Astrological Musings — The Cycle of Spirit and Civilizations, Neptune and Pluto 

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

Dear Lis­ten­ers, I do apol­o­gize for the Zoom set­up mishaps for the show on Sat­ur­day. I incor­rect­ly con­fig­ured the set­tings, so that most of you were not able to lis­ten, nor were you able to speak with me. The audio set­tings were also a prob­lem, and I have changed those as well. I believe I have cor­rect­ed these set­tings (but I will test them out before our next show to make sure!). For now, here is the tran­script for the first half of the show:

This is my first show of 2026, and my last show was in May 2025. I took a break, longer than I intend­ed, from the show, because I had been work­ing 7 days a week, which is not very healthy or wise. I am re-start­ing the show with the inten­tion of meet­ing with you every 4 to 6 weeks or so, and by mov­ing it to a Sat­ur­day, the show becomes part of what is one of my reg­u­lar workdays.

Today I want to return to where we left off last May, to look at these rather larg­er, long-wave influ­ences that inform and shape our human his­to­ry. Specif­i­cal­ly, I want to help us under­stand where we are at this moment, at this end of an age, which by that I mean the end of a gen­er­al type of cul­ture, soci­ety, econ­o­my and polit­i­cal sys­tem, or what we could char­ac­ter­ize as a cer­tain form of civilization.

For the past few years, cer­tain­ly since 2008, we have been expe­ri­enc­ing the end of age that has been in place since the late1700s and ear­ly 1800s. Though it cer­tain­ly is expe­ri­enced as an end­ing, I will also point out that as much as we are reap­ing the Kar­ma of the last 250 years, we are also here, our pur­pose at this time for us is for you and me to be the redeemer cre­ators that will bring into being a new world.

For myself, I find that is through the Ancient Teach­ings, and by this par­tic­u­lar gift of Astrol­o­gy, that we can con­sid­er our present moment with­in the con­text of the larg­er sto­ry of the spir­i­tu­al jour­ney of human­i­ty, and under­stand how we came to this moment, and what we need to do now to meet our moment of des­tiny with the light of understanding.

As I have men­tioned many times since before 2008, what we are expe­ri­enc­ing is shaped by sim­i­lar, but nev­er exact­ly repeat­ing, pat­terns of plan­e­tary align­ments and posi­tions that form a cycle of the emer­gence, rise and dis­so­lu­tion of civ­i­liza­tions through the ages.

For me, the inter­weav­ing plan­e­tary cycles of Plu­to and Nep­tune form the most fun­da­men­tal time­keep­ers of our jour­ney. Because of their orbital rela­tion­ship, they form a pat­tern where­by every time Plu­to is in one Sign, like from 2008 to 2024 in Capri­corn, Nep­tune is either in Vir­go or like in our peri­od in Pisces. When Plu­to is in Capri­corn, the pre­vail­ing civ­i­liza­tion begins to come “undone”, the Insti­tu­tion­al order tries to adapt and main­tain itself, but the cata­bol­ic forces are lead­ing to its dimin­ish­ment. It was formed long ago, and it no longer can func­tion as the ves­sel of human experience.

Now we have entered the next moment in the Cycle, with Plu­to in Aquar­ius, and Nep­tune in Aries. For the last 16 years we have been fight­ing over the past, try­ing to pre­serve or to tear down the social order and the insti­tu­tions (Capri­corn) that sup­port­ed them. Now we are going to spend the next 20 years in what we should see as a rev­o­lu­tion­ary strug­gle over the hopes and dreams, the kind of Com­mu­ni­ty (Aquar­ius) of the New World that is being born. What we are here for is to be the ones who pre­serve and pass down what is wor­thy, but that we must be equal­ly dis­cern­ing as to what of the old order must change to make a brighter, shin­ing future for those who come after us.

