Astro­log­i­cal Mus­ings — A New World 

(If you wish to lis­ten to the show instead, here is the link on Astrologer Bill Attride Radio Show or Apple Pod­casts, Spo­ti­fy)

As many of you know, I have been speak­ing and writ­ing about, well for many years now, about our spir­i­tu­al jour­ney, and in par­tic­u­lar about the Unit­ed States and World his­to­ry. By exam­in­ing the plan­e­tary cycles that frame our jour­ney and his­to­ry over many, many years and cen­turies, you can see that we and our time in his­to­ry are part of a greater sto­ry of human spir­i­tu­al awak­en­ing. Though no one plan­e­tary cycle or series of plan­e­tary align­ments ever repeats, we are able to dis­cern pat­terns, themes and mean­ings that echo down through the ages, and these signs in the heav­ens may help us to under­stand the cir­cum­stances we are encoun­ter­ing now, and that these eter­nal truths may also pro­vide some guid­ance for us as to how to make our way in the world going forward.

Turn­ing Point in History
For many years now, I have been writ­ing and talk­ing, repeat­ing myself over and over again, that we were enter­ing a very crit­i­cal peri­od in his­to­ry. I con­tin­u­al­ly said that we were at the end of age, an age that had begun in the 1700’s, and that the world we knew and the way we under­stood it was going to seem­ing­ly fall apart. And indeed, even before 2008, and accel­er­at­ing ever since, the insti­tu­tions and order of the Unit­ed States, and indeed of the whole world, have been test­ed, and they have cracked, and they are indeed some­what or very bro­ken. I, like so many oth­ers, could not see or pre­dict what exact­ly would hap­pen, all I knew was that it was time for a par­tic­u­lar world order to give way, and that some kind of new order would be com­ing into existence.

But now the ques­tion before us is this, where are we now, right now? Well, I think that most of us would agree that it is not at all clear what is hap­pen­ing, we are faced with so many con­flict­ing and con­trary expe­ri­ences. We can­not see through the fog of bro­ken dreams, half-truths, lies and delu­sion. We do not know what this is, nor what we are mov­ing into, and we need to under­stand what kind of world we can and should be cre­at­ing for one anoth­er now.

2025
It feels as if we find our­selves, espe­cial­ly in 2025, to be in some kind of inter­val, some kind of space, a tran­si­tion between what was and what will be, a tip­ping point where the winds are swirling with no clear way ahead. To bet­ter under­stand the way for­ward, I believe that it is essen­tial to have a review of where we have come from, of how we got here, so as to bet­ter under­stand what we must do to cre­ate the bet­ter future we all want.

Not the Stars but our­selves, this is what makes History
But we must remem­ber a fun­da­men­tal and unwa­ver­ing Truth, that the why and the what that has hap­pened, and what we are fac­ing now, that the con­tent of human his­to­ry gen­er­al­ly, and for the Unit­ed States specif­i­cal­ly, our past and our present, that these real­i­ties were not cre­at­ed or formed by the plan­ets. We need to remem­ber that the plan­ets hold the Ener­gy-Forms that inspire, inform, and guide our jour­ney on Earth, but the actu­al con­tent of what is formed, the choic­es we made and the actions we took, of what hap­pened and will hap­pen, that it is our real­i­ty that we made through the com­plex com­bi­na­tions of ener­gy-forms that we humans forged on Earth, made by the liv­ing spir­it of we humans, by our ances­tors, and today by you and me. The fault lies not in the stars but in one anoth­er for the world we have made, and that gives me hope, because it means we can choose the kind of world we will be mak­ing now.

