Aquar­ius by Michael Trossman 

To Be Human

Since your jour­ney began, since cross­ing that spir­i­tu­al thresh­old where the dark­ness meets the light, long, long ago, you and all humans have wan­dered and won­dered. We have been try­ing to under­stand, we have strug­gled to com­pre­hend, we have searched for the answer to the ques­tion that lies behind all of our ques­tions which is “Why”?

Why are we here? Which leads to why is that here; and to final­ly why, why is any­thing here?

Why?

As we wan­dered and won­dered, we looked up, and we began to see pat­terns form­ing in the star­ry fir­ma­ment; and we looked around our world, and we looked at one anoth­er, and we saw those pat­terns down here as well. And as we lis­tened to the qui­et whis­pers of our high­er self, as we fol­lowed our intu­ition, we felt some­thing famil­iar, and so we came to know that there is mean­ing­ful­ness with­in us, and that there is mean­ing, and beau­ty, and truth all around us too. And we smiled, and we laughed, and we shared in the won­der of our being part of this Cre­ation, of being togeth­er in this jour­ney of the Divine through the stars.

Today we cel­e­brate the entry of our Star into the sign of Aquar­ius, and at this time of the year, and for­ev­er shin­ing some­where in your chart too, we con­sid­er once again the why and the how of being human here on this Earth. Because at the root of answer­ing the “why” for us is to equal­ly appre­ci­ate the “how” of us. How did we become, how were we made, and then ask why are we, what is all this for?

The answer, of course, is in our hearts, as it is woven into the heart with­in every atom and star of the Cos­mos. For this is the most essen­tial nature and qual­i­ty of Spir­it, and it forms the Root of all Mean­ings and Pur­pos­es of the Uni­verse. The answer to the why of any­thing is this, that Spirit’s essen­tial nature is “to be and to become”. Cre­ation is the Jour­ney of Life-Con­scious­ness-Spir­it, which is dri­ven by the agency of Self-Becom­ing, which means that “Becom­ing” is what Cre­ation is. It is the “One in all” form­ing all the ones that are Cre­ation. And there in the beat­ing heart of Cre­ation, the dri­ving force is Divine Uncon­di­tion­al Love.

From our desire and inspi­ra­tion to find mean­ing in our exis­tence, to tru­ly under­stand this sto­ry of Spir­it, which is the Sto­ry of Cre­ation, we came to feel with­in our­selves, and to see in one anoth­er, and in the entire­ty of the Cos­mos all around us, that we are a host among many hosts or forms of Spir­it, a host of divine sparks or mon­ads. We are part of the Sto­ry of Cre­ation, which is this jour­ney of a hier­ar­chy of hosts, who are held togeth­er as mul­ti­plic­i­ties of indi­vid­u­als and com­mu­ni­ties by affil­i­a­tion and by love, and that each of these great hosts of life is shaped, guid­ed, and inspired indi­vid­u­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly by their unique spark of the Divine. The whole of Cre­ation is the jour­ney of innu­mer­able ones who are on the sacred path of the essen­tial nature of Spir­it which is “Self-Becom­ing by Self-Fulfillment”.

The Truths of why we are here has been passed down through the ages by Wise Ones and Seek­ers, held in trust by the Peren­ni­al Teach­ings, and it holds that we are here for one pur­pose. We are here to strive and to grow through tri­al and error, to learn from our mis­takes and by our suc­cess­es too, so that over the span of many years, and through many, many lives, that we will become bet­ter humans, and that each one of us, and togeth­er as a host of Divine Sparks, we may shine ever brighter like Cre­ation itself, as beings full of Light and Love.

