(If you wish to lis­ten to the show instead, here is the link on BlogTalk or Apple Pod­casts)

In my pre­vi­ous show on Octo­ber 2^nd, I had hoped to talk about both the Plu­to return to its Natal posi­tion in the USA chart and Neptune’s oppo­si­tion to its Natal posi­tion too. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there was not enough time to do both, so we should con­sid­er today’s show as part two of that pre­vi­ous show.

But we will need to keep in mind, that in order to dis­cuss and under­stand any one of what I call the Tri­ad of Spir­it, “The Three in One” of Plu­to, Nep­tune, or Uranus, that we will only under­stand any one of them when we also see that each one is nec­es­sary to the oth­er two, as they are prin­ci­pal Avatars of the Inte­gral nature of Spir­it in our system.

Tri­ad of Spir­it – Plu­to — Nep­tune — Uranus
I like to think of these three in this man­ner. Plu­to is the hold­er of the Will and shapes and molds every Ener­gy-Form into a def­i­nite or defined Con­tain­er of Spir­it, (whether that be a mon­ad, atom, cell, organ­ism, plan­et, or star). Nep­tune is the hold­er of the Uni­ver­sal Ener­gy-Form of Uncon­di­tion­al Love, which is the Ener­gy-Sub­stance at the root of all or the One. This Love of the One is the root source of the Spir­it-Life-Con­scious­ness for every par­ti­cle of Cre­ation. And Uranus, is the hold­er of the Quin­tes­sence of Spir­it, because each and every par­ti­cle of Cre­ation is also an Indi­vid­ual. By this we also know that all of Cre­ation is formed by the innu­mer­able indi­vid­ual sparks of the Divine, every one of which is fol­low­ing their Swab­hā­va to be and become a unique instance or expres­sion of the One Divine Light.

What we have been dis­cussing (for quite some time) is that two of these Avatars of Spir­it have made crit­i­cal align­ments in the USA chart. Plu­to has reached the end of its first cycle of 245 years around the Solar Sys­tem and has returned to Pluto’s Natal posi­tion in 2022. The USA is expe­ri­enc­ing its first ever Plu­to return, and this is most impor­tant as we dis­cussed last time. Mean­while, Nep­tune is oppo­site to its natal posi­tion, as it was only once before from 1858–1859. The com­bi­na­tion of these two align­ments, (along with the influ­ences ema­nat­ing through Uranus), can illu­mi­nate and guide us through the moment we are in now.

For today, let us look at the impor­tance of Nep­tune in the USA chart, and the cycle of its mes­sag­ing for the past, and how that may guide us here today. What we need to appre­ci­ate is that Nep­tune has one of the most sig­nif­i­cant place­ments in the chart of the USA, being close to the mid­heav­en (the realm of des­tiny) and locat­ed in the 9^th house of Law, Truth, and Belief, what I like to under­stand as the house of Storytelling.

Nep­tune
Nep­tune is the avatar of the ulti­mate and uni­ver­sal ener­gy-form, which is Spir­it-Life-Con­scious­ness, and it is this which forms the most infin­i­tes­i­mal of par­ti­cles on up to the heav­en­ly hosts, and that is why we should under­stand and expe­ri­ence the Cre­ation as quite lit­er­al­ly the Body of the One. There is but One Spir­it, there is but One Life, and there is but One Mind, and it holds the whole of Cre­ation as one, (all the innu­mer­able ones held as One), and every one of us is made of this Ener­gy-form that you know and feel as Divine, Uncon­di­tion­al Love. It is by this Ener­gy-Form that the bound­aries between the hier­ar­chies and ranges of enti­ties becomes translu­cent, tran­scend­ed, and ulti­mate­ly dis­solved. By Nep­tune you come to your spir­i­tu­al heart, as you walk the path of awak­en­ing to expe­ri­ence the bless­ings of cos­mic con­scious­ness, which is made man­i­fest as love, com­pas­sion, and empa­thy between one anoth­er and real­ly between all life-forms in the cosmos.

But just as we have seen that the Will of Plu­to can be mis­ap­plied and lead to the vio­la­tion of sacred spaces, lead­ing to the sin of tres­pass­ing and great harm done to oth­er souls, Nep­tun­ian ener­gies may trig­ger and form, (by the mis­un­der­stand­ing or mis­ap­pli­ca­tion of this dissolving/transcending ener­gy-form), a cacoph­o­ny of fan­tasies, illu­sions, delu­sions, and decep­tions. We have had his­tor­i­cal peri­ods of a greater shared under­stand­ing, where what I call our “Bub­bles of Belief” align and agree with one anoth­er. And we have expe­ri­enced times of con­fu­sion, doubt, and greater mis­un­der­stand­ings too.