The Tri­ad of Spir­it: Plu­to, Nep­tune and Uranus
First, I want to remind us of the impor­tance of the three out­er plan­ets as the major inspir­ers and influ­encers in our jour­ney in Spir­it. I call these three, the “Tri­ad of Spir­it”, of Plu­to, Nep­tune and Uranus.  Plu­to is the ves­sel 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 ves­sel of the Uni­ver­sal Ener­gy-Form of Uncon­di­tion­al Love, which is the Ener­gy-Sub­stance at the root of all, the One made man­i­fest. This Love of the One is the root source of the Spir­it-Life-Con­scious­ness for every par­ti­cle of Cre­ation. And Uranus is the ves­sel of the Quin­tes­sence of Spir­it held as Con­scious­ness, because each and every par­ti­cle of Cre­ation is also an Indi­vid­ual mon­ad, a spark of con­scious­ness on a jour­ney of becom­ing ful­ly illu­mined. 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, so as to be and become a unique instance or expres­sion of the One Divine Light.

From these three we can forge a liv­ing faith, that we will for­ev­er walk the path of awak­en­ing in order to ful­fill our fun­da­men­tal pur­pose and des­tiny. It is by Uranus and our High­er Mind that we align our Lives with the Path of the Divine, and by Nep­tune that we feel our­selves and hold one anoth­er in Uncon­di­tion­al Love, so that we may remain true and steady, and by Plu­to as our will becomes ever more aligned with the Will of the One.

Giv­en our essen­tial nature, that we are all sparks of the Divine, or as I like to say, “ones of the One”, and giv­en this root essence is true for the entire­ty of Cre­ation, we are here to learn and to be, to be what we are made of, and to sim­ply love one anoth­er. And it equal­ly fol­lows that we must approach every life-form in Cre­ation as spe­cial, pre­cious and deserv­ing of our love and grat­i­tude as well.

Cer­tain­ly, through­out our human jour­ney there have been times when we have drawn clos­er to this foun­da­tion­al truth of love and drift­ed fur­ther away from it too; yes, it has been a long and wind­ing road of love and of loss, a long and chal­leng­ing jour­ney of becom­ing what we all will be, a ful­ly awak­ened, uncon­di­tion­al­ly lov­ing, one of the One.

Spir­i­tu­al Truth – We are all cre­at­ed Equal
This foun­da­tion­al truth of spir­it, that we are all cre­at­ed “equal”, is woven into the many his­to­ries of cul­tures, com­mu­ni­ties, faiths and nations. There have been sub­lime moments in his­to­ry where the liv­ing spir­it among humans has reached a rel­a­tive equal­i­ty and com­mu­nal love for one anoth­er, in a com­mu­ni­ty, in a peo­ple and some­what even in a nation. Then one might well won­der, if that is so, why are we still faced with such dis­or­der, and crime, and vio­lence between indi­vid­u­als, com­mu­ni­ties, and nations today.

The very gifts of the spir­it, of Will and Sacred Space, of Love and Com­pas­sion, of Intel­li­gence and Knowl­edge, can be and have been twist­ed by the ancient curse of divi­sion, and that for­ma­tion of oth­er­ness is root­ed in igno­rance, pain and fear. When­ev­er a human, or a group of humans, looks upon anoth­er as the “oth­er”, and makes them into the ves­sel for the pro­jec­tion of their pain or fear, well that has been the root source of the tragedy and mis­for­tune for much of human his­to­ry too.

Amer­i­can His­to­ry of Equality/Inequality
Turn­ing to our own sto­ry, we find that in Amer­i­can his­to­ry, this expan­sion yet lim­i­ta­tion for the range of how equal and unequal­ly we have treat­ed our fel­low humans has fol­lowed a rather uneven path of exten­sion and con­trac­tion. In 1789, in our orig­i­nal Con­sti­tu­tion, the very def­i­n­i­tion of who was grant­ed the right to cre­ate and estab­lish the laws, and equal­ly what range of per­sons would have the pro­tec­tions of “due process” fell far short of what our orig­i­nal Dec­la­ra­tion had pro­posed, “that all men are cre­at­ed equal”.

But of course, what was held up as the found­ing ide­al of the USA was nev­er made real at that time, or even now as we approach our 250^th Birth­day. 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 the first of the bro­ken promis­es of equal­i­ty and jus­tice for all.