We are equal­ly made by our own efforts, and by one anoth­er and for one anoth­er too. That is because the Divine, our mon­ad, is formed by the inte­gral expe­ri­ence of Indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and Com­mu­ni­ty, so that these truths are inter­wo­ven through­out the fab­ric of the Uni­verse. For humans, we all wish to be “one of a kind”; but we also are made by our kinds, as we alchem­i­cal­ly forge our unique­ness from the diver­si­ty of mean­ing­ful­ness root­ed in the many groups, com­mu­ni­ties, and cul­tures that we weave into our­selves too.

And it is here in Aquar­ius that we find the ves­sel or Avatar of this essen­tial and para­dox­i­cal Truth, that we are One and we are also the Many. Every one of us is here to be a unique and excep­tion­al human, yet we have made our­selves by and through the many groups or “kinds” to which we belong. We are all in one anoth­er, made up by one anoth­er and for one anoth­er; and we know, because it is true, that we are all for one, and one for all because we are sparks of Divine Love.

And as much as we are shaped by our join­ing and blend­ing of these var­i­ous kinds into the spe­cial human that we are, we equal­ly con­tribute our own sen­si­bil­i­ties and expe­ri­ences back into these var­i­ous groups, com­mu­ni­ties, cul­tures, and part­ner­ships. It is this dynam­ic, alchemic and pro­tean cre­ation made by your weav­ing of the per­son­al and social, it is by this that “you become you” and equal­ly help one anoth­er to become a bet­ter human too. Tru­ly, we are the means to make one another’s dreams come true, as our dreams are made through and by one anoth­er, and our dreams hold us to one anoth­er by friend­ship, com­pan­ion­ship, and love.

This is the Truth of Aquar­ius; that we are only what we are because we are part of a sacred fel­low­ship, a band of broth­ers and sis­ters who are for­ev­er seek­ing to cre­ate a bet­ter future, to help one anoth­er to be the very means by which our dreams come true. We are here for one anoth­er; we are for one anoth­er the liv­ing proof of our dreams com­ing true because our hap­pi­ness is their hap­pi­ness, and their hap­pi­ness is ours. And because we love one anoth­er we also know this, that we must equal­ly look to pre­serve and pro­tect the dreams of our chil­dren and all those who may fol­low us too, for what we are made from is not bound by space or time.

We are not here for us or what was, because we know, because we under­stand, that with­in us is the spark of the Divine, the immor­tal seed of Divine Uncon­di­tion­al Love and that we have not seen our fin­er days. We have hope and believe in the dream of what has yet to be, of a day that is brighter, and a world that is healed, and so we set our sights on the far horizon.

Why are we here?

We are here to dream, to cre­ate, and to love one another.

We are here to love and be loved and to shine.

We are here,

To Dream, to Be and Become,

We are here to Love.

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

Today we will con­tin­ue our overview of 2023 by turn­ing to the most impor­tant shift for the year ahead (and for many years into the future), which is the entrance of Plu­to into the sign of Aquar­ius. As you know, I find it quite impos­si­ble to con­sid­er one plan­et mov­ing through one sign to be suf­fi­cient to under­stand any peri­od in his­to­ry, or cer­tain­ly give us clar­i­ty for our cur­rent events. Just like in a dance per­for­mance, for instance like a bal­let, where you may at times focus upon one or anoth­er dancer, and then upon a cou­ple danc­ing, you real­ly can­not appre­ci­ate the choreographer’s mean­ing and mes­sage with­out pulling back, and look­ing at the whole bal­let, with all the dancers mov­ing in shift­ing pat­terns of rela­tion­ships and mean­ings with one anoth­er. (That is one rea­son I like to call our plan­e­tary com­pan­ions’ move­ments around the solar sys­tem, a “Dance of the Planets”).

I think it is most impor­tant to our under­stand­ing as to “the why and the what” that we are expe­ri­enc­ing here on Earth, is for us to exam­ine the cycle of rela­tion­ship of the three out­er plan­ets which form the long-term his­tor­i­cal dri­vers of spir­i­tu­al ener­gy in our sys­tem. Their move­ments with one anoth­er form­ing what we call a syn­od­ic cycle, (from a con­junc­tion to an oppo­si­tion with one anoth­er, and then back to the next con­junc­tion), form the inte­gral or essen­tial heart­beat of our spir­i­tu­al jour­ney through the stars.

