You probably know the feeling. You build your castle of sand by the seaside, but the tide begins to approach your carefully built walls and parapets. Your next smart move is to build a mote. It fills up. You strengthen your walls. But it is all to no avail. Water will always find the lowest point where it can flow over, and all your defenses are bypassed. Welcome to Neptune in Pisces, and welcome to the overflow, which is taking place as Jupiter in Virgo makes the exact opposition to Neptune here in mid-September 2015. And refugees from godforsaken lands like Syria, Eritrea and Afghanistan pour over the European borders, overwhelming efforts to register, contain and control them.

Wave of Compassion
At the same time, something miraculous is taking place in the hearts and minds of people all over Europe. Whilst a year ago right-wing anti-immigrant parties all over Europe made enormous advances in recent elections, there is now an outpouring of emotion for these very same immigrants. Groups, spontaneously formed on the Internet, are swamped with donations. In France and England people make runs to Calais to help refugees. In Denmark too, people are picking up refugees on the way to Sweden and helping them on, and the same is taking place in Austria, Germany and Hungary.

These refugees, some carrying their children and almost nothing else, walk along motorways in an unstoppable stream, and are met at every resting place by ordinary citizens with water, food, blankets and clothing. They have all made dangerous sea-crossings, made it through Greece, Serbia, Macedonia and Hungary in their quest to reach the promised land, which for many is either Germany or Sweden. These are the only two countries that have made Syrian refugees explicitly welcome, in contrast to the xenophobic Hungarian government, and the embarrassing obfuscation of Cameron and the Conservative Party in Britain.

Root Causes
Actually, we owe it to them. There are reasons for the destabilization of the Middle East that we in the West are directly responsible for. After an ill-advised war in Iraq, Western nations are current using millions of dollars every month bombing ISIS. That money could be put to a lot better use. Another cause of destabilization, which is often forgotten, is climate change. The Middle East is hot and dry at the best of times, but temperatures as high as 158F/70C have been measured in Iran recently. Strikes in Baghdad have not been because of ISIS, but rather because of a breakdown of electricity supply when temperatures have been hovering at 120F/49C. Long-term temperature rises and lack of rainfall in the Middle East and North Africa has caused drought, food shortages and migration from countryside to the cities. This is contributing towards much of the unrest that has affected this region over the last five years. The inhabitants of this region are not the ones who have contributed to climate change.

It is almost impossible to imagine the situation for people in these regions trying to make it to Europe. There are over 7 million people internally displaced in Syria due to the civil war there. They scrape an existence with their children and families, unable to work, in extreme heat, caught between the threat of extreme violence from both Assad’s government and its barrel bombs, and ISIS and their fundamentalist extremism. Anyone with any imagination and any sense of responsibility to their children would leave. And this is what many have done, first to neighboring countries like Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, who have taken 600,000, 1.14 million and 815,000 refugees respectively, and then later, inevitably, to Europe.

Good Karma for Germany
So let’s put Angela Merkel forward for the Nobel peace prize, Germany even. Alone amongst nations they made their principles clear and announced their intention to help 800,000 refugees by the end of this year alone. They have literally laid on a welcome to them and effectively transport them to centers around Germany, despite the fact that many right-wing Germans have actively tried to sabotage asylum centers. The warmth and generosity of ordinary people has actually forced extremists to take a low profile.

Germany - Reunification horoscope

Reunification of Germany: October 3rd 1990. 0.00 Berlin AS 4.22 LE

The 1990 reunification horoscope for Germany encapsulates the epoch-making Uranus/Neptune conjunction in Capricorn of this period; in fact there is a triple conjunction of Saturn, Uranus and Neptune at the time… something that has not happened for over a thousand years.  This falls in the 6th house of the Reunification chart, and this may reflect the realistic attitude Germany has to the momentous events taking place in Europe. Like many Western countries Germany has an aging population and a low birth rate. It actually makes economic sense to welcome a new influx of people.

The 1990 horoscope for Germany shows a country with a very different character than earlier German charts. With Leo rising and the Ascendant ruler, the Sun, conjoining Venus in Libra, it is a land that believes in diplomacy and living at peace with its neighbors. The Sun makes a strong sextile to Jupiter in Leo, and a trine to Mars in Gemini, so Germany still has tremendous persuasive power and influence. The square of the Sun to the Uranus/Neptune conjunction in the 6th shows the uncomfortable balancing act of having such a large influx of foreign workers.