The oth­er orig­i­nal sin for the USA was the enslave­ment of African peo­ple until 1865, and the denial of their 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?” For we have not made it right, we have not done this sacred work at all.

Here are the sig­nif­i­cant plan­e­tary align­ments of Plu­to, Nep­tune and Uranus in the chart of the USA that framed and shaped the advances and retreats in the march to jus­tice and equal­i­ty to our present moment of destiny.

Fram­ing His­to­ry: Plu­to and Nep­tune align­ments in the USA Chart
1840’s‑1850’s
In the late 1840’s, Plu­to squared Plu­to, and the impo­si­tion of Will by one part of the nation upon the oth­er, was defined by the seizure of Mex­i­can ter­ri­to­ries by war, which her­ald­ed the final push by the slave­hold­ing states to make their vision of a Unit­ed States that would have slav­ery enshrined in every state, north and south, east and west.  Dur­ing this peri­od, the slave­hold­ers in the South attempt­ed by their con­trol of the Pres­i­den­cy, Con­gress and Judi­cia­ry, to bring this hor­ror to its fullest real­iza­tion, which was enshrined in the Dred Scott deci­sion of 1857 by the Supreme court, which declared that a black per­son could not and would nev­er be free in the Unit­ed States.

But by the late 1850’s the oppo­si­tion of Nep­tune to Nep­tune, the plan­et of love and com­pas­sion, framed the surge in the abo­li­tion­ist move­ment lead­ing to the cre­ation of the Repub­li­can par­ty and the elec­tion of Abra­ham Lin­coln, lead­ing to the Civ­il War between the North and the South.

The end of the Civ­il War and South­ern seces­sion was fol­lowed by the attempt at recon­struc­tion in the South and the tem­po­rary exten­sion of self-deter­mi­na­tion to mil­lions of new­ly freed black men. But by 1877, this brief flow­er­ing of the greater promise of Amer­i­ca was bro­ken by a deal between South­ern Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans in the North, with their self-inter­ests focused upon the rise of Indus­tri­al Cap­i­tal­ism in the North, and the promise of free­dom and equal­i­ty was firm­ly bro­ken and not to be met again until the 1960’s.

1890’s
By the 1890’s the con­cen­tra­tion of wealth, the rise of labor unions and the stir­rings of the pro­gres­sive move­ment were her­ald­ed by the next turn­ing in our des­tiny by Nep­tune squar­ing its natal posi­tion, as a series of mea­sures were enact­ed that began to reign in the cor­rup­tion of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment by wealthy indus­tri­al inter­ests. Equal­ly, this peri­od wit­nessed the exten­sion of the right to self-deter­mi­na­tion of the peo­ple the Unit­ed States cul­mi­nat­ing in 1920 with the right to vote being final­ly grant­ed to women, the great­est advance in democ­ra­cy since the Civ­il War, and then the grant­i­ng of cit­i­zen­ship to Native Amer­i­cans in 1924.

1930’s
But these reforms did not con­tain or con­strain the unreg­u­lat­ed finan­cial mar­kets and by the late 1920’s the Great Depres­sion struck. Once again, the prin­ci­pal influ­encers of our his­to­ry, Nep­tune and Plu­to, had reached crit­i­cal moments in their cycles too, with Plu­to oppos­ing itself, and Nep­tune mak­ing its first return to its natal posi­tion. The reforms of Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt and the New Deal forged a restate­ment and rebirth for the Unit­ed States, and this set in motion one of the most sus­tained peri­ods of gen­er­al growth of eco­nom­ic well-being in the Unit­ed States from the 1940’s into the 1970’s.

But in this same peri­od, the resur­gence of the unmet promise for the free­dom and self-deter­mi­na­tion of black Amer­i­cans gave rise to the Civ­il Rights move­ment, which via Supreme court rul­ings and even­tu­al­ly by laws passed in the US Con­gress, the karmic stain of racial injus­tice began to be cor­rect­ed as Plu­to and Nep­tune made align­ments once again.

