Astrology of Now: Fear and Cruelty

Wolf beset by Hounds. Jean-Baptiste Oudry

How do you deal with the Inquisition, the Nazis, ISIS, the secret police, the occupiers, the forces of oppression, the slave catchers, ICE? What if they come knocking on your door?

Many of our ancestors had to answer this same question, and many people around the world right now. And the answers they come up with are various: collaborate, play dumb, run away, fight, die, negotiate, bribe, keep a record, pray.

Sometimes the oppressors’ motivation is plain cruelty. It’s not complicated by greed or lust for power. They already have that: that’s why they can knock on your door.

The cruel dogs are roaming. They always are — somewhere. In a civilised world, we keep them on a leash, train them to behave in public, quietly clean up their messes, and like the way they answer to our commands.

That’s why we have laws and rules and boundaries. These are the things of Saturn, who is currently in the very end degrees of Pisces, a sign that dissolves what it touches, and Saturn is still conjoining Neptune, Pisces’ ruler, which has that same dissolving effect. These two have been working closely together since the first half of 2025.

We are certainly witnessing a dissolution. It’s not a bonfire of rules — yet: that may come when Saturn and Neptune enter fiery Aries. Remember these two were already nearly conjoined over the summer of 2025 in Aries, so we know what this looks like. This is a loosening and drifting of the bonds that held the world together for the last 70 years.

Things are not going back to how they were — not in Minneapolis, not in Gaza, not in NATO, not in Russia. This process of rule-destruction, the end of the “global order” is reaching its nadir. For Americans this is both within the country and in relations with the rest of the world. It’s not so much that alliances are shifting, simply that they are broken with nothing to replace them yet.

When they are let off the leash, it’s very hard to get the dogs back under control. Cruelty has its own momentum. Since last week, every single fast moving planet has made a conjunction with Pluto in Aquarius, the Lord of the Underworld in the sign of structure. Be especially careful when Mars and Pluto make a conjunction together on 27 January.

Stay safe. And know that this too shall pass.