Concerns have risen over the recent, rapid spread of the swine flu (the H5N1 virus) in Mexico, the United States, and in Europe. Is this the beginning of the next world-wide pandemic? Astrology can shed light on this question. I wrote the following short article as a newspaper column and a posting to my website several years ago. The article has been updated to conform to the current dilemma.

Migrating wild birds are literally spreading this disease throughout the world. Swains and chickens are most susceptible to the virulent flu strain. Human cases are uncommon but the death rate for those infected is high - approximately 50%. Fears are that the virus could mutate into an easily transmittable human-to-human disease, sparking the next worldwide pandemic. All it takes is the avian flu in chickens, for instance, to infect pigs? sick with the human flu; the resulting hybrid virus would be a flu that humans could easily catch. The strain that spread from Mexico to the U.S. and Europe in the spring of 2009 is unusual since the flu is a fall and winter disease. This strain of swine flu has all the makings of becoming a world pandemic.

A Russian historian and later professor of medicine, A.L. Tchijewsky, spent his life collecting, recording, and comparing wars, revolutions, migrations, and other momentous events in history from 500 B.C. to 1900 A.D. Tchijewsky was most interested in any relation between historical events and sunspot activity. One of his most celebrated discoveries concerned the ebb and tide of worldwide epidemics.

Tchijewsky found that epidemics like diphtheria, cholera, smallpox, tuberculosis, polio, and typhus run in cycles of 11 years. 72% of the time epidemics thrive during peak sunspot activity, and only 28% of great plagues have flourished during solar minimums.

The H5N1 virus emerged in Hong Kong near the 2000 sunspot peak. Other deadly virus mutations have also occurred during sunspot peaks: 1947, 1957, 1968, and the 1918 pandemic that killed 20 million people.

We can rest somewhat assured that H5N1 may not mutate into an easily transmittable disease until after spots reach a minimum. This happened, however, in March 2008! Sunspots are now (in 2009) just beginning to rise. This current flu strain may be temporarily contained but chances are great that this killer will evolve into a world-wide pandemic as sunspots climb to a peak in the next few years. The Uranus square (90-degree angle) Pluto occurs from 2012-2015. This powerful planetary combination closely aspects the Sun-Saturn square in the U.S. horoscope. Expect this period of time to correlate with sunspot maxima, political and economic crisis, environmental disasters, and pandemic plus!