Recently I’ve been getting lengthy and detailed emails telling me that the US economy is going to crash and burn in the next few years. The advice at the bottom of the emails: get out of debt, stockpile food, buy gold, get to know your neighbors.

If you really want to scare yourself, go to http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/ to look at the perpetually-rising amount of debt owed by the US, or else go to http://www.videobukkake.com/to find out the constantly-increasing cost of the invasion of Iraq. Clearly, we’re throwing away our resources with great abandon.

To find out more about the collapsing economy question, I coasted back to the 20s to see what was going on then. How did the last Great Depression develop? One telling thing about the 20s was that the division between rich and poor yawned increasingly wide. In 1929, the richest one percent of US households held about 45 percent of national wealth. It’s not quite that bad at this point, but it’s getting there again.

Another thing was the paranoia about Communism that suddenly became an excuse for social repression. As an analogy to today’s Patriot Act, we went into the 20s with the Espionage Act and the Sedition Act. The latter made it illegal to publicly criticize the government.

Does all this sound familiar? A society heavy in rich folks, with increasing paranoia? At that time, there was still a lot of popular idealism around the fledgling Soviet Union. People were asking each other if it was possible to live in a better society. Meanwhile, Henry Ford was churning out automobiles, with humans as cogs in his factories - and the labor unions, on the other side, pushed to turn the humans back into people again.

There was a spirit of social activism. But it was deeply threatening to the gold-plated upper crust, who were having a great time playing the stock market and having wild parties. (Does this remind you of George W. Bush’s inaugural?)

By 1927, when the German stock market crashed, the stage was set. At this time, Jupiter (the boom planet) was in late Pisces conjuncting Uranus (the planet of sudden change) in Aries. Pluto was in Cancer, and Neptune in Leo.

In June of 2010, Jupiter will be in late Pisces once again, and once again conjuncting Uranus in Aries. Pluto and Neptune will be in the opposite signs from the signs they occupied in the late 20s. But opposite signs often echo each other, although never exactly. So this crash won’t be an exact duplicate of the last one. Still, it looks to me like a time when the bubble might burst.

Could it happen earlier than 2010? One of the interesting elements in the chart of the October 29, 1929 stock market crash is a very close conjunction between the north node and Chiron in Taurus. These are both karmic factors, and Taurus is the sign of money. This makes it look like some sort of cosmic payback. People ignored the spiritual nature of abundance, which is the energy to do good - and so the system collapsed.

In the summer and fall of 2008, the north node and Chiron will be conjunct again, but this time in the sign of Aquarius. Aquarius has to do with social progress, and so perhaps there could be a payback on that level? Could our good deeds come back and save the situation? Imagine the economy as a baby falling out a high window. Could we rescue that baby by holding out the arms of community consciousness, by changing our way of living to one that is sounder and stronger?

All our work trying to change society seems so futile sometimes. We protest, we join organizations, we write letters, and we struggle with pessimism. What if all those protests, all those organizations, all that political experience in community-building - what if all that saves us in the crunch?

Will it work? If we don’t introduce some major changes by 2010, the Jupiter/Uranus conjunction eerily echoes the last depression. This is when you have Jupiter, the planet of euphoria, expansion and abundance, suddenly hitting that wall.

Deep down, all of us know that this system is not working. Too many people are working in dehumanized jobs, doing things that don’t really need doing. Too many people are anxious about medical bills for their children. Too many people are eaten up by envy, by endless work, by insecurity. We can ask when the crash will come. But a more important question is how can we build something that really does work? And how can we make the process of change as gentle and painless as possible? Does it have to do with stockpiling food, or is it about learning to share information, resources, and good will?

Right now, in March of 2005, we see an echo of the energy that we felt in the 20s. Uranus, the planet of change, is now at 6 degrees of Pisces, just about where it was in 1921. Pisces is about dreaming, fantasizing, and avoiding reality. It increases idealism and spiritual awareness, but sometimes at the expense of pragmatism and conscious choice. In the US today, there’s a general spirit of denial. We have our television, our drugs, and many other ongoing hypnotic influences, and so we’re all okay.

At the new moon on March 10, the Pisces influence is strong. The moon, sun, Venus and Uranus are all in Pisces, increasing the tendency to drift, to hope, to believe. This new moon will be a very internal time, a time when we visit other dimensions more readily. Although this can be wonderful, it can also mean ignoring our own time and place. We don’t want anything to impede the flow of our imaginations.

But the full moon in March (on the 25th) is very different. At this point, the sun, Mercury, Venus and the north node are all in the fiery, action-oriented sign Aries. This is a shift from slow-moving endings to fast new beginnings. It can mean suddenly deciding to do something definite. But it can also mean that things outside your control happen. The dreaminess of Pisces suddenly collides with the wall of Aries, and you can no longer escape into your imagination. It all becomes quite real, immediate, physical.

What happens when everybody stops dreaming and fantasizing, and begins to really live in the world we share? What happens when we have the courage to leave behind our addictions? This month, we have an opportunity to see the Pisces/Aries shift, and to figure out strategies for dealing with it. Which of our fantasies do we want to take with us, and which should we leave behind? The weight of our delusions could sink us - but I believe there is still time to swim away, to strike out for someplace different. It will take a lot of courage, but collectively and individually, we have all that we need.

Index of Jenny' Writings on Blowjobasian.com