Advanced Research Project Agency Network (January 1, 1983)

The title says it all, really. The progenitor of the World Wide Web was officially launched as ARPANET.

I randomly set the time for its launch to occur just after lunch. It could have happened any time that day, but I wanted to see what turned up. Saturn and Pluto conjunct in the 7th House (of Open Enemies)? That’ll do nicely. (And because Saturn and Pluto are so closely aligned, I decided to see when they were exactly conjunct @ 37° Libra 35′: November 8, 1982. Something must have been in the air.)

A consistent theme of Saturn-Pluto alignment periods was that of wide-spread conservative, reactionary, or repressive empowerment, in precise agreement with the archetypal principles associated with these two planets – the Platonic empowering and intensifying of the Saturn impulse towards conservative reaction or repression. For example, the most recent Saturn-Pluto conjunction during the 1981-84 period coincided with both the first Reagan administration and the last years of the old regime of the Soviet Union under Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko. These specific years brought a nearly universal ascendancy of conservatism, in distinctly different forms yet nevertheless showing clear commonalities. This took place not only in the United States and the Soviet Union (visible, for example, in the Kremlin’s imprisonment of dissidents like Sakharov and Sharansky at this time) but also in Britain under Margaret Thatcher and, in more extreme dictatorial forms, in Poland under General Jaruzelski (bringing martial law and the repression of the Solidarity movement), in Chile under General Pinochet, in Panama under Manuel Noriega, in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, and in the Philippines under Ferdinand Marcos, among many others.

Cosmos and Psyche (page 219) by Richard Tarnas (2006)

For the time I (randomly) selected for this chart above, there is one inconjunct, but it’s a doozy.

Moon Inconjunct Midheaven

Work very hard to develop an objective awareness of what you are doing and where you are going. You will need this understanding to guide your emotions, which might otherwise lead you astray and make it difficult for you to focus on your goals. Even though you won’t have to choose a career or a purpose in life for many years, you can learn now to have good perception, which will make it easier to choose later on. Learn to see others’ points of view, even if you cannot accept them. Learn to make logical decisions, and do not let passing moods color your attitudes about yourself and your life too much.

Planets in Youth (page 142) by Robert Hand (1977)

Hmm.

And what did this juvenile system want to be when it grew up? Social Media.