What The Planets Portend: Spring of 2010
Posted by Steve at 1/20/2010 12:39 PM 
Categories: Echo Trends
Tags: stupendous fantasies Arizona trends Steven Mark Weiss predictions business echo astrologers astrology Signs of Success 2010
Categories: Echo Trends
Tags: stupendous fantasies Arizona trends Steven Mark Weiss predictions business echo astrologers astrology Signs of Success 2010
When we looked at the trends for the Fall of 2009, the salient astrological factor was a so-called Jupiter station. Ultimately this celestial "stalling" of a gas giant at a single degree of the zodiac meant that an entire 2009 season was drawing some of the same energy vibe as a single specific week in February 1997. And we did pretty good with that...look back and you'll discover that mentions of significant episodes involving electric cars, avian flu, James Cameron's Titanic, restaurant closings, electronic hand held devices, El Nino weather, and more all had truly significant echoes in the period.
Seriously, had you heard anything at all about Avatar back at the beginning of last October?
Anyway, as we look to cues from Jupiter for the upcoming spring of 2010, we find our largest planet in a far perkier mood. Rather than vegging out a single degree for a season, Jupiter is currently embarked on a sprint that would make Usain Bolt proud. It has quite recently entered into the sign of Pisces and will traverse the entire 30 degrees of the sign, a trip that takes a year on average, by the beginning of June. (There is some retrograde motion back into Pisces in the fall, but basically Jupiter is hustling its butt off right now).
So basically what we are looking at here is a single season that will be a compression of no single week, but rather of an entire year. The last time Jupiter traversed the sign of Pisces was between February 1998 and February 1999. Roughly, we would expect the spring of 2010 to invoke cultural echoes of the entirety of 1998.
Now 1998 was a most significant and interesting year from landmark corporate mergers (Citicorp/Travelers, MCI/WorldCom, Exxon/Mobil, Deutsche Bank/Bankers Trust) to frightening nuclear threats (Iraq/India/Pakistan) to earth disasters (earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes and the Yangtze floods), to sports (McGwire breaks home run record, Jordan's buzzer beater wins NBA title in his last game as a Bull, France wins the FIFA World Cup at home) to politics (Ventura wins in Minnesota/Heston heads the NRA). Popular culture was popping with the likes of Titanic, Sex and the City, and the glory days of of pop princesses and boy bands. And yet every bit of the preceding received second billing to a single event that dominated the cultural zeitgeist for most of the year, especially in the U.S.
Of course we are speaking here of Monica Lewinsky and her role in the impeachment of the president of the United States, William Jefferson Clinton.
Putting aside the political and the purely salacious, what is interesting here is how the Lewinsky scandal helps explicate the meaning of the passage of Jupiter through Pisces. In astrology, massive Jupiter represents the profound power of collective creed and worldly understanding...the generally sweet fruit of our laws, our ethics, our codified knowledge, our values, even our luck and our joy... while distant Pisces represents the realm of our most esoteric consciousness...our dreams, our profoundest non-rational states, our desire to connect with a truth greater than ourselves that we can barely discern or describe . Certainly the combination of the two is capable of awesome spectacle and progress, but Jupiter and Pisces are also energetically somewhat of a mismatch...a university education pursued on psychotropic drugs.. that can result in titanic confusion, propaganda, obfuscation, and the most massive manifestations of the surreal.
And so you may get a professional wrestler elected as a governor, or a host of sports heroes secretly amped up on steroids. Maybe a major corporation makes up its financial statements to attract corporate suitors. You might even get a situation in which the president of the United States is reduced to the utterance: "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is."
Yeah, the spring of 2010 may be a little like that...don't believe everything you hear, and perhaps even less of what you think you understand.
ADVERTISING
AUTOMOTIVE
First brought out in the 1998 model year, the Dodge Durango had its best sales performance ever in its introductory year. Some of the credit goes to a brilliant positioning strategy that saw its advertising trumpet the Durango as "best in class" among all compact SUV's. The only catch...and here is where a Jupiter in Pisces vibe enters...is that there was very little about the Durango that was in fact compact. Its engine size, its load capacity, its gas mileage, its cargo space, and particularly the fact that it could seat eight people, might have qualified it as a full size SUV...and certainly at least a mid-size...in an honest assessment. So watch for consumers willingness to be sold "small" and "environmentally conscious," as long as they don't have to give up a damn thing.
CONSUMER PACKAGED GOODS
Much was made of a 1998 scientific study of children's breakfast habits, the results of which were reported in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine. The study represented itself as the first long-term investigation of the relationship between breakfast program participation and scholastic performance among inner city school children. Funded by Kellogg and the Mid-Atlantic Milk Marketing Association (not that it matters, of course), the study concluded that eating breakfast had an undeniably advantageous effect on a student's "academic and social functioning." Thus, 1998 turned out to be a banner year for the likes of Tony, and Buzz Bee, and the Cap'n, and the Count. And yet, even in the face of hard research, there were those who came along to deny the academic and social benefits of a bowl of Frosted Flakes in the AM. Self-serving science, anyone?
