THE PLAGUE ASPECT - SATURN CONJUNCT/ OPPOSED OR SQUARE TO NEPTUNE.

Saturn with Neptune square or semisquare, opposed or conjunct happens rarely. When it does, this researcher feels it is linked to events of world plague, endemic illness. Saturn rules banks, governments, power structures, when it's strong, But it stands for fatigue, aging, the penalties of Time, aging. Link it to Neptune, it becomes immune system failure. Saturn is also a planet of endings, hardship, challenge. NEPTUNE adds the element of toxins, poisonous chemicals, some form of  insidious hidden death bacteria.  In Aquarius, as Neptune is now, an air sign, add airborn viruses.

Neptune badly aspected also lends the elements of spiritual torment, of giving up, death embracing, emotional distance, emotional hangover, emotional scars, pain, depression.

Combine Saturn and Neptune,  you have CHAOS, DISSOLUTION, bad health even world plagues. Maybe to prove it, the Day the two opposed in 2007, the stock marked dropped 400 points.

NEPTUNE shows the element of scare, fear that causes stock drops. It symbolizes the toxins that live in water often necessary for illness. Where NEPTUNE is when the plague starts is where the bacillus is. If things are moist that year or things chill down, (and under Sat/Nep aspect, Winter 06/07, even tropical countries in Asia had freezes that killed thousands.) Things dissolve or end in front of your eyes. If Neptune is in an AIR sign, the bacterium can easily float or become airborn, It can rule toxins in the air, smog. Problems with the air.

Mental illness is a Sat/Nep condition. Self judgement, a Saturn event, events in our PAST, also ruled by SATURN, afflicted by NEPTUNE of fear, guilt, paranoia, so we brood about something not quite real. And that is madness.

THe Sat/Nep aspect or transits specially effects  CAPRICORN rising natives, (saturn ruled) or PISCES rising, (Neptune ruled.) Of course we all have a house ruled by Saturn and one ruled by Neptune but depending on what SATURN rules, what NEPTUNE rules, --something is withering, has illness. The day of 07 opposition one of my cats died. Saturn is lord of my sixth house of pets.

Sat/Nep can point to a relationship that is sick. Again, the same day I'm talking about, the day they opposed in Feb, 2007, the American Catholic Diocese  went bankrupt to escape all those lawsuits for child abuse.

In your lifetime, when your Saturn is transited by Neptune or your natal Neptune is transited by Saturn, you can expect anything from stocks that lose value to toxins which produce SICKNESS. In Virgo it might affect digestion, or pets. I had a transit of Sat/Nep opposed in sky on my natal Neptune back in 1968, a feral cat on the property died of Rabies. As we may have touched the animal, my infant son and I had the Pasteur shots daily in the tummy for three weeks. in Libra the spine is afflicted. I saw a chart with Sat/Nep rising in Libra, and asked my client if she'd had polio back in the fifties when this happened. She said yes.

Libra Sat/Nep afflictions will also adversely effect kidneys. HANTA VIRUS is known to take out kidneys and is more endemic in America than is realized. Doctors testing seniors on dialysis did a study and found the Hanta antibody in every state. So it's not just FOUR CORNERS ARIZONA. A LIBRA affliction points to KIDNEY WATCH. Most important you stay away from rodents, which shed the Hanta Virus so keep plenty of cats.

Saturn and NEPTUNE are slow moving so this is a slow, malefic square. If you're reading this on Feb 27, 2007, you may be noting that the structure of someone's life is A MESS. You see unwellness, endings starting to manifest. Step in to correct this. TALK TO elderly people who may need help. Trade your work service for housecleaning, personal grooming. and get back unexpected tales of history, ideas/ wisdom. You'll be rewarded. Maybe just karmically.

On Sat/Nep days, call advisors, counselors, priests, teachers, old persons, healers, experts, hermits who left the marketplace, retired individuals; ask what THEY need. Go there. SERVE, get KNOWLEDGE in return. SATURN makes us a disciple. (The root of the word means 'learner.) NOW we are in a LEARNING mood because life is harsh. Spiritual practice is needed and we will DO IT. SATURN is practice, discipline, sacrifice, alleviating pain. Ours or others' pain.

