As we head into peak season of the 2010 cardinal T-square, I continue to search back through time for similar configurations that might provide some clues of what to expect in the next couple of months.

I’ve made a lot of references to events in 1989, the most recent year we had anything approaching the cardinal configuration currently forming in the sky. As I noted in this week’s forecast, the 1989 alignment wasn’t as dramatic as this year’s, and still there were a lot of exceptional events that year, including the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the Loma Prieta earthquake.

So far this year, we’ve had a mega-quake and a mega-spill, and that’s consistent with the astrological markers.

One could argue that oil spills and earthquakes happen all the time, but those that occurred in 1989 were exceptional. The Loma Prieta quake flattened downtown Santa Cruz and caused extensive damage in the San Francisco area, and the Exxon Valdez spill remains one of worst in history.

Looking back a little farther, we find another period of intense cardinal energy in the early 1930s. I can’t take credit for digging up this one but have to thank Ray Merriman, whose weekly financial column includes a lot of mundane analysis. That’s why he’s first on my list of links in the left sidebar. I highly recommend including him in your weekly astrology reading.

When the stock market crashed in 1929, the cardinal build-up had just begun, with Pluto in Cancer and Uranus in Aries. Saturn entered Capricorn earlier in the year but was back in Sagittarius at the time of the crash. He re-entered Capricorn in December, and then Jupiter entered Cancer in June 1930. At that point, all of the outer planets except Neptune were in cardinal signs, although they weren’t in as tight a configuration as this year’s T-square.

The cardinal configuration continued to build in 1930 and 1931, with a new series of eclipses in cardinal Aries and Libra. The first in the series, a total eclipse of the Sun in late Libra on Oct. 21, 1930, was in a wide square to Jupiter and Pluto conjunct in Cancer, with Uranus in the mid-degrees of Aries and Saturn in early Capricorn.

It’s interesting to note that Ceres also was in the formation, just as she is today. The Full Moon on Jan. 4, 1931, was conjunct Jupiter and Pluto, with the Sun tightly conjunct Saturn and retrograde Mercury, all in a tight T-square with Uranus in Aries. Ceres in Libra transformed the configuration into a grand cross.

You probably know where I’m going with this. The Great Depression began with the stock market crash and lasted ten years. Although it began in the United States, it spread worldwide, causing untold misery for millions of people. At the same time, Adolph Hitler was gaining influence in Germany, Japan began exerting its military might, and the world stage was being set for World War II.

I have to repeat my usual caveat that I’m not trying to spread gloom and doom, only to provide information about how similar astrological configurations have expressed themselves in the past. Obviously, events don’t repeat in exactly the same way, and the T-square is configured differently in 2010 than it was in 1931.

Still, there are enough similarities that it wouldn’t hurt to err on the side of caution. Maybe I’ll feel silly preparing for a situation that never happens, but that’s nothing compared to how bad I’ll feel if I’m not prepared for a serious emergency.

Pat