Humanity’s story is scripted by natural laws and cycles. The show moves along the fourth dimension of time. Events occur: discords and dangers emerge. There’s change: nothing stays the same. Guided by history, incorrect information and false impressions humankind struggles towards an unknown destiny.
In 2026 193 countries (circa 8.3 billion people) experience unique political, economic and social predicaments: authoritarianism, thug leadership, political dysfunction, international distrust, polarization, division, repression, corruption, warfare, gang violence, social unrest, racism, energy shortages, unemployment, rising prices and destruction by storm and flooding rain to name a few.
No nation stands alone. The world is interconnected and occasionally a major global event involving one nation goes global
The UN Security Council is jam-packed with nuclear powers – America, China and Russia – and they’re all developing better bombs and missiles and new ways of launching them. Aggressive intimidation sends a dangerous threat: cooperate with me or I’ll invade and have you shot.
In 2026 democracy – government ‘of the people, by the people, for the people’ – is in retreat and under threat. It’s a dangerous development and a serious Aquarian age challenge.
Politics – the activity of government – keeps the show moving forward. It’s where politicians and lawmakers do all they can to control the political discourse and the path a country takes. They’re delirious with power and often self-serving polarizers.
Democracy is a system of government in which power is invested in the people, who elect representatives to make decisions on their behalf. Democracies are characterized by free and fair elections, individual rights, and accountability of leaders to the electorate. It’s an Aquarian Age best option.
Autocracy is a system of government where one individual or small group holds absolute power, making decisions without the input of the populace. Autocracies often suppress dissent and limit individual freedoms.
In 2024 there were 91 autocracies and the global wave of autocratization affecting 72% of the world’s population (5.8 billion people) is a major Aquarian Age quandary.
When electing a president, prime minister, governor or premier it’s not a matter of listening to what the candidate has to say: it’s a matter of understanding the world situation and asking; Does this potential leader have the expertise and experience to deal with what’s going on in a way that is just, fair and effective.
To achieve their goals self-serving politicians, suppress facts, create division and spread disinformation. And powerful corporate executives and their values are buying political favor and usurping your role as an active participant in the democratic process.
The everyday people work and struggle to do the best they can. They live ordinary lives, elect leaders, believe fake news, follow dubious religious beliefs, accept scientific notions and rely on people with smarter minds to do the things they can’t.
A planet-by-planet world today update
Mars is angry and often boiling mad. Many people are in a state where their mental circuitry is ready to blow a fuse. For them opponents and enemies have to be defeated. Life is all about winning. That’s all that counts.
Countries feud and fight. Aggressor nations flex their muscles. The alpha powers are building up their military forces and there’s an escalating arms race, joint military drills and weapons control agreements that don’t mean much.
Dangerous insecurity has imperialism back in vogue.
Massive weapons spending + ferocious competition = war. When Mars throws a war party no one is safe from the drone and missile attacks.
Mars is harsh and brutal. It teaches harsh truths. Its aggression ignites disputation, conflict, military attacks, violent confrontation, ferocious competition, strife, recklessness and the urge to move fast. It speeds things up.
Mars is the planet of accidents – car, bus, train and boating accidents – and an everyday fire-risk.
Jupiter, the cash provider, has its eyes on the money. It’s desire for more, more, more is out-of-control. It’s irrational money grabbing behavior is dumb: a happiness and safety illusion that only creates wealth inequality, rich world–poor world division and spiritual poverty.
The story of religious warring, scripted by Mars and Jupiter, is a battle for the human soul and land (Saturn). It’s as old as time.
The world’s religious leaders are ignorant of God, life and the soul. They read the Bible with a set of emotional reactions and warped mental processes that prevents them from traveling the pathway of life, light and love.
They’ve acquired, like many others, faulty reasoning processes and the habit of syllogistic logic so they have never learned to think from the inductive foundation which is so essential to using the mind to gain new Aquarian Age information through drawing provable conclusions.
Too many Sunday morning people can hate each other all week.
Saturn is old school. It’s the planet of suffering, hardship and loss. It makes people selfish, materialistic, stupid and bigoted. Its fear is a terrible thing. Its insecurity and anxious paranoia are widespread so security is the dominant global issue. Saturn puts safety first.
It’s the conservative ruler of Aquarius and its hard-right politicians and their constituents are self-serving progress blockers that don’t like having their established ideas and traditions proved ignorant or wrong by new knowledge.
Saturn’s weather is in crisis. It’s influenced by high pressure systems, changing air currents, ocean currents, volcanoes and human behavior. El Nino is a huge pool of warm seawater in the Western Pacific which expands eastward towards Ecuador, nudging the jet streams off course and disrupting weather patterns across half the Earth’s surface. It has a cool sister, La Nina.
Floods destroy crops and property and drought causes famine. And when droughts ruin crops farmers suffer. A winter blitz causes death and destruction and summer heatwaves kill.
Traditional Saturn resists change yet the world moves on.
Uranus is ultramodern. It chaffs under constraint, craves freedom and accomplishes its purpose through discontentment, agitation and disruption.
As the progressive ruler of Aquarius it endorses liberty and human rights and your right to live and be who you are. Around the world people are fighting to liberate themselves from the constraints imposed repressive regimes that put the brakes on progress.
Its motto is ‘without freedom I’d rather die’ and those who constrain a human soul’s right to freedom and self-determination are enemies of the light.
