Preface Sisyphus’ cyberwork
We are witnessing the emergence of a new counterculture in these years when Pluto is about
to run into Aquarius. Young people are calling for change in the face of climate change that
seems inevitable, and they are acting more politically than they have in a long time. It’s a bit
reminiscent of the counterculture of ’68. The difference is that the new young generation is
extremely tech-savvy and skilled at reasoning scientifically. While the post-war boomers were
still fighting against their parents, their fascism, their rigid upbringing methods and their racist
view of humanity, Generation Y and Z are acting against ignorance in general. Their parents
are not so suitable as enemy images, because many of them are basically on their side, but do
not know how to change the world. This helplessness, which has been transferred to the
children who were carted to the school gate every morning in SUVs and packed into a world
of absorbent cotton, is to be overcome by the new counterculture.
As much as the premises differ: However, one enemy image has remained. Without
restrictions and a sustainable way of life, there will be no stop to climate change. Capitalism
and the ideology of growth is still the same problem as in the 1960s. However, the alternative
model is now no longer called communism or hippiedom, but consists of a variety of
alternative life models. Young people no longer read authors like Reich, Marcuse, Foucault,
Deleuze, Adorno or Habermas. The youtubers, bloggers and streamers act on problems in real
time with the help of their smartphones and don’t dwell so much on ideological discussions.
To understand their attitude, one must nevertheless look at the precursors of these
movements from the 20th century. From an astrological point of view, the cycle of Saturn and
Pluto is particularly important. For it marks the field in which sudden mutational changes with
Uranus can take place.
Digitization has taken us as humanity to another dimension, while the real problems of
everyday life have remained the same. It’s as if two worlds coexist that have no overlap. This
is also expressed in the single individuals. Especially people born in the 50s to 80s are subject
to a strong ambivalence indicated by the opposition of two very different principles with
Chiron and Uranus. If we look into the psychological background of their past, we can perhaps
better understand what to expect in the future. Often, they led unsteady lives in their younger
years and were strongly influenced by either conservative or liberal views from their parental
homes – with these terms becoming more and more interchangeable over time. Many were
long in search of spiritual attention or developed a general melancholy toward life. Neither
religion, family nor home could give them the support that had been taken for granted a
generation earlier. Their parents had often been actively involved in the events of World War
II and had mostly avoided talking about their feelings. As a result, these boomer children of
the prosperity years also had to put their needs on hold and could rarely feel the security that
a child needs. Although they were children of the so-called economic miracle, there was often
a strange emptiness inside them. Two extreme forms of compensation resulted: an
exaggerated drive for recognition or extreme conformity, sometimes both mixed in a strange
kind of melancholy and retroromanticism.
They, who now sit at the levers of politics and business in between the Corona crisis and the
Ukrainian war, had grown up in the self-image that everything was attainable and society was
only an annoying side effect of individual self-realization. When Corona and the Ukrainian war
‚hit‘ them, they were busy working fifty hours or more, supervised all around, wrapped in
metropolitan cocoons, fighting for their ‚livelihood‘ and catching the same pains as always in
the tenth edition of a new relationship.1 Allowing a little time off could already evoke a sense
of the danger of being left behind. The lack of identification with their own actions caused by
the colonialist system of exploitation led to rootlessness and the selling out of their feelings
and willingness to perform to the new neoliberalism that slowly began to eat away at their
entire lives like the shadows of Mordor. In order to survive in it mentally, they ‚indulged‘ in
hobbies far removed from reality and idealizing world views in memory of a past whose
grandiose achievements of emancipation, co-determination and equality were mercilessly
caught up by the reality of the ’neoconservative counter-reformation‘.
Although it was slowly recognized that continuing in this way was impossible, they avoided
any approach to change. It wasn’t until just before the Corona Crisis and the Ukrainian war
that a movement emanating from their children had focused on the need for a deceleration in
which the real problems of the world could come into focus. The ‚Fridays for Future‘ around
Greta Thunberg, Luisa Neubauer and many other mostly female protagonists around the world
had grabbed science and politics by their honor and determined that the time for compromise
had finally run out.2 Added to this were increased social injustice, the resurgence of populist
groups, and the erosion of democracy by the intransparency of Internet corporations,
investment funds, pharmaceutic entrepreneurs and similar. It was an explosive mixture whose
political arm was initially crippled by the virus. At the same time, thousands of billions of euros,
dollars and yen were spent on investment programs of the new economy.
