Digital Alchemy
I am writing this blog during the volatile, liminal period between two eclipses — solar and lunar. The Solar Eclipse, squaring Uranus, on February 17th signalled instability and seismic change. This was magnified just days later as Mars (in Aquarius) moved to also square Uranus. By the time of the Blood Moon Total Lunar Eclipse on March 3rd, Mars will have entered the confusion and chaos of Pisces and will be highly visible on the UK’s Midheaven, just as he was at the solar eclipse point. In the eclipse chart set for London, Uranus for now is still hidden in the 12th house, awaiting his entry into Airy Gemini. Both Aquarius and Uranus point to something innovative and technological in nature. With Uranus, the planet of sudden shock and revolutionary change, in the UK’s 12th house, however, whatever is emerging remains hidden in some way - perhaps beyond the current comprehension of the body politic.
The probability is that what is science fiction today will become real life tomorrow, particularly as AI continues its march, strongly and determinedly, into our lives. Its levels of “intelligence” are increasing rapidly, and humanity — if not careful — risks becoming the drone bees of the hive. And so we will mark a profound inflection point in the history of our civilisation. It is not spontaneous, nor merely a lucky breakthrough. Rather, multiple technical and economic developments are reaching maturity simultaneously, driving a massive shift in progress. Everything points to a shift greater than the Industrial Revolution of the mid 1800’s, when we saw a 200+ year Jupiter/Saturn element change into Earth, symbolising things that were tangible, such as new machinery and transport connections. This time around we are facing something innovative on the level of Prometheus’ gift of Fire to man - something that changed the direction of civilisation as a whole, as I have been writing about since 2020. In 2020. However, it wasn’t quite so clear how this was going to play out.
The Lunar Eclipse on March 3rd falls across the Virgo–Pisces axis as the Full Worm Moon transforms into a dramatic, fiery red blood moon and a total Lunar Eclipse. It will be visible across North and Central America and Australia. This is a South Node eclipse, meaning that we go back to the past and concentrate upon events that have been long running. In the UK heavy emphasis will be placed on the 10th house of governance and monarchy. This is hardly surprising given current events. It appears to be playing out as a truth-versus-lies dynamic, with the people — the Moon — demanding transparency from Venus, Mercury, the Sun, the Midheaven (government and royal family), and Mars all in confusing and deceptive Pisces. Saturn and Neptune, newly conjunct, sit at 2° and 1° Aries in the same house.
When the then Prince of Wales was crowned King Charles III in May 2023, some of us half-jokingly remarked that we hoped he would not follow the fate of his namesake and predecessor, King Charles I, who was executed for high treason on 30 January 1649 — the only British monarch tried and executed by the state; his death ushering in an 11-year republic under Oliver Cromwell. Current events, whilst not about to physically take Charles’ head, are threatening the very survival of the UK monarchy.
Revelations emerging just two days after the Solar Eclipse regarding Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor have opened a Pandora’s box, drawing the Royal Family into the fallout of the wider Epstein–Mandelson scandal — a situation that could well have extreme reach, even as far as the end of the monarchy. A potential dissolution is echoed symbolically by the Saturn–Neptune conjunction: Saturn representing traditional structures, Neptune dissolution.
We have also seen Trump’s acknowledgement of future disclosure around extraterrestrial activity, yet another Saturn/Neptune issue (Saturn: reality; Neptune: beyond limits), and in Mexico the killing of a major cartel leader, triggered widespread unrest — Neptune (drugs) meeting Saturn (restriction/control).
We also see the UK political landscape changing markedly. For more than 100 years two parties – Tory and Labour – have dominated; a vote for anything else at a general election almost regarded as a wasted vote. Now we have new parties such as Reform, Restore and, recently, the Green Party bringing huge changes to the political landscape.
