In the first hours after a stunning Full Moon set off the Saturn-Neptune opposition last month, British intelligence and police said they made arrests in an alleged plot to blow up airliners with liquid explosives. The Sun and Moon swept through the opposition, which occurs every 35 years, precipitating the events and setting a new era of history into motion.

The prior week in Planet Waves Weekly, I wrote, "This rare alignment, bringing together many cycles and factors, points to a big drama to which everyone who is alive will be compelled to respond. It seems we cannot do much about it, but we must deal with what we witness or learn."

Actual details remain foggy. The shameless stereotyping of Muslims continues. In the mist, or rather, midst of it all, what the astrology says is: Remember the involvement of Neptune in this event. Neptune often represents situations about which the truth is never found out, and where a smog of deception, confusion, and denial can linger. Yet with Neptune, if one takes a bit of distance from the noise and clatter of the world, it's  also possible to tune into the truth on a subtle but unprovable level.

When you study the patterns of the outer planets, you see a compelling version of history played out following the themes of the cosmic backdrop. Nobody knows how this works, but using well-known astrological archetypes, you can observe consistent patterns going back as far as you can match up dates with history. Very often, Saturn, the planet that from antiquity to the 18th century was the most distant known planet, is often involved.

The events of September 11, 2001, to which this is being compared, were used to galvanize massive political movements and what amounts to a world war. Five years ago, we were experiencing the meeting of Saturn and another slow-moving outer planet, Pluto, which resulted in a fiery explosion setting the tone of the next half decade.

Considering Saturn opposite Pluto, when you apply the dense, penetrating energy of Pluto to Saturn, the result was a lot of localized death, destruction, fire, and noise, which was then magnified to a worldwide scale and manipulated into an agenda. Throughout modern history, such alignments of Saturn and Pluto have nearly always come with contractions of mentality, crackdowns on liberty, tons of moralizing, nonstop accusations of evil intentions used for political ends, and the resulting "necessary" aggressions.

Current developments—so well-soaked in Pisces—will more likely represent an undoing. Saturn-Neptune contacts tend to signify transitions in established structures on the scale of endings or total transformations. Often, as a result, there is a significant improvement. Yes, plenty of bad things have happened under Saturn-Neptune influences in past eras of history, and plenty are happening now. But with awareness, working with the incredible tension of Saturn and Neptune pulling the Earth in opposite directions, can be productive, both personally and in the historical process.

In the summer of 2006, the influence has changed to the equally rare Saturn-Neptune opposition. Now we have had a kind of mirage, a scenario that might have happened. What is lacking in the current story, however, is the emotional impact, though this will not be apparent for some time. It is one thing to say, "They flew airplanes into skyscrapers," and quite another to say, "We caught them planning to have explosives in baby bottles." Note that this was done in the midst of the campaign for the midterm elections, and we all know that war tends to favor the party in power.