Undeniably the cruellest day to celebrate Australian culture & identity, January 26 marks the date Governor Arthur Phillip raised the Union Jack at Warrane, later Sydney Cove & today Circular Quay in 1788 to proclaim British sovereignty over the lands already occupied by Aboriginal people & to drink to the King’s health before upending those societies entirely. The following day, on 27 January 1788, Pluto moved into 0 Aquarius. Two weeks later Saturn entered Pisces. As Saturn returns to Pisces on 8 March 2023 & Pluto re-enters Aquarius for the first time since 1788 on 23 March 2023, we’re about to come full circle.
Arthur Phillip had been sent to establish the colony of New South Wales as a British penal solution for the loss of the American colonies where 50,000 convicts had been transported until America gained independence from Britain in the American Revolutionary War. Between 1788 & 1863 162,000 able-bodied convicts, mostly from Britain & Wales, were transported to build the colony in NSW, which Matthew Flinders would name Australia in 1804. Once their sentences were served, convicts were free to own land under British law but because that land already belonged to Aboriginal people, settlement sometimes involved deadly violence. More than 400 massacre sites have been documented in Australia to date; almost half of these were conducted by police.
The first recorded commemorations of January 26 were actually led by emancipated convicts in 1808 to celebrate both "their love of the land” in which their fortunes had been radically reversed & the success of Australia’s only military coup, which removed Governor William Bligh from power. Bligh had sought to stop the illegal supply & trade of rum by the military & his removal on 26 January 1808 was celebrated with “drinking & merriness” by the colony’s former convicts. Their reversal of fortunes had, of course, only been made possible by the wholesale dispossession of First Nations peoples from their country.
In Victoria the first celebration of January 26 took place in 1871. It was named AMA Day after the ‘Australian Natives Association’, which was founded for the benefit of white “native-born” men. The first national ‘Australia Day’ was nominated by a woman to raise funds for the war effort during WWI & was held on 30 July 1915. On January 26 1938, celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the landing of the First Fleet were countered by the first national Day of Mourning, an extraordinary protest staged in Sydney by the men & women of the Australian Aborigines League & the Aborigines Progressive Association who protested the treatment of Aboriginal people & appealed for the recognition of their citizenship rights. Australia Day was only introduced as a national public holiday in 1994. According to polling, only 29% of Australians celebrated Australia Day in 2021.
The astrology of these events is uncanny. On the first Day of Mourning in 1938 Saturn was in Pisces. Three days after Australia Day was declared a national holiday in 1994 Saturn entered Pisces. The 1967 referendum, which recognised the citizenship rights of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander peoples for the first time, took place shortly after Saturn had left Pisces for Aries. As Saturn re-enters Pisces in March this year, we are again moving towards a national referendum on the constitutional inclusion of a First Nations ‘Voice’ to parliament. The planet of structures, foundations and crystallisation will also make its way into Aries in 2025.
In this video we look to Pluto’s last movement through Aquarius from 1777-1798 for a glimpse of the potential scope of the change ahead. In the French Revolution, the American war of independence, the successful Haitian slave rebellion & the colonisation of Australia the old order of power was upended either from the outside or by those at the margins of power. Since 2020 we’ve been witnessing the global rise of First Nations people. Astrologically this looks set to continue & there's cause for optimism about the potential for real change in the decades ahead. I’m deeply hopeful about what they could bring & am reminded again of my favourite quote: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” - Dr Martin Luther King.
I extend my deep respect & sorrow to Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nations & all First Nations peoples with special love for my Aboriginal friends & family. I’m so sorry that the 26th of January is so shit.
#alwayswasalwayswillbeaboriginall& #lestweforget #notadatetocelebrate #dayofmourning #saturninpisces #plutoinaquarius #firstnations #justice
