If you were expecting some kind of sun sign nonsense, forget it. This is real astrology. See the section above. Please note: this forecast is expressed in terms of Universal Time (UT). Current UT date and time appear at the top of this page. (To update display, use your browser's reload/refresh button.) 

This is arguably the most significant month of 2000, astrologically speaking. Home to the year's two major hard aspects - the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction (the "Great Chronocrator") and the Saturn-Uranus square - May continues, and is in many ways a culmination of, the watershed political and economic events of the year 2000. Years from now, we'll look back on 2000 as the turning point in a cycle of economic development: an old cycle sputters out in exhaustion, a new one emerges from the debris of the old. The clash between the so-called old and new economies reveals that there's only one economy. It has gone through cycles of boom and bust down through the ages - and the contrast between these tends to be most pronounced at times when new technology is radically transforming the economic environment. With these two great generational aspects at work this month, all else more or less fades in comparison.

Always, at such times, there's a cry to protect old industries and power centers, combined with a rush to invest in the new. Buggy whip manufacturers want government guarantees, while investors pour money into dozens of auto companies that won't be around a few short years later. Meanwhile the pundits proclaim that the new order has ushered in an end to the old business cycle. Then, all of a sudden, old industries are gone and the new ones are winnowed out so that a few strong survivors remain and many competitors disappear - either acquired by the strong, or driven bankrupt by them. And once the dust clears, the realization is reborn that practicalities like supply and demand trump fashionable "new realities" every time.

We've been in just such a shake-out period off and on all year, which accelerated last month as Jupiter drew closer to Saturn and Saturn in turn moved in on its square to Uranus. Both celestial patterns become exact this month, so May is bound to be the approximate if not exact turning point: the time when the old paradigm collapses and the new one arises out the debris left behind. As I've already indicated, you can't look for this new paradigm to spring full grown in an instant, like Athena from the brow of Zeus. It's an ongoing process that will take the better part of a generation to manifest and be recognized.

The kind of electronic magic that characterizes today's high technology is one fundamental focus for this kind of change. Its merger with other emerging applications - molecular (including genetic) engineering, nanotechnology, quantum engineering, etc. - will give rise to the dominant technology of the next couple hundred years. Microscopic and submicroscopic miniaturization through control of chemical, quantum and genetic matrices that serve as manufacturing templates as well as direct applications will be the real new technology.

None of this will be fully apparent this month, except in seed form. What is bound to be apparent now is the vulnerability of today's technological darlings: bubbles burst, gateways and portals and "e-tailers" wither on the vine or get swallowed up. Meanwhile real infrastructure builders and creators survive - and not just the electronic communications darlings, but also the biotech pioneers and the financial infrastructure that feeds all of these. As I've said before, this is a shake-up rather than a general collapse - although it will mean the collapse of vulnerable companies whose products or services are revealed as hype rather than substance.

The same pattern that dominates the economic and technological underpinnings of civilization will also be seen in the religious and political fields: the "new" wiz kids get showed up as just the latest bunch of "young Turks". They're not really different, they're just a batch of fresh faces. The same struggle continues: "meet the new boss, same as the old boss." Some of the highest-echelon powers that be leave the stage in these fields, with a drama not seen in decades. But those who take up the mantle of leadership do no more than that: they take their seat on the throne, as it were - but they don't really change things a lot in the beginning.

Of course there's more to May than the great socioeconomic and cultural turning points symbolized by the Saturn-Uranus square and Jupiter-Saturn conjunction. We also have some risk windows for severe storms, flooding and moderate to severe seismic action (Richter 5 or greater quakes as well as volcanic eruptions). These are strongest within plus or minus three days of the 4th and 18th, the new and full moon respectively. Additional risk periods include the 8th and 9th (Luna at maximum north declination), the 13th and 14th (Moon crossing the celestial equator southward), the 22nd (tail end of Luna reaching maximum south declination), and 28th-30th (the Moon's northward crossing of the celestial equator).

  

SPECIAL FEATURE: This month's birthdays of the famous and infamous (with astrological birth charts)