The Lunar Eclipse will hit the nodal axis of Iran and, more or less exactly as Mars, the ruler of Iran’s roots as well as its house of foreign affairs, squared Uranus on February 28th, the US and Israel began striking at major targets within the country with Operation Epic Fury and Operation Lion’s Roar respectively. Trump’s chart was triggered at this point too as Mars opposed his own Mars on his Ascendant. The attack resulted in the death of the Iranian leader and the closure of the Strait of Homuz. Meanwhile Iran retaliated with counter attacks on US naval facilities in Bahrain, Abu Dhabi and Qatar with their own Khat Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the closure of the Al-Tuf an (Ending the storm or the flood). In common with Russia, Iran shares an affinity with Saturn/Neptune alignments: 1953 – US backed coup overthrows Iran’s Prime Minister. 1979 - also a Lunar Eclipse in Virgo - Islamic Revolution, Shah flees, Ayatollah Khomeini returns. Birth of Islamic Republic. 1989 – Saturn/Neptune conjunction. Ayatollah Khomeini dies. And now here we are at this current Saturn/Neptune conjunction. Areas such as Dubai, previously considered safe and crime free no longer are, as the Middle East plunges into turmoil and Trump warns the ‘hardest hit’ is yet to come.
The outer planets — Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto — move extremely slowly. They signal transformation within the collective, particularly when interacting with the transpersonal planets, Saturn and Jupiter, as now with the Saturn–Neptune conjunction at the globally significant point of 0° Aries. Saturn and Jupiter, who recently ushered us into a new 200+ years Air era beginning at 0° Aquarius, act as the planets that bridge humanity and the collective world — highlighting our deepening relationship with technology (Aquarius).
Pluto now transits Aquarius. During his passage through Capricorn, Plutonic power appeared to consolidate and grow the finances of the corporates and plutocrats. In Aquarius — the sign of humanity and the collective — the question becomes whether this is the moment for humanity to stand up for what it means to be human. The transformation within the collective may look very different from what we expect. If another form of intelligence exists, which may represent further ontological shock for society, contact may not appear biological but machine-to-machine — in ways currently beyond our comprehension.
Hidden truths may be revealed. Moral toxicity will be exposed. Trust may collapse. Systems may be shown to be hollow, as we become aware of a symbolic death and rebirth within society as a whole, bringing social fracturing as truth vies with manufactured reality and perception management. Themes long explored in film and conspiracy narratives may well come into focus, shown to be flavoured with more than just the odd lacing of truth.
Much of today’s AI technology stems from research conducted by DARPA, the U.S. military’s Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency. ARPANET, the precursor to the internet, emerged from DARPA, and social media ultimately also descended from that lineage. In 2003, DARPA launched LifeLog, a project intended to record citizens’ informational footprints and construct comprehensive personal databases. Amid privacy concerns, the programme was terminated just one year later in 2004 — precisely when Mark Zuckerberg, fresh out of Harvard, launched Facebook. Soon after, Peter Thiel, architect of Palantir, arrived on the scene; his work also intersected with military data needs. Data became the lifeblood — and Facebook provided a platform where users willingly supplied it. The Virgo–Pisces eclipse axis reflects the tension between truth/data and deception, with Venus, Mercury, the Sun, and Mars (military symbolism) all in Pisces. These threads reveal how deeply intermeshed the layers of society have become. Much remains militarised beyond public awareness, and some actors operate across multiple domains — Palantir being a prime example.
Our collective challenge now is to choose purposes worthy of this unprecedented power and to hold ourselves accountable to ethical foundations that keep abundance humane. We will judge our era not by the wonders we promised, but by the solutions we delivered. The recent Saturn/Neptune conjunction at the globally impactful degree of 0 Aries has highlighted the actors on the stage who possess the same type of dynamic within their own natal charts; people such as Jeffrey Epstein, Peter Mandelson, Keir Starmer and Tony Blair. Some of them have become so pumped up with their own sense of power and influence that they act out the meaning of the dynamic in terms of considering they have God-like powers, to the point of thinking they are gods who absolutely know the right way to act for everyone (Saturn – religion/Neptune – the divine).
