Planet 9 - What does it mean?

Before I tell you how the new Planet 9 may improve our love lives and radically alter our finances for the better, I must ask you to read the following cosmic Health and Safety disclaimer! 

Astronomers measure the sky and all objects within it. Astrologers read meaning into those measurements. Astronomy is a science. Astrology is a belief system.  Astronomers don't need astrologers but astrologers would be helpless without astronomers.

Now we're clear that I am an astrologer, not an astronomer, let us turn to why the 'new' giant gas planet at the most remote extreme of our solar system could (eventually) herald the end of money as we currently know it, a time when the whole human race revels in unprecedented prosperity - and the emergence of a more loving, trusting society!

To explain why I feel able to make such a bold prediction I should point out the huge symbolism in the way this new planet has been announced. The news comes from an impeccable source. Yet there's no tangible, physical proof. Not even a fuzzy snapshot or a little blip from the dish of a radio telescope. All they have, to back any of this up, are a set of hard sums, the likes of which only a doctor of maths could properly understand. 

The vast majority of us must take this entirely on trust. There's an element, here, of what some might call 'mystical resonance'. Unless there's a radical advance in telescope technology, getting proof, say the scientists, will be like 'searching for a needle in a haystack by looking down the end of a drinking straw!' All they're sure of is that there must be a needle. How interesting then, that in the moment of first appearance, this mysterious new planet is inviting us all to take a leap of faith and believe what previously seemed entirely unbelievable!  

Astrologers, by the way, have long had such faith. We knew it would only be a matter of time before a new planet was discovered and have been cautiously nervously expecting it to surface any decade now. Has that now happened? The answer remains in debate. The experts tell us we may need to wait five years before we get the full evidence. "\Five Years? Wasn't that one of David Bowie's seminal songs? Might there be some synergy here? Some internet mystics already seem to think so. Could this, indeed, be the very same 'Blackstar' that he prophesied with the title of the album that he released to coincide with his death? 

If you think that sounds far-fetched, I dread to tell you what this planet apparently means to other conspiracy theorists. Many, for years, have been insisting that the world is about to rediscover Nibiru, an enormous heavenly body on an eccentric, 360,000-year orbit which was known to the ancient Babylonians. They too, have been using the phrase Planet X and they have indeed, also been insisting it will show up any moment now... causing the Earth's magnetic poles to flip, wreaking untold chaos on the whole human race. I mention this only to insist - with all the authority that anyone in my ethereal line of work ever dare muster -  that whatever this new planet IS, it isn't this! 

That, indeed, is why proper astrologers are keen to ensure we all keep referring to it under the working title of Planet 9! It is a herald of positive transformation, not a portent of doom. As for what Planet 9 may eventually be known as - that's always a job for the International Astronomical Union, who famously take their time about this task. Astrologers, by long tradition, accept that the astronomers who do the naming are being inadvertently guided by a force more magical than they realise. The new arrival may briefly pick up an interim popular nickname and there may be some clue, in that, about its eventual relationship with the zeitgeist. But patient, wise astrologers will wait for the IAU and take whatever they choose as a clue, all in itself, into the meaning of this new planet.

What influence WILL it have? Again, my colleagues would prefer to wait for the name and study the mythology that will be attached to this. But there are clues in the changing circumstances we see in the world around us right now.  Remember, please, there's yet no tangible proof of Planet 9. You've either got to believe in it... or not! In this very situation, I and many other astrologers hear a whispered message, from on high, about the imminent birth of a new universal belief system! That may not have quite such a lofty, spiritual implication as you may think. As many students of economics have often observed, money is a mysterious, intangible, abstract force that only has power thanks to the continued belief of billions!  A religion, in a way, all of its own. 

Yet notice how Planet 9 has arrived at a time when the priests of prosperity are panicking. World stock exchanges are in almost unprecedented turmoil. The commodities market is being turned upside down. Traditionally safe bets are clearly safe no longer. Many, even in the most conventional corridors of power, are privately wondering if it is time for the whole human race to review its relationship with money? Futuristic philosophers, the world over, have long been saying how we need to outgrow a very narrow way of establishing value and replace this with a more sophisticated way to gauge worth?  This planet, we astrologers feel, is telling us that the day to instigate such a change is nearer than we think - and that the current financial nadir is another reason for us to review our system! 

 There may also be a message from the sky to us all about the enormous, global refugee crisis? Many believe this is not a situation that can be resolved by dropping bombs or deploying troops. People are dying in squalor and starvation, not just because of misplaced beliefs but because of international fears relating to borders, barriers and boundaries. Isn't there an echo, in that, of how our personal love lives often get into trouble when we don't feel able to trust one another? What if a situation is asking us to love, trust and 'make space' for someone - yet, to do this, we must first overcome our worry that, if we do, we'll be overrun, taken advantage of, or even destroyed? In that respect, Planet 9 can surely be seen as a cosmic message about the need to take a leap of faith with one another. This might yet have a positive impact on all our hearts... with happier love lives everywhere as a side effect!

Some, of course, might argue that the refugee crisis was here before Planet 9 - as were all the ingredients of the current economic slowdown. This, they may say, proves there's no connection between the sudden arrival of this new heavenly force and the changing face of life on Earth. The counter argument is that the planet has been having an influence all along!

The question of 'what difference does it make when the planet is not, technically, actually 'new',  may be best answered by a brief history lesson:

In 1783, two years after William Herschel discovered a new planet through a home-made telescope in his back garden, experts were still debating what to call it when two French brothers built a hot air balloon. Humans flew for the first time ever, and Uranus, the sky god, came into our lives, just as we needed a new planetary symbol to stand for an unprecedented miracle. 

In 1846, Neptune was discovered using a similar process of mathematical deduction to the one recently used to identify Planet 9. At much the same moment in history, photography became possible - and from that, moving pictures changed the world again.

We have every reason to expect that, with a newly discovered planet, there should be new technology. A new way for the human race to think about what's possible and to drop, therefore, its old ideas about what's impossible.  

Might this then, all mean: 'Teleportation, here we come?' It might. I certainly means we're all about to see the world change in wonderful ways we never dreamed of. Planet 9, whatever it eventually gets named, moves too slowly through the zodiac to be an indicator of anyone's daily progress through life. We're not yet sure of its orbit but it may well spend over 2,000 years in some zodiac signs. That means both my mother and my youngest baby grandson will have been born with Planet 9 at precisely the same point in the zodiac.

As an individual significator, it is therefore limited. But as an auspicious omen, suggesting that a generation of billions, all over the planet, are now destined to enjoy a far brighter future, it is most potent... and most welcome!