But the divi­sions we are expe­ri­enc­ing in the present day, the break­down of com­mon under­stand­ings and the grow­ing divide between var­i­ous peo­ples with­in com­mu­ni­ties, between regions and coun­tries, has cast a shad­ow of fear, doubt, and con­fu­sion upon our world. We have reached a yawn­ing abyss where we can­not seem to agree on what is fic­tion and what is fact, of what is “real­ly real”. What we are expe­ri­enc­ing is not a local but world-wide break­down, and this does hap­pen peri­od­i­cal­ly, espe­cial­ly when­ev­er Nep­tune moves through the sign of Pisces like now.

And though this might seem whol­ly neg­a­tive, again there lies part of our delu­sion and con­fu­sion. There is a very spir­i­tu­al pur­pose that dri­ves this moment in Neptune’s cycle, and it is this: we are being inspired to move into a more inclu­sive form of con­scious­ness. But the path to this greater under­stand­ing requires that we have to go through a peri­od where we are con­fused, because it is only then that we will let go of our lim­it­ed under­stand­ings, so that we might per­ceive beyond the dark clouds of fear, and so be able to see revealed a new and high­er and more inclu­sive and lov­ing way to under­stand our­selves and our world.

Nep­tune in Mun­dane Astrol­o­gy
For our pur­pos­es today, we need to con­sid­er Neptune’s role for Mun­dane or World­ly Astrol­o­gy, which is that Nep­tune is the chal­ice or ves­sel for the dream of any nation, it is the Avatar for the sto­ries and myths that inform and explain the char­ac­ter of that polit­i­cal-cul­tur­al order. For the USA, one of the most dis­tin­guish­ing fea­tures of its found­ing myth is the claim that it is spe­cial or excep­tion­al. In the Nation­al Seal for the USA, we can see that the founders believed that they were engaged in an enter­prise that was unique­ly dif­fer­ent, and they declared to the world that the USA was to be a “New Order for the Cen­turies”. Unlike oth­er nations, the USA would be a land for peo­ple from around the world, and that it would be found­ed upon a new type of polit­i­cal order­ing, it would be a “covenant nation”.

The Nep­tun­ian ide­al for the USA was estab­lished upon Uni­ver­sal Prin­ci­ples, in that it would be unique and not like any oth­er nation. His­tor­i­cal­ly, nations were found­ed upon parochial or lim­it­ed deter­mi­na­tions, whether of being made of one par­tic­u­lar peo­ple, or by one her­itage or eth­nic­i­ty, or by one faith. The USA claimed that it would be a land where Free­dom, Tol­er­ance and Com­mu­ni­ty would be pro­claimed and pro­tect­ed for all peo­ples; it would be a new type of nation formed by the many creeds and by the many cul­tures of humanity.

USA – A Covenant Nation
The heart of this cre­ation of a new type of nation was the prin­ci­ple of a covenant com­mu­ni­ty. The USA would be found­ed upon the truth that each individual’s self-ful­fill­ment is depen­dent upon, and real­ly is only made pos­si­ble by being a mem­ber of the com­mu­ni­ty. This prin­ci­ple was stat­ed in our first doc­u­ment, The Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence, which says that we, “Mutu­al­ly Pledge To Each Oth­er Our Lives, Our For­tunes, And Our Sacred Honor”.

This dec­la­ra­tion was a forg­ing of a new covenant. The prin­ci­ple enshrined by the Dec­la­ra­tion, and lat­er by the Con­sti­tu­tion, is that in order to cre­ate this new space of indi­vid­ual free­dom and self-ful­fill­ment would require that the mem­bers of this sacred com­mu­ni­ty would have to agree to work with­in a social-polit­i­cal sys­tem of mutu­al con­sent. This would cre­ate a space of free­dom and jus­tice for every indi­vid­ual, but to do this we would need to forge an inte­gral bal­ance between our indi­vid­ual lib­er­ties with our com­mu­nal respon­si­bil­i­ties. Our free­doms would be pro­tect­ed, but we agreed to cir­cum­scribe our indi­vid­ual free­dom to pre­serve our com­mu­ni­ties too. In the USA, all pre­vi­ous priv­i­leges would be removed, so that we were not behold­en to any lord, king, or mas­ter; we were cre­at­ing a freely formed, self-deter­mined soci­ety based on equal­i­ty of all before the law. In the USA, only the Law would be our King, and all would be equal before the law.