I thought it would be help­ful to com­pare our time to the two most recent peri­ods that par­al­lel our own. Those eras were the 1780s and 1790s, and the 1530s and 1540s. What is strik­ing about those two peri­ods is that each ush­ered in a new zeit­geist, a new Spir­it-Time or par­a­digm for a world peri­od, as revealed in the realms of spir­i­tu­al order­ing, and in the polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal and social sys­tems. Per­haps by see­ing how these pri­or peri­ods formed the foun­da­tion for their time, we might be able to dis­cern some mean­ing and guid­ance with regards to our own turn in his­to­ry now from 2024 to 2044, and what will be the new Spir­it-Time that we are forg­ing for our­selves and our descendants.

I will be focus­ing for our pur­pose today on most­ly Europe or what is known as “the West”, but sim­i­lar struc­tur­al changes were occur­ring around the world in each of these peri­ods too. So, how should we under­stand the Spir­it-Time of any age, how should we divide up these shifts in with regard to Faith and Sci­ence, in the Econ­o­my and Social Order­ings? More crit­i­cal­ly, what changed in them to change the world at that time?

What I believe, what we need to under­stand, was that in each peri­od, and I would argue that this is cer­tain­ly true for us now, that the very heart and soul of the pro­found change that was hap­pen­ing each time, the root cause of what brought about all these shifts, in all these realms, was a shift in the kind or type of human who was expe­ri­enc­ing this, who were cre­at­ing this shift, formed by what kind or type of gen­er­al con­scious­ness was pre­vail­ing, and of course, the spir­i­tu­al attune­ment or devel­op­ment that was present, and to see what was emerg­ing out of that time.

Why were these changes hap­pen­ing? Because humans were chang­ing, so that what we wit­nessed in the out­er realms of man­i­fes­ta­tion revealed in all these realms, of Faith, Sci­ence, Pol­i­tics and the Econ­o­my, that this was formed by a new type or kind of human con­scious­ness. The pri­ma­ry dri­ver for all of Cre­ation is Spir­it, and as it was chang­ing and mov­ing through our human fam­i­ly, and what we saw then, and what we are expe­ri­enc­ing now, is a spir­i­tu­al change or evo­lu­tion, as the human world moved and is mov­ing from one Spir­it-Time to anoth­er. That is what we are expe­ri­enc­ing in our peri­od now.

The 1530s and 1540s
This pas­sage of Plu­to in Aquar­ius was like our own time, when Nep­tune was mov­ing through Aries. Dur­ing this peri­od Europe was tran­si­tion­ing from a Medieval soci­ety into an ear­ly Mod­ern one. It was the end of the Mid­dle Ages, the end of Feu­dal­ism, which had a twin pil­lared polit­i­cal-reli­gious sys­tem, ruled on one side by Local Barons and on the oth­er side by the Church. This order broke down and apart and gave way to the rise to pow­er­ful cen­tral­ized monar­chies in France, Spain and Eng­land and the Haps­burg Empire; and those Absolute Mon­archs, and their sub­jects, were able to chal­lenge and over­throw the Catholic Church’s pow­er in the realm of Faith.

What had changed? Dur­ing the 1530s, the Protes­tant Ref­or­ma­tion had split Europe into Catholic and Protes­tant cities and king­doms, and for the first time in cen­turies, ordi­nary, every­day humans began to think for them­selves about the nature of spir­it and the cen­tral role of the indi­vid­ual con­science in the spir­i­tu­al order. Then in the 1540s, Copernicus’s helio­cen­tric the­o­ry her­ald­ed the begin­nings of what we know as the Sci­en­tif­ic Rev­o­lu­tion. Our human under­stand­ing of real­i­ty moved from a reliance on ancient author­i­ties and reli­gious dog­ma, from a rigid top-down con­trol of thought and belief, and towards empir­i­cal obser­va­tions, math­e­mat­i­cal rea­son­ing, and what we call the sci­en­tif­ic method of inquiry. The very nature of how humans think, and how they think about them­selves was reversed from top down to bot­tom up. But why, why did this happen?