And of course, the Moon in Pisces in the 9th house of this chart clearly indicates the compassionate side of this country when confronted with a flood of refugees from abroad. Clearly this is not something that is going to lessen with time. Neptune entered Pisces in April 2011 and will not leave before January 2026, and this whole period will be characterized by shifting populations due to political transformation, war and climate change. Neptune will conjoin Germany’s Moon in the 9th it 2020, so there will be plenty of drama to come. The flood has just begun.

Horoscope for the European Union
The coming together of Europe has been a slow evolution which grew in strength finally coalescing with the Maastricht treaty which though signed in 1991 came into effect under the terms of the Single European Act on November 1st 1993 at which point it received its current name: The European Union.

European Union horoscope

The EU. November 1st 1993. 0.00 Brussels. AS 17.15 LE

Despite its many recent troubles, primarily the recent bailouts of Greece, the EU is the most powerful economic organization in the world, with a combined population of 500 million… the world’s largest population after China and India. In fact an influx of refugees on the scale we are seeing is unlikely to be more than 0.2% of the population, which is worth remembering when countries like Lebanon have a currently populations currently composed of 30% Syrian refugees

The power of Europe is seen in the monumental conjunction of a strong Mars in Scorpio conjoining Pluto and Mercury, and opposing an exalted Moon in Taurus in the 10th house. This is surely the signature of a tightly controlled union heavily fixated on power and money, and doing quite well at it. Terrorism scares since 9/11 have given rise to sophisticated surveillance and control of a consenting population. The policy towards refugees is that they are fingerprinted in the first EU land they arrive in, but nobody reckoned with the enormous numbers that have arrived on the shores of Italy and Greece, who understandably enough considering the indifference of northern EU countries, allow them to travel on to other destinations in Europe.

It is a curious thing, but if you progress the EU chart to early 2016, the IC/MC axis is at 24 degrees Taurus/Scorpio (having just squared Saturn in 2015), which shows a real crisis for the organization, which may both be connected with Greece and with refugees. This is a time when centralized control is sure to grow, and may even be quite ruthless. (It is obvious that Greece can expect little success in seeking flexibility from the EU in financial matters).

The EU chart, like Germany, also has Uranus and Neptune in conjunction, but now they are exact. This keys the EU in to the Uranus/Neptune conjunction cycle, giving it a life cycle of at least 172 years. The fact the Uranus and Neptune are also in the 6th house may well indicate the significance of an influx of foreign workers with a different cultural and religious affiliation, and that this influx would harmonize rather well with the goals of the EU, considering the harmonious aspects made to the Moon/Mars opposition.

Saturn on the Sign Border
In the summer of 2015 Saturn has been retrograding into Scorpio, but on September 18th Saturn returns to Sagittarius. This wandering back and forth over the sign borders has happened synchronistically with the stream of refugees, and their dangerous plight and many deaths as they have crossed the sea, or been inhumanely transported by smugglers. At the time of writing. September 14th 2015, Hungary has announced the completion of a fence on the border to Serbia, and refugees have streamed through in the days prior to the closing of their border. Germany, overwhelmed by tens of thousands of new arrivals over the open borders, has stopped trains entering from Hungary to Germany.

The re-arrival of Saturn in Sagittarius will inevitably bring a tightening of borders. Whilst the Jupiter/Neptune opposition opened up the floodgates, Saturn will now try to close them again. Success will be limited, because when Saturn meets Neptune, as it does three times from November 2015 to September 2016, there will be leaks. The sea will reach the walls of the sandcastle, flow around, under or over, and more refugees will stream in, as they will over the next ten years

As nations try to seal their borders there will be many tragic stories. But no one should forget that the flow of people displaced by forces greater than they could control brought out some equally great force amongst many who witnessed the flood – and that was the tsunami of compassion and solidarity for their fellow human beings. That is the meaning of Neptune in Pisces – we are all in the same inflatable dinghy.

Adrian Ross Duncan September 14th 2015