2020 feels very much like 1984 to me. And this is no coincidence, for in the language of numerology both are 22 Universal Years, that is to say that the digits of the year add up to 22. 1984 does this straightforwardly (1+9+8+4 = 22) while with 2020 you have to employ a numerological trick of dropping the zeroes and combining (rather than adding) the remaining 2’s. This method is quite legit and enables us to better understand where 1984 and 2020 are similar, as well as where they are different.

1984 was a crazy year, and just like 2020 it had a strong confrontational energy about it. In the UK there was the Miners Strike (which incidentally began on 6th March 1984, 6+3+1984 = 1993, 1+9+9+3 = 22) pitting traditional trade union power against the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher (who was born 13th October 1925, 13+10+1925 = 1948, 1+9+4+8 = 22). This came to a head in the violent Battle of Orgreave that summer, the same week that Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Two Tribes was Number One in the charts. That song, at the height of the Cold War, perfectly reflected fears that the USA and USSR were on a collision course to nuclear war. To get a flavour of 1984 and that sense of impending nuclear apocalypse which people of those days lived through, you only have to watch the film Threads, also released in 1984. Actually, I take that back. Do not watch that film, it is very dark.

In the autumn of 1984 the first reports started coming through of the famine in Ethiopia, described by BBC News at the time as “biblical…the closest thing to hell on Earth”, and the UK music scene, led by Bob Geldof (who was born 5th October 1951, 5+10+1951 = 1966, 1+9+6+6 = 22) mobilised their response in the form of that year’s Christmas Number One, Do They Know It’s Christmas (which was recorded on 25th November 1984, 25+11+1984 = 2020 = 22).

I could give many other examples of this 22-ness but we would be here all day. Suffice to say that both 1984 and 2020 are ruled by this number, 22, and at the end of 1984 Ronald Reagan was re-elected as US President in a landslide. Donald Trump is of course a 22 himself (14th June 1946, 14+6+1946 =1966 = 22), and is up for re-election this November…

So, what are we saying here? That the events of 2020 – BLM demonstrations, Corona, violent confrontations and protests – are just 1984 rebooted in 2020 packaging? Well, no. At least not quite, because there is one enormous difference between then and now. In 1984 not only did social media and the internet not exist, but 24-hour rolling news had not yet been invented. It is easy to overlook these things, and to fail to see what a difference they have made. Take a moment to marinade yourself in a bit of 1984-ness and then imagine how bigger, more shocking, and more frightening it all would have been with 24/7 Breaking News, Twitter, and Google. There would have been miners live streaming from the picket lines, celebrities offering to take Ethiopian refugees into their homes, 24/7 coverage of the social justice implications of the defeat of trade union power, Twitter wars about Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s politicisation of Top of the Pops and a Change.org petition for Bob Geldof to be given the Nobel Peace Prize. 2020 is, to a large extent, so crazy because we are constantly being re-fed the craziness via social media and 24/7 Breaking News…

Of course, there is another important similarity between 1984 and 2020. And I don’t mean 1984 the year, but 1984 the book, which seems to have been taken as an instruction manual, rather than a warning.

Right now, 2020, is a time of great censorship, where necessary ideas are being purged from conversation, particularly online, at an ever-increasing rate. Anybody who has tried to exert their so-called right to free speech will know this, while only those who fail to exercise their voice will doubt that this is happening.

There are thousands of examples of people – well-known and ordinary – being banned and restricted online, and don’t believe for a moment that they are all trafficking in hate-speech. Ideas which were commonly accepted five minutes ago are now subject to an army of anti-spiritual ‘fact-checkers’ who filter and censor based on their own preferences, biases and secular belief systems, rather than any objective standard or regard for knowledge and learning. This matters because it deprives us of opportunities to grow. But the worst form of censorship is not what can be done to you by Facebook or Twitter, but what this culture of shaming and cancellation causes us to do to ourselves, because increasingly we see people self-censoring, stopping themselves from saying what they know to be true, because someone might find it ‘problematic.’ This is how 2020 is just like 1984, and the prophet George Orwell saw it all in advance. Unchecked, this will not end well, and the number 22 tells us how it might go…

Every year in history can, by adding or combining its digits, be reduced to a number, which in turn tells us something about the energy of that year. When we do this calculation for every year in history, we see something very interesting. The twentieth century had the greatest amount of 22 Universal Years of all time. These were 1939, 1948, 1957, 1966, 1975, 1984 and 1993. In each of these cases dramatic stuff happened, as the large-scale, transformative and disruptive energy of 22 stepped into our world. In fact, humanity has regularly experienced 22 Universal Years ever since the 13th century. But – and here is the thing - after 2020 there will not be another 22 Universal Year until 2200, with the next one after that being in 2299. That’s a big gap…

This is significant. It means that the energy of extreme transformation and destruction that has been building steadily over the past 800 years, and which has intensified in the past 80 and has now reached its peak, in 2020. After 2020 this energy will not visit our world again for another 180 years. The next two centuries are going to be very different indeed….

We can take this in one of two ways. We can say that once this year is through things will calm down. Or we can say that the damage inflicted this year will have consequences and ramifications for decades, possibly centuries. To me it looks like the latter, that the events of 2020 – and the reaction to them - will knock human progress backwards. And 2020 isn’t over yet. The events surrounding the US Election are the hot spot, but whatever the result I expect considerable fighting before and after the results, certainly in the courts and probably on the streets. It seems that this cannot now be avoided, for the world’s largest economy and most influential nation is staring into an environmental, political and social abyss, and even though many will cheer its collapse the reality is that the Fall of America bodes ill for everyone.

Yet maybe – in the end - there may be some good news. The last time that the world had a lengthy period without the energy of 22 Universal Years we experienced the Norman conquest of England, the Twelfth Century Renaissance and the Magna Carta, all ‘turn of the page events’ which brought with them hope and optimism which reached far down the centuries. The time before that was in the first centuries after Christ, when a wide range of mystic, spiritual and religious practices flourished. Something significant and new was born in each of those eras, and something significant and new is going to be born from all that is going on right now. But I think that the new ideas which will really shape our future have barely even begun…

So how do you get yourself on the right of history? Well, maybe you would like to be part of something significant and new. If so, you have to at least try to do three things:

1. Accept the impossible. The mind has limits and not everything can be scientifically measured or proved. Magic is real. Numerology and Tarot work. Healing is possible. The censors and fact-checkers want to remove your ability to meaningfully engage with these things, but you must resist.

2. Believe that things can improve. Not that they will improve, that’s naïve. But that, if you do the right things, they CAN.

3. Treat other people well, regardless of how they treat you, or what you think about them. This means giving people a chance to do the right thing, but also being clear-eyed enough to recognise when they refuse, and then walking away from them without resentment or regret.

Do these things (as well as many others) and you will find yourself standing on the foundation of something better for humanity, and a growth energy will become available to you. This positive force will not appear to those who are busily engaged in destruction. Creation, building, writing, designing, making; these things aren’t done by those whose hearts are filled with fear, anger or suspicion. Nor are they done by those who want to police what you read, hear or see. Such people are certainly part of our present but they have nothing to offer the future. Maybe, right now, those people have the advantage. But it will not always be so. Do your work with an eye to the future. For there will be one, and those who spend their days screaming, judging, and censoring others cannot be part of it…