The Promise Bro­ken
But of course, what was held up as the found­ing ide­al of the USA was nev­er made real at that time, or even now some 250 years lat­er. From the moment of “first con­tact” by Christo­pher Colum­bus in 1492, to the final mas­sacre of native peo­ple at Wound­ed Knee in 1890, the near extinc­tion of the native peo­ples was one part of the bro­ken promise of equal­i­ty and jus­tice for all. The oth­er orig­i­nal sin for the USA was the enslave­ment of African peo­ple until 1865, and their denial of full cit­i­zen­ship by one means or anoth­er even down to the present day. The Karmic Ques­tion the USA faces today is quite sim­ply this, “How do we make right over 500 years of Geno­cide; how to we make right over 400 years of Racism?”

Yes, we are at a turn­ing, and Nep­tune, the hold­er of dreams and myths, of illu­mi­na­tions and delu­sions, has returned to the posi­tion it held as the Unit­ed States faced its great­est exis­ten­tial and spir­i­tu­al cri­sis formed by the divi­sion into two visions or myths of Amer­i­ca, whether to be Slave or Free, in the Civ­il War. The ques­tion was then and quite remark­ably but not sur­pris­ing­ly is also the same now, “will the fun­da­men­tal spir­i­tu­al truth, that all humans are cre­at­ed equal, and should be treat­ed as equal with love and com­pas­sion be made our real­i­ty or not”?

Neptune’s Turn­ing Points

In order to frame our under­stand­ing of what we are faced with today, we need to exam­ine our his­to­ry, and the oth­er turn­ing points in Neptune’s cycle through the chart of the USA. Neptune’s orbit is about 163 years, and it will align with the USA Nep­tune every 40 years or so for the more sig­nif­i­cant or so-called “hard” aspects, the dates for which are: 1816–17, 1857–58, 1897–98, 1938–39, 1980–81, and now 2021–22. Most impor­tant, are the Oppo­si­tions and Returns to the natal place­ment. The first and only return of Nep­tune to its natal posi­tion was 1938–39; and the two oppo­si­tions in USA his­to­ry were 1857–58 and the oppo­si­tion we are expe­ri­enc­ing in 2021–22.

Oppo­si­tion of Nep­tune to Nep­tune
The oppo­si­tion should be under­stood as the rev­e­la­tion and out­come of that vari­a­tion of expres­sion from the first or natal imprint­ing and then any suc­ceed­ing returns. The seed plant­ed in 1776 of Neptune’s “Dream of Amer­i­ca” became ful­ly revealed in the first oppo­si­tion (like a Full Moon) of 1857–58. From Neptune’s embod­i­ment of the dream of Amer­i­ca in 1776, “That all men are cre­at­ed equal…”, a polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic sys­tem formed in which a very small num­ber of white, prop­er­ty-own­ing men would hold and wield pow­er. And it would turn out that a great many of them had secured and main­tained their wealth and pow­er through own­ing oth­er humans as prop­er­ty. But an ever-grow­ing divide of the ways of eco­nom­ic life, and in cul­ture and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, between the planter soci­ety and the rest of the USA forged an exis­ten­tial cri­sis in the USA, as two very dif­fer­ent Nep­tun­ian dreams of Amer­i­ca came to a cli­mat­ic con­fronta­tion dur­ing the 1850’s over a fun­da­men­tal ques­tion: Would the USA con­tin­ue as and for­ev­er be a “slave labor coun­try” or not?

The Oppo­si­tion of 1857–1858
The Nep­tune Oppo­si­tion of 1857–58 laid bare the ever-advanc­ing pow­er of the slave­hold­ing states in the Con­gress and over the Supreme Court. This was most clear­ly revealed in 1857 by the Dred Scott deci­sion of the Supreme Court. This deci­sion deter­mined that for­ev­er more the USA would be a slave coun­try, because a white man’s prop­er­ty was more impor­tant than human lives, and so the law of the land would be that “slaves and descen­dants of slaves were nev­er, nor would they ever be cit­i­zens, and that they would remain the per­ma­nent prop­er­ty of their mas­ters”. Slav­ery would be forever…

As a con­se­quence of this clear divi­sion of the two America’s laid bare by the Supreme court’s deci­sion, and by the Leg­isla­tive pow­er of the slave­hold­ing states, Lin­coln spoke of this divi­sion with­in the coun­try, between the slave states and the free states, when he declared, “that a house divid­ed from itself can­not stand”. He pro­posed that this divi­sion would be solved one way or anoth­er, and that the US would either become a nation where in every state all humans would be free and equal, or that in every state there would be slav­ery and inequal­i­ty forever.