NEPTUNE is faith. The two together fuse into a discipline of faith, a regular practice of faith. A typical Sat/Nep practice would be to take a minute to affirm or pray. MAKE THE DISTINCTION in your thoughts between the visible YOU form and the INVISIBLE, inner place where you are the CREATOR of outward forms, (your life, environ). Say "God and I are one." and CHANGE your outer by perfecting it, dumping the old, cleaning.

When there is a Sat/Nep link like the one we have in sky now, there will be some DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL type days. We LOSE faith. Saturn reality takes it away from us. We gasp at the amount of depression and the load of bad karma we believe we have. Faith, again. But bad faith.

This hits especially during the very hours that the MOON links with SATURN and NEPTUNE. As the two malefics are opposed for months and as SATURN always rules economic community, I suspect we will see the stock market wither and stay cool.  Saturn rules governments, banks, the world of high finance.

I look back at other conjunctions or squares in history. I want to start with the worst events ever to hit the planet where the largest percentage of human life took a hit.  Scientists agree that one record event was February 4th, February 4th 535 AD, when Krakatoa blew up, sending an immense cloud of sulphur and ash into the sky. The Chinese heard the boom and saw the smoke on the horizon & pinpointed the hour of the explosion! Surf to that URL -- the event is definite and very nearly all the people on the planet died. Darwinian day, that!

Now, to do the horoscope of that day, Feb 4th, 535 AD, NEPTUNE was in AQUARIUS, an air sign, so air toxins resulted. Saturn in Leo the sign ruling the SUN,  sun and light were affected. The planet went dark for l8 months. In Rome, they recorded l8 months of night. Imagine no sunlight! The volcanic winter chill immediately awakened the bubonic microbe in rats. Those who didn't die from the cold and other diseases, died of starvation as nothing would grow. Grains and grass were dietary staples of humans and livestock. But running around in the dark? RATS! PUHLENTY OF 'EM! Loaded with bacillus loaded FLEAS! Gene-tracing scientists can actually see most of humanity dying at that point in time. As we know the Krakatoa explosion was FEB 4, (The chinese heard the explosion all the way to CHINA, sawl the smoke and they supplied the date, that day we have MOON setting off Uran/Sat/Neptune, adding its weight to a conjunction of URANUS AND SATURN both of which were opposed to NEPTUNE. So triple bad!

IN late SPRING 1348, Mars in VIRGO (again, rodents) opposed Saturn in PISCES, (death,) and Neptune simultaneously was in semisquare ASPECT to Saturn and stayed with it, tightly for a half year, unfortunately just during the heat and flea season resulting in BLACK PLAGUE exploding across Europe for that whole half year period. The entire Spring, Summer, Fall while the two stayed in aspect, one of the longest Sat/Nep transits on record!  Fleas and continual rain persisted and 1/3 of all europe died. Great grand Children of survivors of the holocaust 800 years before!

According to WIKIPEDIA, other plague dates were:  the Italian Plague of 1629-1631, the Great Plague of London (1665–1666), the Great Plague of Vienna (1679), the Great Plague of Marseille in 1720–1722 and the 1771 plague in Moscow. There is some controversy over the identity of the disease, but in its virulent form seems to have disappeared from Europe in the 18th century. The Black Death had a drastic effect on Europe's population. Let's examine one, astrologically to see if our rule holds.

In Late May 1720, with Saturn 20 Scorp, Neptune 20 Taurus, (it holds!) some infected rats got off a Syrian trading boat in Marseilles Harbor and created a half year long bout of bubonic plague that took half the city's population, 50 out of l00 thousand people. The only people who didn't get ill were those who worked with horses, as rats won't go near horses. PLUTO in VIRGO of rodents, had the Mar/Sat midpoint that week.

Now, lets turn the clock of time closer to us, today. Sat/Nep conjuncted in LEO in l9l7 and we had the first, isolated cases of a killer Flu which really took wing in September l9l8 and mowed down the soldiers' camps then got loose all over the world in big cities. This flu acted by giving a long, high fever, putrescent lungs and stopping the HEART, ruled by Leo, the sign where they conjuncted.

