"We seek security not knowing that the only real security comes from within ourselves, from inner space." — Carl Payne Tobey  

The Monkey Trap

In Hindu lore, there is the myth of the monkey trap. The monkey spies a bottle with a banana inside it. The neck of the bottle is just big enough for the monkey's empty hand to slide in. The monkey grabs the banana and, whoops! He finds he cannot extract his hand and the banana. To retrieve his hand he must let go the banana.

Uranus-Pluto squares and Neptune in Pisces have coincided with monkey traps for emperors, kings, premiers and presidents for hundreds of years.

President George Bush's monkey trap is Iraq. Having sent the mightiest military in the world to Iraq to unseat Saddam Hussein and impose "freedom and democracy" on the besieged Iraqi people (and/or control Iraq's oil, protect Israel and the dollar), Bush is now faced with the monkey trap choice: turn loose the material goodies or "stay the course" and perpetuate the suffering.

As Bush's dilemma is happening, transiting Pluto is moving opposite the US natal Mars, with both square the US Neptune in Virgo. The mighty warrior invading Hades, ruled by Pluto, with inspirational/delusional Neptune whispering mystifying advice.

Pluto in Sagittarius, the Last Time Around

The last time Pluto moved through late Sagittarius and early Capricorn, England's King George sent the mightiest military of his time to seize the banana of the American colonies, producers of raw products and consumers of teas and a variety of manufactured goods. Back then, the poor rebelled against their colonial rulers, who in turn rebelled against their King. The costumes, settings and technology are very different now, but the same essential drama is unfolding on a global scale: an uprising against the world's latest greatest mightiest empire.

Mars opposite Pluto symbolically pits the mightiest warrior against the one enemy he can never defeat, Pluto, ruler of Hades, realm of death of the old, birth of the new. Some argue the Bushites have come to empire-building too late, that the world economy has left conventional empires in the dust and is moving toward a new structure as yet undefined.

The first World Trade Organization was envisioned by Chinese Emperor Zhu Di when, in 1421, he sent a huge fleet out to map the world and establish mutually beneficial trade with all nations. Gavin Menzies, author of 1421: The Year the Chinese Discovered America, resurrects this amazing adventure which, till recently, had fallen though the cracks of official history, but is now being rediscovered by archeological finds. Eventually, it will rewrite world history.

Uranus in Pisces

In the 1420s and now, Uranus in Neptune-ruled Pisces changed long-distance trade, religious beliefs and relations between rulers and ruled. Before Zhu Di's armada returned in 1423, a revolution had taken place in China , an uprising of the poor whose labor had provisioned the fleet at a devastating cost to domestic well-being.

Before King George could bring the American colonial aristocrats to heel, the poor of the colony rebelled. When Massachusetts Chief Justice Thomas Hutchinson justified poverty because, he said, it helped the poor become industrious and frugal, crowds attacked. Historian Gary Nash wrote:

Much the same happened in Zhu Di's China when Uranus in Pisces squared Pluto in Gemini. Zhu Di had abused the working class in order to provision his fleet. Not long after the fleet of around a thousand ships set sail from Nanjing , lightening struck the royal palace, burned down the Forbidden City and much of Beijing, and hunger triggered uprisings throughout China.

Today, while Bush and co. "stay the course" in Iraq, there is growing discontent in the American working class. Outsourcing jobs and importing cheap labor to replace American workers will, sooner or later, create a rebellious mood. The dodo is due to hit the blades when Pluto moves within orb of a square with Uranus.

Pluto, which takes around 248 years to circumnavigate the Zodiac, will inch into Capricorn in 2008. The Uranus-Pluto square will begin forming in the summer of 2008, if you allow 7 degrees orb. Then, off and on till 2019 this square will form, separate and reform. It will be most exact in 2014 and 2015, when it will create a grand cross pattern with the natal US Sun-Saturn square. The grand cross has proven to be the most "difficult" of geometric angles formed by the planets.

The last time Uranus and Pluto squared from these constellations was during the French and Indian War, which was followed by Pluto moving through late Sagittarius into early Capricorn, coinciding with working class rebellions and riots in the colonies, climaxed by the Revolutionary War of 1776.

History Doesn't Repeat, It Rhymes

History doesn't repeat exactly but it does, as Mark Twain put it, rhyme. Historic cycles coincide with planetary cycles, and the planets are never arranged exactly the same way twice. Examples: When the Uranus-Pluto square formed in 1676 for Bacon's Rebellion, Neptune was in Aquarius. Neptune was in Leo for the Uranus-Pluto square coinciding with the French and Indian War. Neptune was in Taurus for the Uranus-Pluto square during the great depression of the 1870s. In 1930, Neptune was in Virgo when the Uranus-Pluto square formed for that great depression.

When the upcoming Uranus-Pluto square first becomes exact in 2012, Neptune will be "at home" in Pisces, where it can be expected to stimulate idealism, religious fervor, explorations of the unseen and immaterial, etc., as Uranus surprises and Pluto changes. The last time Neptune was in Pisces was during the 1860s, the Civil War years, when both Northerners and Southerners believed God was on their side. Some predict the Iraq War will escalate into a major clash of Judeo-Christian and Muslim civilizations, with both sides believing God is on their side.

The Chinese fleet set sail to explore the whole Earth in 1421 under another Uranus-Pluto square with Neptune in Cancer. The fleet's homeland then underwent a profound revolution. When survivors of the fleet returned in 1423, they expected to be welcomed as heroes. Instead, an angry populace destroyed their ships and burned their records.

Emperors, kings, premiers and presidents rarely admit their mistakes. Caught in his monkey trap, Bush assures us he will "stay the course," which has the potential to compound a horrible mistake into a worldwide catastrophe.

If John Kerry is elected president, will he get us out of Iraq? What will he do about the USA 's worsening situation in the community of nations and the deteriorating plight of America's working classes? Like Bush, Kerry is a member of Yale's Skull and Bones club, indicating allegiance to the super rich. Will Kerry establish a "protectionist" trade policy in the face of today's PR-created belief that it would wreck the economy? (Actually, it would save the economy, but that's another article.) Or will Kerry perpetuate Bush's WTO-driven, corporate profiteering at the expense of American workers?

Zhu Di's monkey trap was the whole Earth as his own WTO and his is a cautionary tale. The rebellion of downsized Chinese workers in the 1420s resulted in China becoming an closed society for the next six centuries.