Last year’s World Forecast Highlights (published in December 2011) correctly foretold the major stories of the year, including the re-election of resident Obama and the world NOT ending on December 21, 2012 – and all the major trends and events in between, from the continued and intensifying uprisings in the Middle East (the "Arab Spring") to the Occupy movement in the US, and the anti-austerity and anti-corruption riots in Greece, Spain, France, England, India and China (to name only a epresentative sample). All of these social upheavals, part and parcel of the Uranus-Pluto square, were in essence the 99% rising up against the 1%, the poor and middle class in revolt against the plutocrats and the system they largely control. It’s a system which, as predicted in past editions of my annual World Forecast Highlights, has been on the verge of collapse for years now, since the Leo-Scorpio-Aquarius Saturn-Jupiter-Neptune T-Square of 2005-2006 – the first such configuration in some 1,500 years. Accelerating as the Saturn-Uranus opposition of 2008-2009 heralded a global financial system near-shutdown, and hanging on via governmental intervention under the aegis of the 2010-2011 Jupiter-Saturn opposition, this historical epoch remains a time of social, political and economic turmoil into 2020, when the next Jupiter-Saturn conjunction occurs.

The current Uranus-Pluto square (90° arc) has been within a few degrees of exact since the spring of 2011, and remains so until early 2016. Just as it did the last time it occurred (1931-1935, although it was a waning [270°] square then), this celestial configuration has coincided with the aforementioned social, economic and political turmoil, Compare the 1932 Bonus Army march on Washington to the 2011-2012 Occupy movement, "Arab Spring" and widespread protest movements around the world – and the widespread rise of fascism in one form or another. The Uranus-Pluto square means revolution or at least revolt, and we’ve seen plenty of it since this pattern formed in the heavens in the last couple years.There’ll be plenty more in 2013, as Uranus and Pluto remain with just a few degrees of their waxing quadrature for all but the first couple months of the year – maybe most especially in spring and fall, when the aspect is partile (exact); and in August (when Jupiter joins the configuration and turns the pattern into a T-Square). Some of the most strident demonstrations and most violent clashes in these protests, revolts and rebellions are likely in March (Mars conjunct Uranus), July (Mars opposite Pluto) and December (Mars opposite Uranus). With a new Mars Max cycle beginning on December 22, 2013 and lasting into August 9, 2014 – more on that later – it’s virtually certain that the fall and winter of 2013 will be the setting for the year’s most violent uprisings.

Economic downturns always impose the greatest hardships on the lower and middle classes, and the ongoing Uranus-Pluto square makes it clear that this will be a major story off and on throughout 2013. Markets and economies have more downside risk than upside potential for the first three quarters of the year, all else being equal. It won’t be a relentless drop, mind you. There will be ups and downs of course. But the downside is likely to prevail over-all until the next Venus Max begins in November, ushering in a relative rebound in the direction of prosperity. (More about that later.) The masses can only bear so much hardship before the pushback begins – or in this case, breaks out again, because it’s been going on for several years now already. The historical association between anarchic uprisings and the Uranus-Pluto square is a bit of an over-simplification, to be sure. Every coin has two sides, and there’s more to look for in the time and tide of this particular celestial configuration than revolution and barricading the streets. Political programs aimed at redressing social and economic ills are also part of the picture, like the US WPA and CCC or the German Autobahn during the Uranus-Pluto square of the 1930s. Their analogs are surely in the works now that the quadrature of these two planets has returned. Likewise, breakthroughs in science and technology that will transform and transmute our lives, our minds, our understanding of the world within us and around us. The two extremes of the material scale – from particle physics to astrophysics – are where the breakthroughs are coming; along with the peculiar middle ground occupied by medicine and biotechnology. The fact remains that these – which are ultimately the bigger stories – won’t get much everyday media focus. It’s conflict that gets the Breaking News banners, and there will be plenty of that to go around.

Another Mars Max cycle commences this year, and continues into the spring of 2014. It begins on December 22, 2013, when the Red Planet's daily apparent motion through Earth's sky drops below its mean motion (0° 28’ 48”) over the period from the Sun-Mars conjunction of April 18, 2013 to the Sun- Mars opposition of April 8, 2014, for the first time since July 12, 2012 at the end of the last Mars Max cycle. This relative slowdown is the precursor to the Red Planet retrograde that begins on March 1, 2014 and ends a few months later on May 20. The slow relative motion period persists until August 9 – the end date for the 2013-2014 Mars Max cycle.. Mars Max also marks the beginning of the biennial Mars perigee phase, as Mars and our home planet come together for their close approach during the Sun-Mars opposition of April 8, 2014. (See the animation illustrating this online at my website,)

The major developments of 2012 were all laid out in advance in last year’s World Forecast Highlights, from the protest movements (e.g. Occupy Wall Street in the US and the anti-austerity/anti-establishment riots and revolutions in Europe, Asia and the Middle East), to the re-election of President Obama, to the world NOT ending with the Mayan calendar change on December 21, 2012. I hope you’ll want to get a head start on 2013, a year that’s bound to be significant for all of us, in light of its three planetary Max cycles (Venus, Mars and a triple-header with Mercury), three SuperMoons, four eclipses (including one that’s also a SuperMoon) and more. They’re all in there . . .