If you were expecting some kind of sun sign nonsense, forget about it. This is real astrology for the real world. 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). 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.
I know no way of judging of the future but by the past.
-- Edward Gibbon
 

Gibbon wrote on the decline and fall of Rome; a process that took centuries, to hear him tell it. That sounds inexorably slow to the modern ear, but isn’t that how history really happens? Little things add up over time; even though there are days and weeks and months of high drama, here and there along a mostly quiet way. July, I suspect, will not go quietly. We’ve got a couple eclipses – one of them a SuperMoon – and another visitation by the Jupiter-Neptune alignment on the 10th, followed a few days later by a Mercury-Sun conjunction and a whole lot of spin and obfuscation . . . not to mention the early July squares to Jupiter and Neptune from Venus and Mars, still dawdling along together in the night sky. Plus Uranus spends the whole month within about a quarter degree of its July 1 retrograde station, now closing the temporal gap on its September 15 opposition from Saturn. And July closes out under some pretty fancy accounting and propaganda – I repeat myself - what with Mercury opposing Jupiter and Neptune, and Venus opposing Pluto on the first day of August.

Where’s the greatest potential for sturm und drang this month? Take your pick. It may lie in President Obama being endangered, something I’ve written about in my 2009 World Forecast Highlights, and reiterated last month. Certainly there will be a newsworthy spate of unusual tidal surges, strong storms with heavy precipitation and damaging winds, and moderate-to-severe seismic activity (including magnitude 5+ earthquakes as well as volcanic activity); most especially around the July 22 SuperMoon total solar eclipse. The ongoing Jupiter-Neptune conjunction – within a couple degrees of exact since early May and throughout July – speaks of equal parts delusion, inspiration and revelation: a heady mix, downright explosive as we draw nearer the September Saturn-Uranus opposition, which occurs pretty much at the halfway point between this year’s first (May 27) and last (December 21) Jupiter-Neptune conjunctions. And of course there’s more drama on the economic and financial front, including more "Freaky Fridays" – the day US regulators seize failing banks.

Plenty of prognosticators are going on and on about the end of the world this week or next, or in 2012 at the latest. I’m no prophet of doom, because I know better. The fall of Rome may have seemed like the Apocalypse at the time; but all it really was, was a change of management. An oligarchy that ran an empire from a city state was replaced by a bunch of oligarchical feudal fiefdoms that evolved into oligarchical nation states. Likewise the "Apocalypse" we’re going through now: meet the new boss, same as the old boss. The names, faces and systems change, and all the while the prophets of doom wail and gnash their teeth. When the dust settles, the system reemerges under new management. That’s what’s happening now, in a process which I’ve described as continuing into the birth of the new system in 2020.

I’m not saying that it’s business as usual over the next dozen years or so, as we undergo this transition. Disruptions, interruptions and discontinuities are inevitable. The world won’t quit running and crash, but it will seize up from time to time. The next such paroxysm will occur this year, perhaps even this month. At the earliest, I figure that sometime around the SuperMoon eclipse of July 22 (at the midpoint between the Moon-Venus conjunction on the 19th and the Moon-Saturn alignment on the 25th) comes the next panic in the world financial system and major equity markets. Or it may take until the next (and central) alignment in the current Saturn-Uranus opposition series, on September 15. If you followed my advice, you did fine by riding the bubble up starting when Venus went retrograde March 6 and getting out when the Venus intersolar cycle ended last month – in which case you’re sitting pretty for now, having locked in the best quarterly US stock market performance in a decade. Now it’s time to start planning your next move, because the trading range I predicted is about to come to an end, and it won’t be pretty.

What the immediate cause will be, I don’t know and it really doesn’t matter. It might be the realization that the bubble of optimism (and bear market rally) which came on schedule with the Venus intersolar cycle has run its course – exactly as per my forecast. This could be precipitated by something that endangers President Obama, who has masterminded the federal attempt to manage the US end of the economic and financial collapse. Anything along these lines would be a huge setback to public confidence.

Unemployment will surely play a part in triggering the next shock to the system. I already gave notice last year that double-digit unemployment awaits "many of the G-20 nations (including the US) in 2009-2010". That was written back when US unemployment was officially forecast to peak at under nine percent. With the global financial system one straw from a breakdown anyway, rising unemployment undermines the market for goods and services and thereby undercuts any recovery. It holds off inflation by keeping down demand, true. (The patient in a coma doesn’t eat nearly as much as the healthy one who’s out and about and active.) But basic needs don’t shrink with paychecks. Big ticket items may fall in price due to declining demand, while foodstuffs and other essentials will cost more and more as time goes by and currencies debase.

Of course the fundamental issue is that we’re caught in a financial system that just doesn’t work anymore, as outlined in my 2009 World Forecast Highlights. The credit crunch, deflation, demand destruction and currency debasement: they’re all just symptoms. So it really doesn’t matter which one gets blamed for the next paroxysm.