This corresponds to the astrological signature of the conjunction of Saturn and Pluto in
Capricorn. It is the dominant constellation of this time and leads to a striving for efficiency. But
as we said, it is not easy to focus on the essentials when you are busy fighting for survival.
Thus, new technologies are not so much used to find intelligent solutions to energy and
resource problems, but drive to even higher rates of consumption and energy-guzzling
hobbies. Industry-bought civic movements try to convince us that we are still in the Cold War
between capitalism and communism and that the only salvation lies in limitless growth.
Although machines can now do much of the work for us, we rush through life like driven men,
finding little peace for contemplation.
The cycle of Saturn and Pluto marks phases of different spheres of influence of power and its
structures. In a way they give the norm targets of the respective epoch. Their conjunctions fall
on the years 1786, 1819, 1851, 1883, 1914, 1947, 1982 and 2020. The expiring phase between
1982 and 2020 is under the sign of globalization and neoliberalism. It took off in the mid-1980s
with Thatcher and Reagan’s decision to heavily deregulate and liberalize markets, and is
heading for its natural end at the beginning of the third decade of the new year thousand.
After that, turbo-capitalism will probably shrink on its own to normal levels due to a lack of
resources and new low-wage forces that can no longer be relentlessly exploited. The capital
cannot pay any longer its workers.
1 The astrologically interesting thing about the virus is that it came over us punctually with Chiron in Aries, as
it had been the case in 1918 shortly before the world war and in 1968 with the last pandemic, which rushed
over the globe in the form of the Hong Kong flu.
2 Greta, asked why she did not accept the Pope’s invitation, once said that it was a waste of time for her. If we
wait for old white men to overcome their third life crisis, we will not bring about the necessary changes.
The next section with Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn will bring us a global bureaucracy that will
severely limit the freedoms of the individual for the time being. Completely new technologies
will regulate life in a perfect way. Networked mobility guarantees the fastest possible travel in
an environmentally friendly way. Factories will be fully automated and take the hard work away
from humans. Instead, they will be increasingly occupied with handling the Brüocracy. Medical
interventions will be performed by machines and care robots will take care of the elderly. A
new green deal will be proclaimed, in which every human being will have to control his or her
ecological footprint.
The Corona crisis and the Ukrainian war have shown us how unstable the psyche of many
people is at the moment. Something is emerging that has been there for a long time and that
has its roots in the wars of the past and the fear of losing control again. This diffuse fear is also
present in the generations that are referred to in sociology as Kriegsenkel. They are the
children of the children born during war, born in the cohorts of about 1955 – 1985, and whose
lives were mainly shaped by their entry into the digital world.3
Their psychological disposition flowed into the programming of the electronic circuits and is
thus the basis of an interstellar consciousness that we are heading towards. They are called
Kriegsenkel because their parents grew up as children in the war or in the deprived post-war
years. Due to the traumas they usually suffered, they were unable to give their children
sufficient emotional protection later when they became parents, so the theory goes. Many of
those born in the prosperity years, despite material provision, found no emotional orientation
in life, struggled with psychological problems and were unable to build stable relationships,
although they seemed to have everything at their disposal that their parents had not had.4
Astrologically, a new point of influence was involved, the asteroid Chiron, which played a major
role in the acclimatization to the new relationship patterns. Between 1951 and 1990, there
was a recurring opposition of the two planets Uranus and Chiron, which led not only to a
technological revolution in all fields, but also to emancipation, co-determination in the
workplace and at university, sexual autonomy and much more. However, the new freedom
(Uranus) was bought with many vulnerabilities (Chiron) and in some places the systems jolted
so hard that they almost caused a complete crash in the brains of the natives. Many of the
psychological difficulties laid down in previous generations, starting with depression, anxiety
and compulsive behavior patterns, hyperactivity, hypersensitivity and split personality
patterns were not dealt with and carried over into the next generations. One can see in the
corresponding horoscopes the balancing act that each and every one of these births had to
perform in their lives.
