Should we accept it or not, we are in the very midst of a mourning process, namely going through the depression stage. We are sad, mournful, thoughtful, no longer able to brighten up at what amused us before. We are worried, sorrowful, gnawed by a grey anxiety, that keeps us awake at night, that makes us no longer smile. We are afraid, afraid of the future.

Of the five stages of grief processing identified by Elisabeth Kübler Ross, depression comes after bargaining and before acceptance. Within certain limits, this can be good news, that doesn’t cancel, however, the difficulty we are experiencing in trying to serenely accept the end, not of the world, but of a world, of a way of living our life on this planet. The loss of the certainties and reference points to which we had got used is in any case destabilizing, and makes us feel uncertain and uncomfortable.

It seems as if all of a sudden we have opened our eyes only now to the reality of a seriously ill, agonizing society, without knowing what to do to heal it, and even dubious about the possibility that a cure can actually exist.

As long as the opposition of Saturn in Leo to Neptune in Aquarius was active, that is approximately till mid 2007, we kidded ourselves with the conviction that everything  would have continued to go on in this way forever – that the affluence based on the accumulation of material goods would have risen ever more, that our planet’s resources would have continued to support the growth rate to which we had got used, that the existence of a Third World to be exploited in order to satisfy our needs was all too natural, that the environment would have magically digested and transformed into fertile humus all our waste, sewage and toxins.

However, when Saturn entered into Virgo, we began realizing that perhaps things were not just that way, From Virgo, Saturn threw naked reality in our face, making us perceive it in our everyday life, that began to be poorer and poorer in “probiotic” values.   With the passing of time, the symptoms of this illness became more and more severe and debilitating, but in spite of their obviousness, we tried with all our forces to deny to ourselves that the situation could be so serious. In this phase of denial, we took refuge in thinking that what experts and scientists had been telling us for a long time maybe was not true, refusing even to consider the possibility to bring into question our lifestyle and way of interacting with the planet we are living on.

But in the two years and a half of transit in Virgo, Saturn inexorably severed our illusions with its sickle. We realized that continuing to deny reality, apart from being useless, was also harmful. So, we passed to the anger stage, that coincided with the long transit of Mars in Leo, from the second half of October 2009 to early June 2010. In that period, we began releasing our emotions of anger and fear, projecting them onto the outside world or ourselves – usually in both directions. We asked ourselves why this was happening just to our generation, trying to identify who was responsible of this mess, even coming to ask ourselves at times to what extent we had personally contributed to bring about such a decay. We began feeling helpless in front of the gravity of the problems, small and insignificant with respect to the forces into play. And this attitude did anything but intensifying anger and fear.

When in June Mars finally left Leo, while Uranus and Jupiter were about to enter into Aries, we began going through the bargaining stage. We started thinking that if we had done the right things, everything might be brought back to “normality”, that if we started to behave ourselves, we would have been magically pardoned and dispensed from the necessity to recognize that something had irreversibly changed. This too was a way to deceive ourselves, knowing that we were fooling ourselves, because facts shouted the truth – see the fires in Russia, the apocalyptic floods in Pakistan, India and China, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, just to give the most striking examples.

So, in September, on coming back home after our summer holidays, while Venus and Mars were entering Scorpio, we began realizing that our truth-concealing strategies simply didn’t work, and above-all that we hadn’t the slightest idea of how to find a remedy for this situation and what the future was setting aside for us. This was the beginning of the depression stage, that became darker when Venus turned retrograde in early October.

Our full awareness of the loss was triggered by the simultaneous transit of the Sun, Mercury, Venus and Mars in Scorpio. At that point, we could no longer deny that our world is ill, and anger was replaced by a sense of defeat.

When Venus resumed its direct motion on November 18th, we have finally begun going through the acceptance stage, that will go on till January 8th, 2011, when Venus will leave Scorpio to enter Sagittarius. From this fire sign, Venus will have the possibility to stimulate a broader, more articulated and possibly inspired vision of the problems at issue, almost a vision from above, that will allow us to start off again in spring with a brand-new perspective. In fact, in mid-March Mars, Jupiter and Uranus will enter Aries, the action/reaction sign, while Saturn will emphasize from Libra the pressing need for new measures, actions and laws in favour of a real environmental and social justice.

Meanwhile, Jupiter and Uranus are transiting over the last degrees of Pisces, continuing spurring us to think different thoughts. Many of us have been already doing it for a long time. This doesn’t mean that Uranian insights of a new world make us immune from the sadness of the depression stage. However, feeling ourselves inside a flow of renewal is nonetheless regenerating, doesn’t make us feel too lonely, and succeeds in giving sense and direction to the grief over the loss we are suffering.

"People are like stained-glass windows.

They sparkle and shine when the sun is out,

but when the darkness sets in

their true beauty is revealed

only if there is light from within."

Elisabeth Kübler Ross

Rome, November 24th, 2010