Why doesn’t everyone see this? Human existence is based on denial – of mortality at least – and there’s more than the usual amount going around under the aegis of the ongoing Jupiter-Neptune conjunction. Yes it’s inspiring, it’s idealistic and brave and wonderful. Witness the Iranian revolution following the recent sham elections there, which were held on June 12 as Jupiter stood just a half-degree away from Neptune in the sky. Massive public protests began the very next day, pitting millions of unarmed idealists against tens of thousands of brutal thugs with guns, batons and axes: wonderfully brave and inspiring, totally delusional. The thugs will eventually be overthrown; but not this month or next, and probably not even this year. (If you've got 2010 in the pool, you might be okay.)

Another example of Jupiter-Neptune delirium is the outbreak of mass idolatry following the death of song-and-dance man Michael Jackson on June 25, as Jupiter and Neptune stood just a quarter degree apart in the heavens. People were crying and dancing in the streets, as if someone they actually knew and loved had died. That’s about as crazy as fixing a broken financial system by piling trillions of dollars of extra debt onto what is already a mountain of bankruptcy . . .

We live in hope, and that’s a fact. But hope is one part denial – and there’s an awful lot of that going around lately. That’s why almost nobody sees this coming. If you’re one of the few who somehow escaped (or is beginning to awaken from) the illusion, there’s still some time to make preparations that might help get you and yours past the rough spots ahead. See my forecasts for this year for some tips you might want to take into consideration. Remember: you don’t have to quit your job, sell everything you own and run off to a cave in Wyoming with a trunkful of gold and guns and ammo and MREs to survive. But if you don’t make a few preparations, the rough spots can be a whole lot rougher.

Speaking of preparations, it wouldn’t hurt at all to have your emergency kit ready to hand in time for the July 22 SuperMoon total solar eclipse at 29° 27 Cancer – the first of two eclipse SuperMoons this year, and the closest to Earth of the year (falling just hours after the lunar perigee on the 21st). Because it’s a solar eclipse, I give this SuperMoon an effective risk window extending from the 15th through the 29th. Strong storms with high winds and heavy precipitation would seem to be a specialty of this alignment: a surge in hurricane, tornado and typhoon activity will be a focus of this particular lunation, although it will have its tidal and seismic components as well. In fact I see plenty to suggest that the risk of magnitude 5+ earthquakes and volcanic eruptions will be a specialty of the July SuperMoon eclipse.

Of course the geophysical risk associated with this alignment is global, as is always the case with a SuperMoon. But there are probably areas of special vulnerability indicated by the eclipse zone and astro-locality mapping for this event. The eclipse is visible over much of Asia and the South Pacific, and that makes it a likely indicator of powerful storms and heavy rain in the region. (Shanghai looks like the biggest city in the eclipse path, but many large Chinese as well as Indian population centers fall under the shadow of this eclipse.) Astro-locality mapping picks up a longitudinal risk zone in the eastern hemisphere running from eastern Siberia down through Japan, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Australia, and through central Greenland and eastern Brazil in the west. Another risk zone centers on a horizon arc sweeping northeast from northern Baja California across the western US and through Winnipeg, arcing from there through northern and central Europe down through the Middle East.

The July 22 SuperMoon eclipse may be the single most notable storm and seismic risk window of the month, but there are others. July 4-13 ranks second in importance in this regard, mainly thanks to the penumbral lunar eclipse at 15° 24’ Capricorn on the 7th – which, incidentally, will be the farthest full moon of the year and hence the smallest in apparent size. (Adding to the potency of this particular geocosmic stress window is the Moon’s south declination extreme on the 5th.)

This too is of course a global phenomenon, in terms of its considerable storm and seismic potential. It’s smart to be prepared wherever you are under this kind of alignment. That said, far western Canada (near the Alaskan border) is one of the two longitudinal zones astro-locality mapping plots as a zone of special risk during this eclipse window. On the other side of the world, a longitudinal sector from Moscow down through the Middle East and east Africa is similarly suspicious looking. There’s also a horizon arc sweeping across western Australia and Indonesia through the Bering Strait, bending down to cross eastern Canada and the northeastern US (passing over Montreal and Boston, and close enough to count to New York City), turning south from there to pass through the eastern third of Brazil. (Sri Lanka, Indonesia, eastern India, Indochina and central China are crossed by additional risk lines for this eclipse.)

Having covered the macro stuff, I’d be remiss if I didn’t advocate a "gather ye rosebuds while ye may" policy for the first week of July, what with Venus and Mars still shacking up in the sky. One should not let such moments go to waste: vacations, honeymoons, parties and the like are in order. Meet cute, see what happens . . .

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