Tri­ad of Spir­it, Pluto-Neptune-Uranus
What we need to remem­ber is what each plan­et holds as an Avatar, and then to con­sid­er what the com­bi­na­tion of one with anoth­er would cre­ate. I like to describe the three out­er plan­ets as form­ing the Tri­ad of Spir­it, and that by Plu­to we strive towards Self-Mas­tery from a “Cen­tered Will”; by Nep­tune we are sup­port­ed to hold real­i­ty and one anoth­er in “Uncon­di­tion­al Love”; and by Uranus we are helped to become a unique Spark of the Divine by mov­ing into ever “Freer Minds”. On the Uni­ver­sal lev­el, Plu­to as the Avatar of Divine Will cre­ates and forms the Spaces or Con­tain­ers for any being or group of beings, and Nep­tune as the Avatar of Uncon­di­tion­al Love holds the expe­ri­ence and root ener­gy-form of each mon­ad as part of the One Life of the Spir­it, as part of the One host or Com­mu­ni­ty of Light and Love, and Uranus as the Avatar of Freer Mind shapes the aware­ness of any being or group towards every greater Indi­vid­u­al­i­ty, to the real­iza­tion that each and every instance of the One is spe­cial and unique.

Plu­to
For our pur­pos­es today, let us con­sid­er the roles of Plu­to and Nep­tune as they work togeth­er. Plu­to is the Shaper of Forms; Nep­tune the Ener­gy-Sub­stance of those forms. Our Uni­verse which is the sto­ry of the One, is formed and pow­ered by what we know as Chem­istry (phys­i­cal­ly) or Alche­my (spir­i­tu­al­ly), and this Foun­tain Source or Pri­mal Ener­gy for Cre­ation cease­less­ly unfolds as the prime mover or the Self-Becom­ing ener­gy that forges the innu­mer­able com­bi­na­tions and trans­for­ma­tions of the hier­ar­chy of Ener­gy-Forms of the One Spirit.

From the One came all the many ones, who then began to forge unions to cre­ate every greater ones, and it is these ones who fill and form the spaces of space which form and are the body of the One. To do this, the Alchem­i­cal nature of Spir­it forges the con­tain­ers of spir­it, with­in which each one is bound­ed and held sep­a­rate from oth­er ones. Then, through the Alchem­i­cal mys­tery of com­bi­na­tion, by the Spir­i­tu­al Will as chemistry/alchemy, atoms com­bine with atoms to form larg­er atoms, mol­e­cules with greater mol­e­cules, organ­isms with larg­er organ­isms, on up to the plan­ets, stars, and galax­ies. What dri­ves Cre­ation is the Pro­tean Pow­er that is Alche­my, which is the mag­ic and the mys­tery of com­bi­na­tion. This secret to Cre­ation, the majesties, and the mys­ter­ies that we call Birth, Death, and Rebirth, is held by the Sign of Scor­pio, and also for us in our Solar Sys­tem by the Plan­et Pluto.

Nep­tune
Nep­tune is the avatar of the Uni­ver­sal ener­gy-form that holds the entire­ty of cre­ation as it is. There is but One Life, there is but One Spir­it, and there is but One Mind, and it holds the whole of Cre­ation as ONE, (the many ones held as One). This Uni­ver­sal and Omnipresent Ener­gy-form is the Love of the One which we know as Uncon­di­tion­al or Uni­ver­sal Divine Love. Through this Ener­gy-Form, all the Spaces of Space are filled, as the Uni­verse is a Plero­ma, a full­ness not an empti­ness, so that ulti­mate­ly the bound­aries between the hier­ar­chies and ranges of all ener­gy-forms are tran­scend­ed and held togeth­er as one, and it is this expe­ri­ence which is the true seed for your expe­ri­ence of com­pas­sion and empa­thy between one anoth­er and real­ly between all life-forms, and tru­ly for the whole of Creation.

