On April 12 we’ll see one of the most important transits of 2022, a conjunction between Jupiter and Neptune in Pisces. In this piece I showed how these conjunctions, which happen every 13 years, have correlated extraordinarily well with the ends of major armed conflicts in the 19th and 20th centuries, including the First and Second World Wars, the Crimean War and the Boer War, as well as various international treaties and periods of detente.
This time I want to see if we can make some more predictions based on the coming conjunction. To do this, I’m going to use astromapping.
What’s astromapping, Dan?
No matter where you are on Earth, the planets are always in exactly the same zodiacal positions. Venus is in Capricorn right now whether you’re in Tokyo or Times Square. But where the planets are in the sky at a given moment will change depending on your location. For example, Saturn might be rising in London when it’s culminating in Moscow. Uranus might be in the 5th house if you cast a chart in Buenos Aires, but in the 10th in Dhaka.
This is where astromapping comes in. Using astrological software we can create maps that show us where the planets at a given moment are rising, culminating, setting and anti-culminating. In other words, we can see where in the world the planets are on the angles, the most powerful places in an astrological chart. Places where the planets are on the angles are those that will experience their symbolism—their energies, if you like—most strongly.
Let’s look at some examples of this technique in action so we can see how powerful it is. I’m going to focus on Jupiter-Neptune conjunctions, but you can do this with any astrological configuration you like. I’m using Astro Gold to make my maps, but there are plenty of astrology programs that do this.
The end of the Crimean War
Below is the map for the last time Jupiter and Neptune conjoined in Pisces, on 17 March, 1856. Note how the vertical line, showing where the conjunction culminated (i.e. was exactly on the Midheaven), goes right through Crimea. Less than two weeks later, on 30 March, the Treaty of Paris that brought the Crimean War to an end was signed.
The end of the Second World War
Here’s the map for the conjunction in Libra on 22 September 1945. The Second World War officially ended on 2 September 1945 when Japan formally surrendered after the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Note how the conjunction was setting (i.e. on the Descendant) in Japan and East Asia, where the last battles of the war were fought.
When the Cold War cooled down—twice
Two Jupiter-Neptune conjunctions correlate with key periods of detente in the Cold War between the US and the USSR. From November 1958 to September 1961, the US and the Soviets suspended nuclear tests while they negotiated the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, a development heralded by a Jupiter-Neptune conjunction in Scorpio on 24 September 1958. The astromap for that conjunction is below. Note how the conjunction was rising in the middle of the US and setting in Russia. It was also anti-culminating in the Pacific, very close to the Marshall Islands, where the US tested 67 nuclear weapons between 1945 and 1958. The fact that the tests in the Marshalls stopped after 1958, when the conjunction took place, is quite remarkable:
In November 1983, the two superpowers came very close to annihilating each other—and everyone on the planet—in nuclear war. While the Americans and Soviets met at a conference on nuclear disarmament in Stockholm, there was a Jupiter-Neptune conjunction in Capricorn on 19 January, 1984. US President Ronald Reagan delivered this speech on the possibility for peace between the two superpowers. The Cold War was to drag on a few more years, but it ended within the 13-year cycle that started with that conjunction. The Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991, with the two planets less than 2 degrees from a trine. That’s a great example of how a cycle’s full unfolding is reflected in the moment it begins.
If we look at the astromap for the 1984 conjunction, we see that this time it was culminating in the US and setting in Russia:
Enough historical rambling, tell us about the future!
OK. Let’s check out the astromap for the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction on April 12, 2022:
Now, there’s some interesting stuff going on here. First, the conjunction will be setting on the border between Russia and the Donbas in Ukraine, the disputed region taken over by Russia-aligned separatists in 2014. As we all know, fears are high right now that Russia is about to invade Ukraine, and there are some astrological indications that it just might. If conflict is coming, then the fact that the conjunction is setting in Ukraine and Russia, and will be almost precisely on the Descendant in the Donbas, suggests that, around the time of the conjunction, there will be peace talks or a truce of some kind—and possibly an end to the conflict. Still, hopefully war can be averted completely. In that case, I suspect we’ll see the huge numbers of Russian troops that have gathered on the Ukrainian border dispersing around the time of the conjunction.
Yemen’s brutal eight-year civil war
What’s also interesting is that the conjunction is setting in Yemen and Ethiopia. Both of these countries are in civil war right now. Yemen has been locked into a brutal civil conflict since 2014, one eight-year Venus cycle ago (there’s an interesting similarity to Ukraine there).
The conflict pits forces led by Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, supported by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, against the Houthis: Shia minority rebels who currently control the capital of Sana’a. The fighting is intensifying right now, and recently the Houthis began attacking the UAE, a member of the Saudi-led coalition, potentially opening a new front. Still, US President Biden has made pushing for peace in Yemen a priority. And the fact that the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction will be angular in Yemen is surely a positive sign. Does it signify peace talks or an end to the conflict there?
Ethiopia in humanitarian crisis
Since November 2020, civil war has been raging in Ethiopia, where separatists in the Tigray region are trying to break away. At least 10,000 people have been killed, more than 20,000 are missing and a humanitarian crisis involving food shortages is ongoing. The rebels had earlier made advances on the country’s capital, Addis Ababa, but have since retreated back to the Tigray region, and there are signs the sides are ready to negotiate. It’s reasonable to think, then, that we may see substantial progress, and perhaps a peace deal in Ethiopia, around the time of the conjunction.
There’s at least one other interesting thing going on in our astro map for April 12: the conjunction will be culminating in Brazil, where elections are taking place this year. There are some amazing correlations between the conjunction and the charts of Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsanaro and left-wing former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. But I think we’ll have to leave that for another time. See you then!