1970’s‑1980’s
By the late 1970’s and into the ear­ly 1980’s, the Unit­ed States was at anoth­er major turn­ing point, like the 1850’s or the 1930’s, as Plu­to squared Plu­to and Nep­tune squared Nep­tune, and the Key­ne­sian econ­o­my was bro­ken by the adop­tion of a neo-lib­er­al­ist ide­ol­o­gy and the dereg­u­la­tion of mar­kets. This led to a huge surge in finan­cial wealth and pow­er for the few, and the divide between the wealth­i­est Amer­i­cans, the 1, 2 or 3 % and the rest of the pop­u­la­tion explod­ed. This shift in wealth and pow­er, led to the re-cor­rup­tion of the US gov­ern­ment, much as it had in the late the mid 1800’s and the late 1800’s, with both the Repub­li­can and Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ties becom­ing behold­en to the siren song of monies in order to fund and secure their hold on the seats of pow­er in the House, Sen­ate and Presidency.

Where we are today is at the end result of that entan­gle­ment and cor­rup­tion of the body politic, where pay to play from the local lev­el to the high­est reach­es of gov­ern­ment has pushed many Amer­i­cans, on both the left, mid­dle and the right to lose faith in their gov­ern­ment and its institutions.

Today
Which brings us to our moment in his­to­ry, and once again we find these framers of our jour­ney, Plu­to and Nep­tune, are at major his­toric turn­ing points as well. Plu­to has just made its first ever return to its natal posi­tion, and Nep­tune has just made its sec­ond oppo­si­tion to its natal posi­tion. That means to me that we are in a peri­od more like the 1850’s and 60’s, but real­ly in some ways this is not com­pa­ra­ble to any time, giv­en this is the first return of Plu­to ever.

Echo­ing that ear­li­er time, once again the ques­tion, “who is tru­ly a cit­i­zen of this coun­try” is being raised once again, of who is or is not pro­tect­ed by the laws of the repub­lic is being asked again.  And equal­ly the promise of a gov­ern­ment “for and by the peo­ple” has been ren­dered mean­ing­less when the most basic right of select­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tion is over­whelmed by a cacoph­o­ny of half-truths and lies, fueled by the tidal wave of uncon­test­ed pow­er held by the few with unlim­it­ed funds to shape and sway pri­maries and elec­tions, destroy­ing even the sem­blance of free and fair elections.

Democ­ra­cy Broken
And just like in the 1840’s and 50’s, when the wealthy elite of the south­ern slave­hold­ers, whose “wealth” was held by enslav­ing oth­er humans, and then in the 1880’s and 90’s and real­ly on up to the 1920’s, when the monop­o­lists and financiers bent and twist­ed the for­ma­tion of laws to suit their prof­its and not the peo­ple, we find our­selves once again faced with the chal­lenge of being with­out the means to have a con­se­quen­tial polit­i­cal influ­ence over our des­tiny. Why? Because the divi­sion between the wealthy and the rest of the pop­u­la­tion has cre­at­ed an Amer­i­ca that is divid­ed between those who can shape the pow­er of the gov­ern­ment to serve their ends only, while the vast major­i­ty know that their future is being shaped by the rule of the few over the many. We are not in a democ­ra­cy at this time, we are see­ing what it means to live in an oli­garchy of the wealthy, and which now seems to be devolv­ing into a Klep­toc­ra­cy like Rus­sia or Hungary.

As I have not­ed more than once, from 1980 to 2020 the gross domes­tic prod­uct of the Unit­ed States rose by 80% in those 40 years, it almost dou­bled. But the dis­tri­b­u­tion of that growth was far less equal than our pre­vi­ous peri­od from 1940 to 1980.