Though many changes were con­tribut­ing to this, it fun­da­men­tal­ly came about because human con­scious­ness was altered, because of a new found means for indi­vid­u­als to think for them­selves, to ques­tion the ortho­doxy that had held them in a hier­ar­chi­cal order of belief and con­trol from Pope to Priest for hun­dreds of years, so that every day humans began to think with­out being held in bondage by dog­ma and their lives cir­cum­scribed by fear of excommunication.

The prin­ci­pal rev­o­lu­tion­ary advance­ment that accom­pa­nied and quick­ened this shift of human con­scious­ness and under­stand­ing was the “Guten­berg rev­o­lu­tion”, the print­ing press, which led to a ver­i­ta­ble trans­for­ma­tion of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and thought for all humans, and for the first time our known his­to­ry, mass lit­er­a­cy became pos­si­ble, accel­er­at­ing the spread of new ideas, and so forg­ing and form­ing a new col­lec­tive con­scious­ness for humans. The minds and con­scious­ness of humans was rad­i­cal­ly altered, and I would argue expanded.

1780s and 1790s
This next pas­sage of Plu­to through Aquar­ius was accom­pa­nied by Nep­tune mov­ing through Libra. Dur­ing this peri­od in Europe and the “West”, his­to­ry was defined by the Amer­i­can and French Rev­o­lu­tions, as absolute monar­chies, which had accom­pa­nied the pre­vi­ous Plu­to phase, were the ones being chal­lenged or over­thrown now by rad­i­cal repub­li­cans, lead­ing to con­sti­tu­tion­al monar­chies and bour­geois democ­ra­cies. I would argue that this pas­sage of Plu­to in Aquar­ius with Nep­tune in Libra should be under­stood as the result or sec­ond phase of what was ini­ti­at­ed in the 1500s. I believe we should under­stand that dur­ing the time when Nep­tune is in Aries we expe­ri­ence the emer­gence of a whole new con­scious­ness, but it has to prop­a­gate and unfold until, 240 years lat­er, the Libra phase brings that rev­o­lu­tion of con­scious­ness to a fuller or more expan­sive realization.

Indeed, the seed that was plant­ed in the 1500s led to the rad­i­cal empiri­cism and intel­lec­tu­al ide­al­ism of the Enlight­en­ment, which found its most con­se­quen­tial real­iza­tions in the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion, “all men are cre­at­ed equal”, and in the French Rev­o­lu­tion with the “Dec­la­ra­tion of the Rights of Man and the Cit­i­zen”. We had gone from a world defined by the mass­es gov­erned by the Pope and Lords, to self-gov­ern­ment, where ordi­nary humans should have agency and choice and could and should gov­ern themselves.

Where­as in the mid-1500s there was the Ref­or­ma­tion and the rise of Human­ism, in the late 1700s there was the Enlight­en­ment and the spread of Sec­u­lar­ism. Where­as in the 1500s there were Reli­gious Wars, in the 1700s there were Polit­i­cal Rev­o­lu­tions and the rev­o­lu­tion­ary, but tru­ly spir­i­tu­al propo­si­tion that all humans are equal.

Now the ques­tion is, where does that bring us now. What might we dis­cern in the cur­rent debates about our nature indi­cate or form the shift in Con­scious­ness that we are to be expe­ri­enc­ing in our phase of Plu­to in Aquar­ius and Nep­tune in Aries.

2024 to 2044
Dur­ing our peri­od, Plu­to will be in Aquar­ius while Nep­tune is in Aries. Which means our peri­od is more like the 1530s and 1540s, than like the 1780s and 1790s. It would seem to me that we can look at this shift­ing of Nep­tune from Aries to Libra in each suc­ceed­ing pas­sage of Plu­to through Aquar­ius and more accu­rate­ly define the influ­ence and mean­ing for each type of Plu­to cycle, and what might hap­pen in such a cycle.