For many Kriegsenkel, their freedom in the ‚best years of life‘ consists of seeking a thrill in even
more extreme sports or resource-wasting hobbies, numbing themselves with drugs and
alcohol and taking performance-enhancing medication in order to ‚hang in there‘, to belong,
or to cut themselves off from society completely. Especially when they are raised up in
militarized societies such as China, England, France, Germany, the U.S., and Russia they have
difficulty orienting themselves and are easily susceptible to ‚easy solutions‘ that neglect the
complexity of the interpersonal. They do not have good access to their cancer characteristics,
to nurturing warmth and contentment within themselves and often lead an unsteady life, are
in search of emotional care or, exacerbated by the corona crisis and the Ukrainian war, develop
a general melancholy towards life.5
The cause of their disorientation is the traumatic experiences of their parents. They were also
afraid to talk about their feelings and often showed a rigidity of feeling towards their children.
3 Interestingly, they are the same ones who created the artificial intelligence and perhaps their melancholy and
rootlessness is reflected in these new beings.
4 Prime examples are David Cameron, Dimitri Medvedjeff and Bashar al-Assad, born in 1965 and 1966, who
each embraced a totalitarian idea and betrayed their ideals, helping to create major crises for their countries.
5 Similar scenarios can be expected from the people who are traumatized in the current wars. Their road to
paradise is paved with danger, touts to leave them behind, gangsters to rob them, and sonic weapons to hold
them back. Especially when they come as refugees to countries whose people themselves have not finished
with the war traumas and the circumstances of the great depression and experience re-traumatization through
immigration, the psychic deseaaes will not be treated well.
The theme came to a head with Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn in the Corona crisis, where the
needs of the older generation (not to be infected with the virus) collided with the needs of the
younger generation for material security. Sufferers of the once again unresolved conflict were
ultimately the children, who were often left to their own devices, spent days in front of the
computer screen, were not allowed to see their friends and had difficulty reaching their
teachers during the lockdown. In this way, the old traumas are also inherited by the new
generation and fed into the digital reality of war games and consumer manipulation.6
In the horoscopes of the particularly unsteady Kriegsenkel, there are strong emphases on the
axes. Many planets are at house transitions and thus correspond to the lack of basic
orientation. Traumatic and near-death experiences are often associated with birth.
Astrologically central to this is the conjunction of Uranus and Pluto in the sign of creative
efficiency and competence (Virgo). In the mid-1960s, Saturn and Chiron entered into
opposition to this, achieving a form of restless exploratory urge with simultaneous enthusiasm
for historically outdated world views. In this spirit, the machine mind was blown and the first
chip with ‚integrated circuit‘ was created in the Intel 4004. Its triumphal march displaced all
other problems that now catch up with us with concentrated force.
The general dilemma of the generation of Kriegsenkel is the lack of a real perspective on life
and collective cohesion. On the outside, one was born into the economic miracle, materially
nothing was lacking, the will of the parents to raise ‚educational champions‘ is there – but the
real needs of the child were often not seen. Due to the traumas from the war, feelings and the
showing of weakness were suppressed by the parents and so the Kriegsenkel were often
unable to develop a stable identity based on a role model. The shame of admitting one’s own
discomfort is also so great because ‚you were so preferred‘. And one has not really got to know
his own needs in order to be able to describe them more precisely. The slightest deviation
from the routine could throw the parents out of their rhythm. And so, they pretended that
everything was fine, learned to play roles so perfectly that they often confused their own
identity with the role. So many of them remained in jobs that make them sick or in
relationships that have long since broken down.
The years of the Kriegsenkel can be identified astrologically with the constellation between
Chiron and Uranus from 1950 – 1990.7 More than 40 years as the duration of the opposition
between Uranus and Chiron is unusually long; it arises from the fact that Chiron’s orbit is
eccentric. In its slow phase in the signs Aquarius to Gemini, it has about the same speed as
Uranus.8
6 Those born with Chiron/Uranus can work on their role as parents if they look at themselves to see what is
personally connected with the theme of freedom and patterns of dependency and what unnecessary
restrictions they carry around.