So, we could say that Neptune’s mes­sage is almost the “oppo­site” or coun­ter­point to that of Plu­to as the Lord of Will and Bound­aries. Or per­haps it is bet­ter to say that this reminds us of the para­dox­i­cal nature of a true spir­i­tu­al under­stand­ing of and liv­ing a life guid­ed by spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. While it is cer­tain that we must be respect­ful­ly “sep­a­rate from one anoth­er”, we must at the same time see through all our var­i­ous sep­a­ra­tions, bound­aries, and bor­ders between one anoth­er and know that they are nec­es­sary, but they are also at the root an Illu­sion, for every­thing and every­one is con­nect­ed, inter­pen­e­trat­ed by, and shaped by all oth­ers. There is but One Spir­it, and Nep­tune is the Avatar of exact­ly this, the Holy Spir­it. We must there­fore also live with this wis­dom and act towards one anoth­er by hold­ing to this com­ple­men­tary spir­i­tu­al truth, that we are all in essence one with one anoth­er. A great and Ancient Teach­ing that should guide is that “We are all relat­ed”, so that if we bring harm to any­one at all, we will cause equal harm to our own true self too.

What we need to do, at least for our pur­pos­es today, is to not only con­sid­er what this move­ment of Plu­to into Aquar­ius means, but to also con­sid­er what stage or cycle moment Plu­to is going through in its most sig­nif­i­cant cycle of rela­tion­ship, which is with Nep­tune. As I have not­ed before, their rough­ly 490-year cycle is quite inter­est­ing, as Plu­to will go around the Solar Sys­tem in about 248 years and Nep­tune in about 165 years, mean­ing that from one of their con­junc­tions to the next, Plu­to will go around the Zodi­ac twice and Nep­tune three times.

Neptune/Pluto Con­junc­tions as a Series
As they dance with one anoth­er, we have found that their series of con­junc­tions, which are like New Moons where a new spir­i­tu­al seed is plant­ed, is that these seedings/plantings will move for­ward through the zodi­ac by about 6 degrees each time they meet up rough­ly every 500 years. For the last two con­junc­tions, they have met in Gem­i­ni, both in 1398 and for our cur­rent cycle in 1891, and they will do so again in 2384, and twice more after that. Pri­or to this, Plu­to and Nep­tune aligned with one anoth­er in the sign of Tau­rus. That shift to Tau­rus con­junc­tions start­ed in 1071 BCE, which was a very sig­nif­i­cant shift in human his­to­ry, as is our cur­rent series of Gem­i­ni seed­ings that began in 1398. What this also means more broad­ly is that every 2500 years we humans expe­ri­ence a series of seed­ings of Nep­tune and Plu­to in one Sign before mov­ing onto the next, form­ing a com­plete cycle in about 30,000 years!

Tau­rus Series of Conjunctions
The series of con­junc­tions from 1071 BCE to 1398 CE were focused through the mean­ing and mes­sage of Tau­rus, which con­cerns the nature of our human expe­ri­ence of Val­ue, of what is wor­thy, of what is beau­ti­ful, of what makes for and what cre­ates val­ue for us. Great civ­i­liza­tions were formed dur­ing this peri­od, rang­ing from Per­sia, to Baby­lon, to Greece and Rome, and the Han in Chi­na, and the Mayan and Olmec in the West­ern hemisphere.

Gem­i­ni Series of Conjunctions
The series in Gem­i­ni that began in 1398, and that was reini­tial­ized for us in 1891, holds as a focus what has been a spir­i­tu­al quick­en­ing for humans, trans­form­ing our minds and our intel­lect, pow­er­ful­ly shap­ing our intel­li­gence and means of net­work­ing and communications.