I see the Aries type, the 1500s and our peri­od, as being a time when there is a tru­ly new “seed” of con­scious­ness being released, a fun­da­men­tal shift in con­scious­ness is at hand. Then the Nep­tune in Libra peri­od, 240 years lat­er, should be con­sid­ered as being the result or phase two of that seed­ing passage.

From the per­spec­tive of Astrol­o­gy and con­sid­er­ing Neptune’s move from the last sign of Pisces into the first sign of Aries, it makes sense that this pas­sage would release a new seed of Con­scious­ness. But just like in nature, a seed is form­ing for quite some time before it ger­mi­nates, grows and final­ly emerges into the light of day. What ear­ly signs or evi­dence do we have for what may have or may be emerg­ing in our time? What is the nature of human con­scious­ness now, and what might it be becoming?

For me, with a belief and under­stand­ing anchored upon the Ancient Wis­dom or the Peren­ni­al Teach­ings, this ques­tion of human con­scious­ness must be cen­tered upon the Spir­i­tu­al truth that this entire Cre­ation is the Spir­it, Mind and Body of the One, at that the entire­ty of Cre­ation is alive and con­scious, from the mon­ads, atoms, and mol­e­cules, to organ­isms, devas, stars and Galax­ies, that in all these many forms there are many realms and lev­els of con­scious­ness, and yet, they are held togeth­er in the Divine Light of the One.

When we look at the cur­rent con­di­tion of human con­scious­ness on Earth today, what is form­ing it, what is shap­ing it and where it might be going, we would have to under­stand that the way our minds work com­pared to humans in the 1800’s and even the ear­ly 1900s, well we are quite dif­fer­ent now because of the very nature of what makes our mind and shapes our consciousness.

I love to play with words, as they hold mean­ings that are often hid­den but quite sig­nif­i­cant. The word, “Con­scious­ness”, means “Togeth­er-Know­ing”, which real­ly affirms that we form our human under­stand­ing in, through and from our many rela­tion­ships and inter­ac­tions with one anoth­er, from Moth­er-Father, Broth­er-Sis­ter, to the whole range of friends, col­leagues and of course our dear­ly beloveds. But how those expe­ri­ences that form our under­stand­ings and con­scious­ness are being forged now is what has changed.

Start­ing in the 1500s onwards, with the Guten­berg rev­o­lu­tion, increas­ing steadi­ly in the 1700s, 1800s, and ear­ly 1900s, we humans con­tin­ued to inter­act with one anoth­er via direct speech most­ly, but we were also able to shape one anoth­er through mes­sages medi­at­ed by books and let­ters and such. But dur­ing the 20^th cen­tu­ry, and now expo­nen­tial­ly in the 21^st Cen­tu­ry we have reshaped our minds with ever more pow­er­ful mes­sag­ing tech­nolo­gies, and I think that it has cre­at­ed such a pro­found shift now that humans of those ear­li­er peri­ods would not and could not under­stand the way we are today.

We have shift­ed from mind­ful, delib­er­ate com­mu­ni­ca­tions, such as in hand­writ­ten let­ters and face-to-face speech, to mod­ern, instan­ta­neous, and frag­ment­ed dig­i­tal inter­ac­tions, and this has trans­formed human con­nec­tions from deep, slow, and inti­mate to fast, broad, and often superficial.

It is true that while tech­nol­o­gy enables glob­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty and effi­cien­cy, it has replaced thought­ful, sub­tle non-ver­bal cues with emo­jis, it has reduced and some­times trag­i­cal­ly elim­i­nat­ed our emo­tion­al depths and true under­stand­ing of one anoth­er and increased the poten­tial for mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion and alien­ation from one another.

We need to under­stand this most impor­tant and essen­tial truth, that our thoughts and our com­mu­ni­ca­tions are not mere­ly “in our head”. We are liv­ing beings, shaped and guid­ed by feel­ings and intu­itions. We are feel­ing-thinkers, where the del­i­cate inter­play and inter­con­nec­tions between our hearts and our minds cre­ates our consciousness.