In the last 40 years, the bot­tom 20% of the USA pop­u­la­tion gained 20% more wealth; the mid­dle por­tion of about 40% of the pop­u­la­tion gained 50% more wealth; but the top .01% gained 420% more in their wealth. Those top accu­mu­la­tors live in a world that does not even under­stand, or for the most part prob­a­bly care, for the rest of us at all.

Here are two graphs of that redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth since 1980:

 

The Wealth of a Nation
As I have said many, many times, the wealth of a nation is in its peo­ple, who are the liv­ing spir­it and the cre­ators of all and every kind of val­ue. There has been no prob­lem for the Unit­ed States in cre­at­ing wealth, which is made by us all, the prob­lem is the unequal and unjust dis­tri­b­u­tion of that wealth made by the people.

In terms of wealth dis­tri­b­u­tion, the Unit­ed States is one of the worst of all the so-called “advanced soci­eties” and this inequal­i­ty is even greater when defined and dis­trib­uted by race and eth­nic­i­ty. This is the prin­ci­pal rea­son why the USA has appalling life expectan­cies and health out­comes com­pared to many of the advanced nations in the world.

So, the ques­tion we face now is how, how do we fix this? How do we reclaim and restore our democ­ra­cy, how do we restore our abil­i­ty to not only live but to make a bet­ter life for one and for all?

Despite what we see and hear about every day, I believe we are at the begin­ning of the rebirth of our coun­try. But it will not come, cer­tain­ly not at first, from one par­ty or anoth­er, because both par­ties have con­tributed to bring­ing us to this moment.

And as we watch the events of each day, we see indi­vid­u­als, and groups of indi­vid­u­als, we see orga­ni­za­tions and insti­tu­tions push­ing back against the myr­i­ad attempts to twist and break the rule of law, to erase the sacred truths that we are made of, the love we are that holds and pro­tects one anoth­er, as those who swore an oath and were entrust­ed to pro­tect and faith­ful­ly exe­cute these laws try to replace them with rule by fiat or command.

We must face the forces of fear and dark­ness with a fierce and lov­ing faith in one anoth­er, to speak, to write, to demon­strate and to orga­nize so that we are the change that we wish to cre­ate in our world.

A New Covenant
What we must do is build a new “way of being”, we must be the cre­ators of a new covenant with Life and Spir­it. Yes, the prob­lem is pover­ty; yes, wealth inequal­i­ty is the prob­lem; and they are both made by one anoth­er, and they are forged and main­tained by a sys­tem that is destroy­ing the diver­si­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty of life on this planet.

We must expand our under­stand­ing of the real prob­lem, which is that the very Polit­i­cal-Eco­nom­ic and Social sys­tems that were formed to meet our needs in the 1700’s is killing us. And not only us, because life is leav­ing the plan­et at a rate that is grow­ing expo­nen­tial­ly. Life on Earth is becom­ing less diverse, less vibrant, less beau­ti­ful, less pos­si­ble, and we only need to look in the mir­ror to see the cause.

We must forge our new covenant of spir­it with one anoth­er based upon uni­ver­sal Equal­i­ty and Jus­tice. We must real­lo­cate the wealth that we all pro­duce so that every per­son has what we owe to one anoth­er in our human fam­i­ly: Equal Edu­ca­tion, Equal Health­care, Equal Hous­ing, Equal Oppor­tu­ni­ty, so that every child and adult has an Equal chance to achieve Self-Fulfillment.

This is the begin­ning of the Age of Aquar­ius, and no indi­vid­ual can be tru­ly ful­filled, not a sin­gle one of us can be tru­ly hap­py, if so many of our broth­ers and sis­ters live in fear and poverty.

We must imme­di­ate­ly change the way we pro­duce our Ener­gy, change the ways in which we Source our Food, change the ways we Cre­ate our Shel­ter. We must change our way of liv­ing, which has been formed by “destroy­ing in order to cre­ate” and instead forge a way of liv­ing where we are “Cre­at­ing to Thrive”.

The choice we face is between Love or Fear, between Truth or Lies.

The choice is ours.

Let it be love.