We can see that what began at the first Gem­i­ni phase of 1398 with­in 500 years led to a world­wide spread of cul­tures, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and inter­con­nec­tiv­i­ty that spanned (for the first time as far as we know) all around the Earth by the late 1800’s. The sec­ond impulse of 1891 has unfold­ed until the present day with a ver­i­ta­ble explo­sion of sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, and com­mu­ni­ca­tions that in no small degree has shaped how we humans think and relate to one anoth­er. This trans­for­ma­tion has changed and con­tin­ues to change our very under­stand­ing of what it means to be human, and it has most cer­tain­ly trans­formed and dis­rupt­ed the expe­ri­ences of most oth­er life-forms on the Earth.

Sex­tile Phase for Neptune/Pluto
What we also need to under­stand is that as Nep­tune and Plu­to con­tin­ue on their 490-year cycle, they will come to sig­nif­i­cant moments in their cycle of rela­tion­ship, which are formed by their angu­lar sep­a­ra­tions from one anoth­er, what we Astrologers call aspects. Anoth­er way to under­stand where we are now, and how what hap­pened in the past may inform our under­stand­ing as to what is before us now, is that for quite some time now, begin­ning in the 1950’s, and con­tin­u­ing off and on through our very own peri­od now, is that Nep­tune and Plu­to have been form­ing a 60-degree sep­a­ra­tion or Sex­tile aspect. That aspect is a time of con­cretiza­tion and con­sol­i­da­tion, of mate­ri­al­iz­ing or quick­en­ing of what­ev­er began at the con­junc­tion, which in our peri­od was 1891.

Let us com­pare our moment now to what was hap­pen­ing dur­ing the pre­vi­ous Sex­tile for the 1398 con­junc­tion. Just like in our peri­od, and this is due to the unusu­al nature of the orbit of Plu­to, that it is very ellip­ti­cal and goes through some signs more quick­ly or slow­ly than oth­ers, (three times longer in Tau­rus than in the oppo­site Sign of Scor­pio, 36 years ver­sus 12 years), there was a rather long wax­ing Sex­tile phase dur­ing this ear­li­er peri­od too.

Sex­tile from 1461 to 1540
This extend­ed sex­tile for this Neptune/Pluto cycle came in two phas­es, from 1461 to 1480, where Plu­to was in Leo and Nep­tune in Libra and lat­er when they were in Sagit­tar­ius and Libra. And then anoth­er phase from 1536 to 1540 with Nep­tune in Aries and Plu­to in Aquar­ius. So, all in all there was a Sex­tile aspect for about 80 years. This was what has been termed in Europe as the peri­od of the High Renais­sance lead­ing to, (as we would expect of Plu­to as the hold­er of the Pow­er of Alche­my), the Death and Rebirth of the Euro­pean order which cul­mi­nat­ed in the Ref­or­ma­tion. Dur­ing this peri­od, just like our own, there was a ver­i­ta­ble rush of ideas, a quick­en­ing of cre­ativ­i­ty and intel­lect, and social and eco­nom­ic change.

The Break­ing of the Euro­pean Catholic Order between the Sacred Realms and the Sec­u­lar Order led to many wars on that con­ti­nent and also to con­quests and col­o­niza­tion around the world. The most con­se­quen­tial and destruc­tive for our part of the world was the Span­ish destruc­tion of the Aztec, and the Mayan and Incan civ­i­liza­tions from the 1520s-30s. We can see how this sex­tile brought relent­less change and devel­op­ment in tech­nol­o­gy, ideas, and beliefs, but also very great suf­fer­ing for mil­lions of souls as well.

