Today is the 50th anniversary of the start of Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China. It was launched to purge his rivals and ended up nearly destroying China in a decade of unthinkable brutality and chaos. Millions were persecuted, beaten to death or driven to suicide, schools and libraries were destroyed, children turned against their parents. It only ended with Mao’s death when the personality cult he had built around himself collapsed.
It started with an edict on 16 May 1966 when the transiting revolutionary Uranus Pluto in Virgo was exact and just into the 8th house of the China national chart, 1 October 1949 3.15pm Beijing. That properly describes the state of national psychosis which gripped China in the years following. Uranus Pluto was also conjunct the 8th house Saturn in Virgo so a bleak, hugely unsettled time.
It came to an end in May 1976 with Mao’s death, when tr Pluto was conjunct the China 8th house Libra Sun and the Solar Arc Saturn, forcing through another transformation under great difficulty. In the years following new economic reforms were put in place though with tr Pluto moving on to conjunct Neptune in the two years thereafter, there was considerable confusion and a great deal of devastation to repair, much of it psychological damage as well as destruction of the social fabric.
Tr Uranus was also conjunct the China Solar Arc Sun in 1976, freeing the country of a madman.
Mao Tse Tung, born 26 Dec 1893 7.30am Siangtan, China, had the delusional, megalomaniac Pluto Neptune conjunction in Gemini (like Hitler). In Mao’s case it was in the showy 5th house opposition Mercury in Sagittarius – and that opposition was being triggered by tr Uranus Pluto moving through his 8th, when the Cultural Revolution started.