FASHION
1998 saw the introduction of hair mascara. Runway models and runway model wannabes everywhere adorned their tresses with streaks and swatches of colors not found in (hair) nature. The earth is our mother, but draw your own conclusions.
FOOD
It wasn't just breakfast cereal that celebrated nutritional sanctioning in 1998. The year also found one food manufacturer (and chemical company) after another announcing its plans for functional foods and nutraceuticals. Nestle, Kellogg, Unilever, ConAgra, Nabisco and Quaker were just some of the food giants who announced major research and/or product introduction plans. Food Processing Magazine named functional foods/nutraceuticals the number one trend in the industry, even more important than fat or salt reduction. One specific highlight of the year was the dissemination of research that the lycopene found in cooked tomato products, such as ketchup, could help prevent prostate cancer. This ketchup thing has yet to be entirely proven, by the way...but why mess up such a cool story ? This spring watch for metabolic mustard at a store near you.
INSIGHT
If the Lewinsky/Clinton thing didn't make things clear enough, one really doesn't have to write much more about 1998 than it was the year that saw the introduction of Viagra. If you are looking for the most graphic possible of explications for tumescent Jupiter in phantasmagorical Neptune, the intro of Viagra might be it. Here one has a contemporary ethos that demands sexual potency, even past one's natural prime, and a drug that makes the elders feel like men again...even if it all just is a (pardon my language) f---ing illusion. Talk about your coming attractions...
MANAGEMENT
Leadership theory was royally stirred up with the publication of Daniel Goleman's article "What Makes a Leader?" that appeared in a 1998 issue of the Harvard Business Review. Although he had published on the subject earlier, it was this article that widely exposed the management world to the concept of "emotional intelligence." While most business leaders are blessed with an abundance of technical skills and rational intelligence and authoritativeness, Goleman argued, the real differentiator of a successful leader is to be found in such "soft" qualities as self-awareness, empathy and social skill. In a business world currently gone mad on quantification and efficient delivery, the passage of Jupiter through Pisces is very likely to invoke the importance of right brain (associative) understanding versus the so-called plain hard facts.
MEDIA
In the summer of 1998, Cartoon Network introduced Sailor Moon as part of its anime-inspired 'Toonami' block of cartoons. Sailor Moon would require a whole lot of blog space to adequately explain, but suffice it to say that the title character is the leader of a team of warrior school girls and a talking cat who are charged with the mission of saving the the universe. What is so interesting about Sailor (who has a lot of other names...don't ask), is that she is really recognizable as a school girl...whiny, kind of lazy, into candy & video games, boy crazy, and academically disinterested (her favorite class is home economics). But again, she is the designated savior of the world. I guess this just means that it's not just horny old men who have stupendous fantasies...
RESTAURANTS
...and speaking of stupendous fantasies (a very precise expression of Jupiter in Pisces), consider the big buzz in the restaurant world of 1998. Hogging the headlines were the openings (announced and actual) of the universe's most ambitious 'eatertainment' restaurants. Modeled on the likes of the Hard Rock Cafe and Planet Hollywood, these big and bodacious new eateries were designed to kick the themed fun factor of dining out into the stratosphere. High profile projects featured magician David Copperfield, the Marvel comic book crowd, various real life Hollywood legends and, in the case of one New York City eatery, the planet Mars. So each and every one of these gargantuan grub halls either never gets open or fails within a year. (Astrologers might find the single exception, Mars 2112, symbolically interesting...but that would be too much to get into here). Anyway, here's a word to the wise in a Jupiter/Pisces cycle: when you are building an actual castle in the air, it probably does not improve your chance of stability to build a bigger castle.
TECHNOLOGY
Google is launched in 1998. All of the world's recorded knowledge is suddenly accessible in a virtual realm called cyberspace. Touchdown Jupiter in Pisces! (Well, at least for its creators and investors, even if it's tended to mess up what we consider knowledge a bit...I mean if you're such an authority how come your page rank sucks?)
TOYS
Techies have children too, it would seem, as Lego introduces its Mindstorm series of robot building kits to much wonkish acclaim. (Note to astrologers: "mindstorm" is aperfect expression of Mercury in Neptune, but it's also pretty good forJupiter in Neptune.) There's no confirmation of this but reliable sources report that Sailor Moon didn't seem to care.
TRAVEL
In researching my last blog post about place predictions for 2010, I couldn't help but notice a nice confluence of positive economic energy sweeping through the state of Arizona. I noticed this because: 1) I happen to live in Arizona; and 2) I'm pretty tired of watching my home's value sink towards the price of a burrito. Happily, there was ample confirmation in my research for this entry, as 1998 was more than a decent economic year for the state. The state gross product rose by a whopping 8.75% and Arizona led the nation with 4.5% job growth, among other statistical and anecdotal measures of growing prestige and prosperity. It's a lot different right now, as you may have heard, but I've got Jupiter in Pisces hopes. Even if I should know better.
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