They are saying that as of today, 06 February 2018, the Berlin wall has been down one day longer than it stood, or something like that because I’m not checking the figures. I grew up with the Berlin Wall, having been born in 1963. I thought of it as a permanent feature of the world, like the troubles in Northern Ireland and Kodachrome film.

uranian

From 1988 to 1989 I became interested in mundane astrology, particularly the symbolism of the Uranus/Saturn conjunction at the end of Sagittarius that happened around then. I interpreted it as a massive (Uranian) upheaval in structured (Saturnine) systems in the world (28 degrees of Sag/galactic centre). All this was set against the ongoing dawning Age of Aquarius and Pluto joining the conjunction at some point (I struggle to remember it all now) meant the death of the system.

This caused me to describe it as the final manifestation of the hippie revolution (that had been thought to have fizzled out) but this time being a more permanent change from top down structures of religion and politics to more bottom up grass roots systems and beliefs. I claimed this would set the landscape for the next 2000 years. My ideas were nothing if not ambitious.

crisis

As I watched the people in Eastern Europe with perestroika followed by the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square I thought, the Berlin Wall could be about to come down. In the autumn of 1989 I published these ideas in an essay called Satanic Viruses: The Fall of the Roman Empire and how to bring it about. Having something of a minor crisis of confidence I removed the prediction about the fall of the Berlin Wall and went on to publish the book. Three weeks after publication the wall came down.