Sex­tile from 1950 to 2032
We have been expe­ri­enc­ing this same or sim­i­lar influ­ence in our mod­ern era after the 1891 Con­junc­tion of Nep­tune with Plu­to. For us, the quickening/manifesting stage of the Sex­tile has been in effect from 1950 to 1956, with Nep­tune in Libra and Plu­to in Leo, just as in the pre­vi­ous cycle, and then again from 1976 to 1986, as before with Nep­tune in Sagit­tar­ius and Plu­to in Libra, and then Nep­tune in Capri­corn and Plu­to in Scor­pio. And we will expe­ri­ence it exact­ly one more time from 2026 to 2032, and again like in the 1500’s with Nep­tune in Aries and Plu­to in Aquar­ius (which Plu­to will begin to enter this year). That means we will have had this very con­se­quen­tial align­ment of Nep­tune and Plu­to for over 82 years, just like in the 14 and 1500’s.

I have for many years been stat­ing that what we have been expe­ri­enc­ing with Plu­to in Capri­corn from 2008 to 2023 makes our peri­od like that of the 1500’s, in that it rep­re­sents the “end of an age”, and that in some form we are hav­ing our own expe­ri­ence that is much like our ances­tors, which was of the old order framed by the Pope and the King, between realms Sec­tar­i­an and Sec­u­lar, of gov­ern­ments and economies and cul­tures, of a type of human and what it means to be human, trans­form­ing into what we under­stand now as our mod­ern-age of nation states, with a pro­lif­er­a­tion of tech­nol­o­gy and inten­si­fi­ca­tion of net­work­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and tru­ly mak­ing us just as it did them into a dif­fer­ent kind of human.

But for us today, what our ances­tors forged as an Insti­tu­tion­al Order, and Econ­o­my, and Gov­ern­ment and a Way of Life in order to meet their chal­lenges and secure their needs, the very solu­tions that they cre­at­ed and invent­ed to solve their prob­lems and ful­fil their dreams, those very solu­tions have end­ed up in many ways being the source of the very chal­lenges we face today. Just as the pas­sage of Plu­to through Capri­corn was to be a time for the Death of many Insti­tu­tions of the world, it has also been, in fact it must be, the begin­ning of the birth of new means of meet­ing our needs, of new cre­ations, but also for pre­serv­ing and sup­port­ing a rich and diverse hier­ar­chy of earth ecosys­tems; we need a new Order and/or rebirth in our Insti­tu­tions and our way of life, of how we live with our world in order to pre­serve and pro­tect all life on this Earth. Many of us look around and see a world in per­il, of life leav­ing the plan­et, of our world becom­ing less vibrant and dimin­ished, and of our own lives and our dreams for the future being cir­cum­scribed and bound by appre­hen­sions and fears.

The Sec­ond Age of Gemini
We are mov­ing through the quick­en­ing of the sec­ond age of Gem­i­ni. In the first age and into this sec­ond age of Gem­i­ni, what many call the Indus­tri­al and Post-Indus­tri­al Ages, humans wield­ed their sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge and tech­ni­cal means to bend and shape the Earth and her life-forms to meet our needs, which result­ed in a mas­sive Growth in Mate­r­i­al Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty for human Goods and Ser­vices and cre­at­ed for a type of rel­a­tive Plen­ty for many. But it equal­ly set in motion fun­da­men­tal changes in the bal­ance of ener­gy and life-forms on this plan­et which has brought us today to a ver­i­ta­ble globe cir­cling war of destruc­tion and dev­as­ta­tion for most oth­er life-forms on this plan­et. Here in this Sec­ond Age of Gem­i­ni, we are moved into a time that will require max­i­mum adapt­abil­i­ty to the glob­al changes that our pre­vi­ous way of life has forged, and that chal­lenge cer­tain­ly seems to be grow­ing expo­nen­tial­ly, and it seems to be over­whelm­ing for many of us.