Of course, what hap­pened was the Civ­il War, and the abo­li­tion of slav­ery and amend­ments to the con­sti­tu­tion to estab­lish a more just and equal soci­ety. But the peri­od known after the Civ­il War wit­nessed the ever-increas­ing ero­sion of that more just order, until by local laws and com­mon prac­tice the dream of a more just Amer­i­ca was denied again.

Neptune’s Return 1938–39
Astrologers con­sid­er any plan­e­tary return like a “New Moon”, a seed­ing of a new vari­a­tion of the ener­gy-form that for that plan­et, Nep­tune for us now. This would mean that a new begin­ning was formed dur­ing the pres­i­den­cy of FDR, with his efforts to restore the USA econ­o­my after the Great Depres­sion, while he equal­ly led the USA to pre­pare for the exis­ten­tial con­fronta­tion with the rise of Fas­cism in Europe and Asia in World War II.

What is quite remark­able about this moment, as it will be in the next two Nep­tun­ian align­ments, was it was at this time accom­pa­nied by the Plu­to oppo­si­tion to Plu­to; the remark­able syn­chronic­i­ty and mes­sag­ing for the USA at this time led to a restate­ment and rebirth for the promise of the USA, so that a renewed effort and strug­gle was begun to extend equal­i­ty before the law and have a more or less equal oppor­tu­ni­ty for self-fulfillment.

Dream Renewed – The New Deal
Roosevelt’s New Deal was sup­posed to be a Fair Deal for all Amer­i­cans, but of course this was not at all true for the South, and for many com­mu­ni­ties through­out the coun­try, where local laws and cus­toms con­tin­ued to dis­en­fran­chise a great many peo­ple. But it was true that dur­ing FDR’s term, and for many years there­after, the gen­er­al growth of pros­per­i­ty in the Unit­ed States was more or less fair­ly shared by the entire pop­u­la­tion. The com­mit­ment to a Lib­er­al State form of gov­er­nance, from the 1940’s into the 1970’s, cre­at­ed a lift­ing tide of eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty, where that ris­ing tide was seen as, “lift­ing all boats”. It cer­tain­ly was not per­fect, but there was a gen­er­al feel­ing that there was more equi­ty, bal­ance, and fair­ness in how we cre­at­ed and shared our well-being with one another.

But some­thing began to change in the 1970’s and then most cer­tain­ly in the 1980’s. You might won­der, what changed? What hap­pened to the New Deal and the Dream of America?

Nep­tune Square, 1980–1981
There had been a gen­er­al con­sen­sus in the 40’s and 50’s for both major polit­i­cal par­ties that the mod­ern lib­er­al order was the answer. But as the strug­gle for civ­il rights in the 1950’s and 1960’s led to the pas­sage of the Civ­il Rights act, which over­turned the local and state laws deny­ing full cit­i­zen­ship to many, there rose up a counter-rev­o­lu­tion to the lib­er­al con­sen­sus. It came under the guise of an eco­nom­ic the­o­ry, called neo-Lib­er­al­ism, and its main thrust was artic­u­lat­ed by the pres­i­dent-elect in 1980, Ronald Rea­gan, who ran on the slo­gan that the prob­lem with Amer­i­ca was the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment. Once again, Amer­i­ca was a at a turn­ing, and once again the plan­ets were at a turn­ing too.  If fact Nep­tune squared Nep­tune, and Plu­to squared Plu­to at this time. Remem­ber, a Square presents a choice; it holds both an oppor­tu­ni­ty and dan­ger. The oppor­tu­ni­ty is to rise to the chal­lenge with love and faith, or to react with fear and lit­er­al­ly fall backwards.