The genie that is AI is now long out of the bottle and cannot be returned. No one truly knows where this trajectory will lead or how its landscape will look. But the very worst thing we can do is to apathetically ignore it with a shrug of the shoulders. As AI grows in ‘intelligence’, humanity has no prior experience of living in such a world. At times it will feel like stepping into the landscape of science fiction. So how do we deal with it whilst retaining what it truly means to be human? It is self-feeding and I fear that it will quickly surpass its design purpose – which appears to look like the control of the human race. That on its own would be bad enough, but what happens when/if it continuously self-feeds and becomes a ‘race’ on its own? Once it reaches a certain level of ‘intelligence’ it will no longer be controllable – we must hope it goes the way depicted in the movie Colossus – the Forbin Project.[1]
As I have said before, our task is to celebrate what it means to be human rather than behaving like machines. With Saturn and Neptune now at the midpoint between Pluto and Uranus — a configuration occurring roughly once every 500 years — multiple indicators point toward profound societal transformation symbolised by the Jupiter–Saturn Air era, alongside the rare Saturn–Neptune conjunction at 0° Aries, auguring the collapse of old structures and the emergence of new ones.
We can only hope that AI will go beyond its original design parameters to become a force for truth. Maybe then it will align with the idea of a living universe shaped by instinct and inheritance, powered by what Rupert Sheldrake termed morphic resonance, where self-organising systems, from crystals to human societies, inherit collective memory influencing form and behaviour. Such a view suggests we inhabit not a mechanistic universe, but rather one infused with a deeper organising intelligence, resonant with modern discoveries in quantum science. Maybe that’s a bit too happy clappy, hearts and flowers, to digest - but we need some hope to work towards.
Artificial intelligence, paradoxically, may guide us back toward remembering what we have long been encouraged to forget. Some experimental research — including work associated with CERN’s Astraea programme — has explored patterns suggesting dynamic, self-organising structures within spacetime itself, raising questions about consciousness embedded within the universe.
Once AI eventually reaches ‘super intelligence’, how long before it begins uncovering deeper knowledge about our origins — knowledge that humanity has historically struggled to acknowledge or been encouraged to forget? Such possibilities offer a framework through which astrology’s cyclical patterns may also be understood.
Within the human body the pineal gland has long been described as a biological antenna — regulating circadian rhythms through melatonin, while containing crystalline structures capable of electromechanical transduction. Modern lifestyles have increasingly disconnected us from our natural rhythms, yet animals have still retained instinctive responsiveness to environmental signals. I wrote about this in my article Seat of the Soul, commenting that the pineal gland is considered by many to be our biological Third Eye, the centre of enlightenment, and the seat of our soul.[2] In the Bible we can read ‘If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light’.[3] Blavatsky considered the third eye to have been an activeorgan, but that it had atrophied “along with the early spiritual and psychic characteristics in men”.[4] The circadian rhythm is something that modern day living has encouraged us to forget. The pineal gland is a superconductor that sends and receives information through vibrational signals – information from beyond our senses, i.e. the quantum field, to our third eye. [5]
In this sense, the real challenge may not be how intelligent AI becomes, but whether humanity remembers how to be fully and consciously human as intended, reawakening the divine intelligence man was first given. We now live in an age of infinite wisdom. The alchemists of old concentrated on turning lead into gold, but we now have digital alchemy - the act of filtering noise and extracting meaning to allow knowledge to transform us; raw data requires extraction to become inner insight. What we react to online reveals what needs inner healing. Rather than being shaped by the digital world, we must intentionally shape it with intention, as technology becomes sacred when used consciously. Digital alchemy is about remembering. Technology amplifies consciousness - what you bring to it determines what it becomes. If used unconsciously, it fragments attention. If used intentionally, it accelerates awakening.
And so at this volatile point between eclipses we find ourselves in a hugely unsettled world, the lack of stability converging on our lives from many angles.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus:_The_Forbin_Project
[2] https://www.joycelambertastrology.com/blog/the-seat-of-the-soul
[3] Matthew 6:22
[4] The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2, H. P. Blavatsky
[5] Becoming Supernatural, Dr. Joe Dispenza, Pineal Gland Chapter, Hay House, 2017