7 The core time of the Kriegsenkel, which is often chosen even more narrowly in the literature, agrees in
essence with the dwell time of Neptune in Scorpio (1956 to 1970) and denotes an insatiable longing for
security.
8 The previous oppositions of Chiron and Uranus were much shorter. In the one of 1846 and 1847 Karl Marx
wrote the communist manifesto, in Berlin there was the potato revolution and in Ireland the famine. In
addition the Mexican war and the Sikh uprising in India. Liberia is founded, Neptune is discovered and
Edison is born, Hindenburg and Anna Kingsford, one of the most important women’s rights activists of the
19th century. In the 1743 OP, one of the brightest comets of all time is sighted with an unusually fanned out
tail, and the War of the Austrian Succession rages. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the American Declaration
of Independence is born and Antoine Lavoisier, the founder of chemistry.
The assignment to the Kriegsenkel is not only made according to the years. If these also roughly
determine the age cohort of the respective group, it is also important to which group one sees
oneself belonging based on one’s own life contexts in the context of a ‚transgenerational
passing on of war-related burdens‘.9 Therefore, I discuss the five phases that Chiron and
Uranus contested during this period again individually; the time of the civil rights movements
in the 50s, the hippies of the 60s, the peace movement of the 70s, the youth cultures of the
early 80s and the New Wave and nerd communities of the late 80s. Everyone developed a
different identification with one of these time phases and formed a different preference.
Hardly anyone, however, remained completely untouched by the themes of one of these
periods.
We could identify wonderfully with the freedoms that were won during these phases. But for
the difficulties in finding one’s own path in life, there are also factors of the past: the previous
two world wars, the Cold War, the neo-liberal agenda and the transformation of village and
city. Only four generations earlier, most people still lived in villages and had no knowledge,
even by hearsay, of the things that have become second nature to the children of the student
revolution. Only a few had the path to an academic career open to them. In the middle of the
20th millennium, however, there was a rapid demographic development in the OECD
countries. Families became smaller, but the pressure to perform increased due to
individualization. A certain level of prosperity made it possible for children to have a varied
education – combined with the expectation of a return on investment.
Accordingly, many Kriegsenkel also developed quite a passable biography, a lifestyle with
which they would have been worth something in all previous generations on this planet. But
not in this time. For the demands became ever higher, the speed of life changes ever greater
and the technological progress of digital media immense. The resulting dilemma of aspiration
and realization reached its climax in the economic crisis of the early 2000s, when the feigned
sense of well-being collapsed like a house of cards.
We are not surprised to see the planet Uranus involved in this development. For revolutions
are astrologically under its banner. In all revolutionary charts it has a great influence.11 But
what is astonishing is the involvement of Chiron. This small asteroid, discovered only in 1977,
has just completed its first full orbit. And yet, in modern horoscope interpretation, it plays
almost as large a role as the ancestral planets of the star system. Its presence in opposition
with Uranus for forty years can help us to arrive at deeper patterns of interpretation and
explain its effects. Chiron carries with him a sensitivity to his fellow man that stems from a
tragic story. The Greek god was born with a handicap among the Centaurs, wild fellows who
were not particularly concerned with culture (Sun square Mars). There are two horoscopes for
Chiron, one of the first photo sighting and one of his identification by a human. I find the
former more meaningful.12
Andreas Bleeck, July 2022
11 At the storming of the Bastille, Uranus is in conjunction with Jupiter and Venus at cusp 8, Pluto is in
Aquarius, at the Russian Revolution it is in opposition to Saturn in Aquarius, at the founding of the USA it is
at the Descendant with Moon in Aquarius, at the Paulskirche Constitution Saturn, Uranus and Pluto were in
conjunction in Aries and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine Uranus is in Aries in a T-square with Pluto and
Jupiter.
12 http://janswebsites.altervista.org/astro/astro-chiron-de.html