This Nep­tune-to-Nep­tune square of 1980–81 should be seen as the reac­tion or counter-rev­o­lu­tion to Roosevelt’s New Deal for Amer­i­cans. But what was the result of fol­low­ing the poli­cies of neo-lib­er­al­ism, of less gov­ern­ment? How can we see or mea­sure the ben­e­fit or the cost? The rise of neo-lib­er­al­ism led to a dra­mat­ic shift of income and wealth in the coun­try. The dis­tri­b­u­tion of the growth of wealth from 1940 to 1980 is stark­ly dif­fer­ent than that from 1980 to 2022. If you look at the eco­nom­ic pic­ture of these two peri­ods in USA his­to­ry, it is like you are view­ing two com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent coun­tries. The rea­son is that choic­es were made to turn away from fair­ness for the many, and to pro­mote ram­pant self-inter­est­ed beliefs and actions that led to self­ish­ness, greed, and great wealth for the few, and the result was the dec­i­ma­tion of the mid­dle class and the poor. Today, we have a coun­try that is divid­ed into the very wealthy few, a shrink­ing upper and mid­dle class, and final­ly the rest who are just strug­gling to survive.

2021–22 Nep­tune Oppo­si­tion (and Plu­to Return)
We find our­selves at the next great turn­ing of Nep­tune (and of Plu­to) here in 2021 and 2022. We are most cer­tain­ly expe­ri­enc­ing great divi­sions between var­i­ous mem­bers and sec­tors of our coun­try. It is quite remark­able that just like in the 1850’s, when Nep­tune was oppo­site to itself, and when Plu­to was squar­ing Plu­to, that we can see that the very same exis­ten­tial ques­tions are before us once more: Who is an Amer­i­can, who gets to decide, and are we equal to one another?

As I spoke of in my last show, we are at this moment in order to address the ques­tion of the Plu­to return, which is “what is the essen­tial val­ue of the USA”? I stat­ed then and would reit­er­ate here that the heart of val­ue for our nation (and real­ly any nation) is the people.

And we are also at a “Full Moon” for Nep­tune, just like in the peri­od of 1857–58. Nep­tune is pos­ing the ques­tion, “what is the Dream of Amer­i­ca”? With Nep­tune once again in Pisces, the spir­i­tu­al inspi­ra­tions of Uncon­di­tion­al love are resur­gent now, and many are work­ing to meet the chal­lenge of this moment by their com­mit­ment to increas­ing social jus­tice, of try­ing to build new bridges of under­stand­ing and care for one another.

But we are also, just like before, expe­ri­enc­ing the veil between realms becom­ing much thin­ner now because of Nep­tune in Pisces, and as much as we can hear the call­ing of our bet­ter angels when we turn to and are guid­ed by our gen­tle, lov­ing high­er self, we are also wit­ness­ing that for many the images and feel­ings that are being evoked, that they are found­ed not upon faith but in fear, and from these dark shad­ows we are con­front­ed with the mount­ing dan­gers of con­fu­sion, mis­un­der­stand­ings, delu­sions, and deceptions.

We are divid­ed in so many ways, but prin­ci­pal­ly it is because our Amer­i­can Dream of equal­i­ty and jus­tice, which is the foun­da­tion for self-deter­mi­na­tion and self-ful­fill­ment, has become increas­ing­ly unreach­able for more and more Amer­i­cans. We can­not live our Nep­tun­ian dream with­out a func­tion­ing democ­ra­cy. We do not have that, we can­not have that, when wealth and pow­er are con­cen­trat­ed in the hands of so very few indi­vid­u­als, fam­i­lies, and com­pa­nies. As many have not­ed, the USA is an Oli­garchy, a polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic sys­tem that is ruled by Plutocrats.

We are going through a spir­i­tu­al cri­sis, and the strug­gle by so many to try and under­stand, to try to do what is lov­ing and good, well that is what gives me hope. The chal­lenge is for each and every one of us to remem­ber where our true wealth lies, it is found­ed in our love for one anoth­er. If we can under­stand that the secret to our hap­pi­ness and well-being depends upon every­one being enabled to real­ize their fuller poten­tial, then we will rise togeth­er into a bet­ter world.

The ques­tion at the cusp of our Civ­il War is the same ques­tion we face today, “will the fun­da­men­tal spir­i­tu­al truth, that all humans are cre­at­ed equal, and should be treat­ed as equal with love and com­pas­sion, will that be made our real­i­ty or not”?

Let us face this moment as we must, with the faith, love, and wis­dom that is held by the eter­nal truths and light of the One, whose cen­ter is every­where and whose cir­cum­fer­ence holds us all as one.