In the early fifties, when SAT/NEP conjuncted in Libra, we had a polio epidemic. The polio virus attacked the SPINE ruled by Libra. I have seen charts where the conjunction was in the first house, Libra right on the ascendant, with planets square it and that person did indeed get polio. What's more without asking, I TOLD the lady she had polio and she told me I was right.

In l989 when Saturn and Neptune conjuncted in CAPRICORN, we had the AIDS plague. Capricorn rules the bones where T-cells are produced or NOT produced, as in the case of this illness and in the case of leukemia. Also, something else collapsed and died. The Soviet Union. Guess they were ruled by Neptune having been born under an altruistic belief system.

So Saturn/Neptune may symbolize the birth of governments with altruistic hopes. And the death of them.

Later on, In l998, with a NepSat square, not a conjunction, I expected a new plague. Taurus rules throat, Aquarius veins. Squares notoriously affect people with LEO, heart problems, and Scorpio regenerative organ diseases. Chronic Fatigue seems to me to be showing up under this. Four corners disease, HANTA got started in USA. And as these two travelled together to meet Uranus in a t square, we had the Big tech wreck. The NASDAQ fell in. April 2000. That one I foresaw and asked clients to get out of stocks in MARCH.

But it's always health issues, too. During late nineties, millenium, many books emerged about plagues showing up in AFRICA. Films got made on the subject. We noted the rising tide of AIDS casualties, also a mysterious NON AIDS immune deficiency diseases, a kind of pervasive chronic fatigue syndrome.

Holistic healers tell us this comes from microwaving food, which destroys cell integrity, eating vegies/fruits grown on agribusinesses chemically treated soils. They tell us to go back to organically grown, unsprayed, high mineral vegetables (14 times the minerals as factory grown vegies/fruits,) and use them in raw salads or juices extracted from them (celery, greens, carrot juice,) using these power foods several times a day to maintain optimum vibrancy and immediately plan to get my juicer off the shelf and standing OUT in the kitchen.

WE've read many books on exotic killer viruses showing up in America. Tuberculosis is back. West Nile Virus, Hanta Virus. There was a mini wave of killer flus in 2003, when SATURN AND NEPTUNE linked. It started DEC 2002 in China, and lasted through spring 2003, the exact period that SATURN IN GEMINI was sesquiquad to NEPTUNE in AQUARIUS. Air born. Take note of sesquiquads. They're for real!

We're in a Saturn/ Neptune opposition now. What can we do to be watchful? MARK the ephemeris ahead of time or if you don't use / read one try using the CHART MAKER at ASTRO.COM

People with the RISING SIGN of CAPRICORN whose ruler is that SATURN will tend to catch the disease in the street, as NEPTUNE rules their third house. They also are cranky and offend others being demanding, controlling, critical.

People with PISCES rising will catch disease from close friends as they have Saturn ruling llth house. They also feel that their associates tend to blow a fuse at them. Pisces rising is sensitive to being the victim figure.
LIBRA rising notes that a home/family /parent matter is tiresome. Or just plain TIRED.

HOW TO DETER ILLNESS- Get Tamiflu. Get its active ingredient,a Chinese herb. When it's chilly out, and flu is endemic in the city, absolutely do not go to theatres and don't let your kids go. Rent your films, see them at home. Eat at home, no restaurants with cook's waiter's hands all over your plates.

TO KEEP BIRDS from POOPING all over the property, awnings, roofs, patio furniture, lawn and with birds being full of  BIRD FLU during certain seasons, keep a cat, Remind your pals that cats  keep rodents away from the house so there are no fleas. FLEAS spread some diseasees. MOSQUITOS in SUMMER spread WEST NILE VIRUS, fairly lethal, so for that, STAY INSIDE during SUMMER EVENINGS. Screen all windows.

For RATS, get a FEMALE POUND CAT and her kittens. KEEP HORSES as no rat will come near a property with a strong horse aroma or the sound of heavy hoofs stomping! Inventors: Get busy on a stomping, smelly machine!