Because we have dimin­ished our abil­i­ty to feel and think, our high­ly con­nect­ed but extreme­ly frac­tured world has rup­tured the more delib­er­ate and method­i­cal means of humans refin­ing and fil­ter­ing truer thoughts from the less true, which can­not be accom­plished by log­ic and rea­son alone but relies on our intu­ition to reach beyond what is known or appar­ent­ly true to a high­er and deep­er lev­el of under­stand­ing. With­out this essen­tial qual­i­ty, we have become over­whelmed by a ver­i­ta­ble cacoph­o­ny of points of view and opin­ions that push and pull indi­vid­u­als and groups into dis­as­so­ci­a­tions from their high­er selves and from one anoth­er, stir­ring up pas­sions and fears with no means to dis­cern what is real or true.

I would have liked to enu­mer­ate the rea­sons for and divi­sions of the types of con­scious­ness­es we see in our world right now, but we are run­ning out of time. So, I will turn to that exam­i­na­tion of the groups and fac­tions in our cur­rent Zeit­geist, of what I call thought-bub­bles or bub­bles of belief for my next show or the one after.

For now, what I do hope and believe is that this time of Plu­to in Aquar­ius with Nep­tune in Aries will ush­er in this next shift of our con­scious­ness, and that it may pro­vide a means to  heal this breach between thought and intu­ition, between our heads and our hearts, so that we will be able to expe­ri­ence deep­er and more spir­i­tu­al lives. I do not think we will find this by some tech­no­log­i­cal “fix”. Instead, it will come from with­in, from our souls, from our spir­it so that paths will be forged that lead us away from con­fu­sion and fear and back to the light. So let me end today’s talk we these thoughts.

As opposed to wait­ing for the shift that is com­ing, we need to take respon­si­bil­i­ty and be the shift, to be the kind of human we wish to be. How do we do this?

We must begin and remain aligned with the heart of Cre­ation, which is that the entire­ty of the Uni­verse is the One. Truth is not to be found over here or over there; Truth is eter­nal and omnipresent, and it is what forms every par­ti­cle of Cre­ation, includ­ing the stars and plan­ets and you and me. The Truth is with­in us as much as we are part of a ver­i­ta­ble ocean of truth that is the cos­mos itself. And it is this immutable real­i­ty that makes truth knowable.

What this means is that whether you go inwards to lis­ten to the qui­et, still voice of your high­er intu­itive self, or you choose to go out­ward­ly to observe and learn from realms rang­ing from the most ethe­re­al to the most sub­stan­tial, you will come to truth. On the one hand we can turn to those who came before us, to the seers and teach­ers through­out the ages, who left pearls of wis­dom and truth to guide our steps;  and equal­ly we should look at, and fol­low the exam­ple of those who live in this light as they pre­serve these gifts by their con­duct and ser­vice here today.

But for your­self, as in every life, you must hone your own spir­i­tu­al intu­ition and under­stand­ing by doing what we have done since the dawn of our awak­en­ing, you must share what you have observed and under­stood with oth­ers; and, most crit­i­cal­ly, you must equal­ly be open towards them as they share what they have dis­cov­ered with you.

This is part of the mes­sage of Aquar­ius, that we are made by our fel­low­ships, and you can­not find the way of truth by your­self because you are made of one anoth­er, and you need one anoth­er to lift the veil of mis­un­der­stand­ing, to hone your dis­cern­ment by tem­per­ing your under­stand­ing in the cru­cible of shar­ing, con­trast­ing, and renewing.

And remem­ber, and this is most cer­tain­ly true, that it is not enough for you or I to speak, nor is it enough for us to lis­ten, we are here to be the truth, to live the truth, in how we con­duct our­selves and treat one another.

There is only one path, there is only one way…and that is by being the Love that we are.