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Jupiter, Neptune, and Chernobyl

“The nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl… was perhaps the real cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union five years later. Indeed, the Chernobyl catastrophe was an historic turning point: there was the era before the disaster, and there is the very different era that has followed.”

-Mikhail Gorbachev

HBO recently aired the last episode of the docudrama Chernobyl, re-familiarizing the world with the terror which began unfolding on April 26, 1986 at 1:23 AM, as Uranus rose on the horizon at the V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Plant. There are a lot of interesting features to the chart, as you might well imagine. Transiting Jupiter and Neptune were big players in the birth chart of The Soviet Union at that time, and the Chernobyl Incident, more than any other single event, was pivotal in the demise of the Soviet Union. Specifically, transiting Jupiter was conjunct the USSR’s natal Mars-Uranus conjunction, and Neptune was conjunct the USSR’s natal Sun

Jupiter and Neptune were in a sextile in April 1986. Sextiles are normally considered to be a “good” aspect, but when Jupiter and Neptune combine (even under amiable circumstances) the result can often be “enthusiastic delusion.” What does this mean for us though, here and now, during the month when the Jupiter-Neptune Square becomes exact?

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Here is a recipe for disaster:

• Create an authoritarian environment where all the bad news about said environment is suppressed or ignored.
• Put someone in charge who clings arrogantly to his/her own sense of superior skill and won’t listen to dissenting voices.
• Wait.

Well, gosh. It’s a good thing that sort of thing never happens any more, because Jupiter square Neptune hits the exact degree for the second of three times on June 16.

But, just to be safe: take a good long look at the things you may have been kidding yourself about in the last year. Then take a moment to question whether your actions and thoughts are always the result of the pureset of logic and motivations.