SAT/NEP TIMING:  Determine when Sat/Nep transits fall on your chart. See what house is ruled by Saturn and which by Neptune. And, last, IF these two planets gang up on any planet of yours, by transit, you or the person ruled in your chart by that planet, may become ill.

But what if SATURN transists your NEPTUNE or NEPTUNE transits your natal SATURN. Make notes of the day when MOON will move to add its weight to that transit, thusly setting it off and don't go out! I'm not kidding.
I got flu in a theatre sitting next to a sick guy. My daughter caught the flu going to a public market, grabbing a shopping cart. There were no antibacterial wipes at the door which many markets offer customers. She shopped, touched food, came home, peeled a carrot without washing her hands and got sore throat fairly quickly. Then ten days of flu ensued. Make your market get those anti-bac wipes for shopping cart handles.

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* NOTE ON IMMUNITY - Many of us with European ancestry have automatic immunity to AIDS as our ancestors had or were exposed to BUBONIC PLAGUE and survived. Read below:

"You may possess the AIDS free genetic mutation. Most people would probably be aghast to learn that one of their genes is malformed. But before you start asking, "What does that mean? Will it make me sick someday? Will I pass it on to my children?" bear in mind that a mutation of the CCR5 gene -- called "delta 32" in its mutated form -- has no adverse effect on humans. In fact, possessing delta 32 could save your life, and the lives of your children.

"It's highly unusual," says Dr. Stephen J. O'Brien of the National Institutes of Health in Washington D.C. "Most genes, if you knock them out, cause serious diseases like cystic fibrosis or sickle cell anemia or diabetes. But CCR5-delta32 is rather innocuous to its carriers. The reason seems to be that the normal function of CCR5 is redundant in our genes; that several other genes can perform the same function."

"The non-mutated form is what's called a chemokine receptor," he says. Chemokines are protein distress calls released by an injured region of your body. "The normal function of the CCR5 gene is to act as a retriever of the chemokine distress signal from these bruises, which will then be alleviated by the chemokines."

This may not sound exciting, but delta 32 is a powerful mistake. HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, attacks the human immune system, infecting the white blood cells sent to destroy it. The delta 32 mutation, however, effectively blocks the crucial gateway into human cells the virus needs. In the case of Steve Crohn, whose partner was the fifth person to die from AIDS, possessing the CCR5 mutation has prevented him from contracting the virus.

O'Brien explains further, "In order to have total resistance to HIV, you have to carry two doses of the mutated gene -- one from each parent. If you get only one dose, you will not be resistant to infection. However, you may be able to delay the onset of HIV once you become infected. That's because, in patients with one copy of the mutation, the amount of 'portals' or 'doorways' that HIV can use is reduced by about 50 percent. That slows down virus replication, which is the most important factor in AIDS progression."

O'Brien's work on AIDS led him to another disease that delta 32 could prevent, the plague. "They both, upon entering the body, infect the macrophages, which are the first line of defense against bacterial infections," he says. "Over the course of evolution, many bugs and pathogens have become extinct because the body learned how to defend itself against them. So the ones that are around today, like HIV and the plague, are pretty savvy -- HIV, for example, specifically attacks and kills the very cells that are designed to kill it. Both these pathogens have developed very clever ways around our immunological defenses."

The results of the Eyam study suggest that delta 32 may have helped save Europe from the bubonic plague pandemic. It seems logical, then, that this could be confirmed by an experiment in which the plague bacterium is injected into the cells of someone possessing the delta 32 mutation. "We have attempted to design experiments that allow us to expose the plague to the lymphocytes of different people, including Steve Crohn," O'Brien says. "But so far we haven't been able to design that kind of experiment ... to do that experiment, you would need to isolate that particular kind of cell. You would need to isolate the exact strain of the plague, and you would need to expose them together."

Nevertheless, delta 32 seems to be a formidable defense the human body has developed in response to ages of pathogenic exposure. And though we may just be getting acquainted with it, delta 32 has been protecting humans for ages. O'Brien suspects the mutation has been around since long before the Black Death. "There have been human remains dug up from graves in Scandinavia -- bodies 3,000 and 4,000 years old -- in which they actually found the mutation, through DNA typing. So there are all kinds of pieces in this puzzle that are coming together."

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