The approach­es and solu­tions of the first wave of the Gem­i­ni con­junc­tions of Plu­to and Nep­tune led to what became the first tru­ly glob­al or Mod­ern World. This sec­ond Gem­i­ni seed­ing wave begin­ning in 1898 is now mov­ing towards the last crit­i­cal series of Neptune/Pluto sex­tiles. Begin­ning this year with the start of Pluto’s jour­ney through Aquar­ius and becom­ing ever more pow­er­ful as Nep­tune moves into Aries in 2026 and into the 2030’s, we will meet the heart of what will forge our futures, our des­tiny and lega­cy to those who will fol­low us.

Plu­to in Capri­corn ver­sus Plu­to in Aquarius
The pas­sage of Plu­to through Capri­corn her­ald­ed the end of an Insti­tu­tion­al Age. What is the mes­sage of Plu­to in Aquar­ius, what does it offer and what are we enter­ing into now from 2024 to 2044? For Mun­dane or World­ly Astrol­o­gy, Aquar­ius rules “Fel­low­ship” or “Com­mu­ni­ty”, the nature and sub­stance of what are known as our so-called vol­un­tary asso­ci­a­tions with one anoth­er, what you and I would expe­ri­ence as the world beyond our fam­i­lies, that larg­er human social expe­ri­ence that we know as Friendship.

As you know, I like to say we are made of one anoth­er, and that all with whom we jour­ney have in some way become part of us and we have become part of them. We share our dreams and doubts, our hopes, and our fears, and we gath­er togeth­er to help one anoth­er, to be and become for one anoth­er our dreams come true.

Rebirth of Dreams
Aquar­ius is our Dream; of the world we wish to pre­serve and the world we hope to cre­ate. Plu­to mov­ing through Aquar­ius will her­ald the break­ing down of our old dreams for our futures and the birth and remak­ing of a New World Dream. As much as Plu­to in Capri­corn was the break­ing down of the Insti­tu­tion­al Order that was cre­at­ed to pre­serve and sup­port our dreams, Plu­to in Aquar­ius will bring us to the neces­si­ty to change the very con­tent or Sub­stance of our Dreams themselves.

The dream that drove the first Age of Gem­i­ni was that through our inge­nu­ity and crafti­ness, through our sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, we would bend and form the rest of this Earth to meet our ever-expand­ing need for things, for the basics of food, cloth­ing, shel­ter, and for an ever-increas­ing range of desires. But unfor­tu­nate­ly, this ever-increas­ing growth of wants and desires was met with­out con­sid­er­a­tion for the effects and con­se­quences that our means of secur­ing those wants cre­at­ed. We were very smart, we were very crafty, but we cer­tain­ly lacked Wis­dom and Humil­i­ty. But forces greater than ours are remind­ing us that we are not the mas­ters of the Earth.

Now we must con­sid­er what should be at the heart of our dreams for this Age. Is it to be more of more; are we so enam­ored of hav­ing more, of con­sum­ing more, that we are held cap­tive by this val­ue of quan­ti­ty only, of this mate­r­i­al mea­sure of the good life, so that to have more of more is what it means to be human. Or will we dream of a dif­fer­ent pur­pose and mean­ing for our lives?

I do not think we will, ulti­mate­ly, have a choice. We will have to humbly and wise­ly and grace­ful­ly accept our need to turn are dreams from the Illu­sion­ary Right to do what we wish with the Earth and forge a Way of Life built upon our Respon­si­bil­i­ties to one anoth­er and to all life-forms with whom we share this world. We must cen­ter our dreams upon heal­ing, pre­serv­ing, and pro­tect­ing all the life and lives on this plan­et, on our home, on our moth­er, on this beau­ti­ful Earth with whom we trav­el through the stars.

Astro­log­i­cal Mus­ings — 2023 Pre­view, a look ahead part 2- Plu­to and Neptune

In my first show of 2023, we will con­tin­ue to con­sid­er the plan­e­tary indi­ca­tions for 2023. We did not have time in the last show to con­sid­er the biggest change ahead for 2023, the begin­ning of the jour­ney of Plu­to through the Sign of Aquar­ius, from 2023 to 2044. We will exam­ine that today, by review­ing the influ­ences that Plu­to brings to bear along with that of Nep­tune, and what that might mean for the next 20 years as Plu­to moves through Aquarius.