Uranus rebels against convention, craves autonomy, never submits to tradition or precedent and incites social unrest, protests, demonstrations, strikes, rebellions, revolutions and radical change.
It has weird ideas and bizarre explanations and gives ridiculous conspiracy theories the thumbs up. It has sparked a growth in crazy people, saying and doing crazy things.
Uranus is wickedly complex. It makes the world complicated and in 2026 it’s a myriad of complications.
It keeps the technology revolution moving along and its artificial intelligence is causing radical social change. AI can tell you what to eat, but it can’t make you eat it. Some propose it’s going to take over the world and bring about the extinction of the human race but chatbots prey upon the vulnerable.
Uranus incites extremist activity: the internet facilitates online radicalization through information provision and legitimizing extreme ideology and violence.
Neptune is creating chaos and chaotic situations. It exaggerates and punches the situation up. It overblows the level of anger, aggression, hate, fear, gloom, pessimism, expansion, hope, optimism, unrest, coercion and cooperation and makes it impossible to know the real state of a situation.
It exaggerates expected benefits and potential difficulties.
Neptune is an idealist with a utopian vision. It’s a fanciful dreamer that easily succumbs to the idea that you can buy utopian happiness with money that isn’t yours. And it temporarily relieves the stress of harsh reality by escaping into movies, books and podcasts. Hooray for Hollywood.
Real-world despair, insecurity, violence and hopelessness make a drug induced hallucination seem very appealing. Your local pharmacist dispenses pills that don’t cure but keep people breathing; and its oil companies produce gasoline (petrol) that keeps cars on the road and people driving.
Neptune creates confusion by telling lies and presenting a version of events that can have you questioning what you’re seeing and hearing; and it launches idealistic but sometimes crazy schemes.
Pluto has the world polarized. Its inversion and disinformation are more blatant and dangerous than deceit. They’re controlling the narrative so you’re believing lies and making mistakes.
In September 1945 Elbert Benjamine warned: ‘In any country where the government or powerful groups or individuals are able to spread disinformation or suppress facts through their control of the mediums of expression the people are in a position of intellectual servitude.’
Disinformation is the deliberate and purposeful distribution of false information. The term is generally used to describe an organized campaign to deceptively distribute untrue material intended to influence public opinion, and social media exacerbates the impact of disinformation campaigns.
People form opinions based on the facts they possess or the fallacies in which they believe. Therefore, any authority or clever group which can censor some facts and twist others to appear as they desire, can shape public opinion in any chosen direction. And public opinion not only elects presidents and legislatures in democratic countries it keeps dictators and autocrats in power too.
Pluto has the world divided between Saturn and Uranus and Higher and Lower Pluto.
Higher-Pluto sees society as something you benefit by contributing to the welfare of those around you. It’s all about respect, tolerance, consideration and social cohesion.
In the Age of Aquarius humanity is moving towards the cooperative society so the only remedy for the loss and suffering inflicted by destructive competition is organized cooperation. Competition must be toward contributing more to the welfare of society rather than accumulating wealth and power for self.
But organized cooperation cannot be compelled by democratic governance. It can only be attained by the voluntary action of people and groups when they become aware that the welfare of all resulting from organized cooperation in which they take an active part gives a higher sense of satisfaction than does destroying or suppressing competition.
Lower Pluto’s thugs and gangsters join groups and hunt in packs. Its autocrats, dictators and demagogues engage in coercive control, corruption, threats and intimidation; and its atheistic academics spread inversive propaganda suppressing truth where ever and whenever they can.
The Golden Age of Aquarius will be realized when Cetus the greedy monster of armed aggression is slain; when humanity liberates itself from the atheistic disinformation and authoritarian bigotry; and when political leadership guided by system, order, foresight, patience, careful planning and wisdom eliminates want, poverty, greed and unemployment.
Tracking events and developments
Daily mundane life is a series of regular events that provide news websites with a 24-hour news cycle. Political happenings receive constant coverage: politicians do this, that and the other. When a war breaks out the death, destruction and missile and drone attacks become regular, everyday events. And the acts of violence, shootings, accidents, boat sinkings and fires you regularly read and hear about are just daily life events.
Storms and floods are often connected to a country’s natural weather cycle so they’re nothing special; and major disasters get ongoing coverage until they lose their news worthiness. So, when you sift the regular from the irregular you’re left with the occasional major national or international event that is genuinely important.
You’re tracking global developments by referencing the press and electronic media but there’s so much going on that you’re inclined to miss trends and events that go under the radar.
Good things happen and there are groups working to make the world a better place. Right-minded warriors fight the discords and dangers.
International Physicians for the prevention of Nuclear War, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace oppose uranium mining and nuclear war; the FBI and security agencies fight crime; doctors fight to save lives in the war zones; humanitarian groups fight injustice and inequality; cyber spy agencies fight online crime; fact checkers fight misinformation; and human rights heroes are fighting for your online privacy rights. Just to mention a few.
But the news media is more inclined to focus on the bad stuff and disasters. The bad news overwhelms the good.
Major news stories can develop over days and weeks. Opinion, gossip and social interest stories are not news. So much comment is pointless speculation. And you’re left trying to make sense of it all. The good news is Hermetic astrology is here to help. It has enormous explanatory power.
This article contains words written by Elbert Benjamine.
Astrology for Aquarius – sharing our knowledge