If you wish to sug­gest a sub­ject or top­ic for a future show, please email me as I would be hap­py to hear from you. My email is: billattride@gmail.com.

Here is the main link to Astrologer Bill Attride Radio:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/astrologerbillattride

Here is the link to the show on Sun­day Jan­u­ary 8^th @ 2 pm EST:

https://www.blogtalkradio.com/astrologerbillattride/2023/01/08/astrological-musings-2023-preview-a-look-ahead-part‑2

The phone num­ber to call if you wish to ask a ques­tion dur­ing the live show is: (516) 531‑9638

Please join me on Sun­day Jan­u­ary 8^th @ 2 pm EST as we look at the cur­rent astro­log­i­cal indi­ca­tions and what they mean for you.

If you miss the show, it will be avail­able as a Pod­cast short­ly after on BlogTalk or my Apple Pod­casts.

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

As we move into the last weeks of 2022, I thought it would be help­ful to look ahead and see what 2023 holds for the Astro­log­i­cal con­di­tions we will be expe­ri­enc­ing. Although there are no major out­er plan­e­tary align­ments to one anoth­er, no Sat­urn square to Jupiter, or Uranus with Plu­to, there are major shifts that we will be encoun­ter­ing in the months ahead. These include Plu­to begin­ning to move into the Sign of Aquar­ius after hav­ing been in Capri­corn since 2008, and Sat­urn mov­ing from Aquar­ius into Pisces. Before we exam­ine these longer-term shifts, let us look at the year­ly phe­nom­e­na of the Lunar and Solar Eclipses, the Mer­cury Ret­ro­grades as well as the next Venus Ret­ro­grade too.

Eclipses
Typ­i­cal­ly, we expe­ri­ence two Lunar and two Solar eclipses in any year, and this year we will that two of each type in the months of April, May, and Octo­ber. The Solar eclipses are always to be con­sid­ered as more sig­nif­i­cant, and Astrologers often con­sid­er their influ­ence to be in effect for the next six months (until the next Solar eclipse). The Lunar eclipses are much short­er in influ­ence and pre­vail for the next lunar month typically.

Eclipses hap­pen twice a year when the orbital plane of the Earth around the Sun, and the orbital plane of the Moon around the Earth align in such a way that one body or the oth­er cre­ates a shad­ow that is vis­i­ble to us. In a Solar eclipse the New Moon pass­es exact­ly in front of the Solar disc form­ing a shad­ow on that part of Earth, (when at oth­er New Moons the Moon is either below or above the Sun’s posi­tion), and a Lunar eclipse occurs when the Earth comes between the Sun and the Moon and the shad­ow of the Earth falls upon the Moon.

The first eclipse is a total Solar eclipse on April 20, 2023, at 29 degrees, 50 min­utes in Aries. It will be vis­i­ble par­tial­ly or whol­ly in Aus­tralia, Indone­sia, Tim­or, Papua, and Papua New Guinea. To under­stand the sig­nif­i­cance for one­self, you would look to the house that has 29 degrees of Aries, and/or any plan­ets you may have in your chart very close to that degree. Typ­i­cal­ly, the house where an eclipse is locat­ed would be a very impor­tant realm of activ­i­ty in your life for the next six months or so. But you must remem­ber, plan­ets or an align­ment like this do not cre­ate some­thing good or bad, they just elic­it ener­gy-forms that you will need to be aware of and need to work with. The expe­ri­ence will be deter­mined by you, giv­en your past actions and your present spir­i­tu­al awareness.

The next eclipse is a Lunar eclipse on May 5, at 14 degrees, 58 min­utes in Scor­pio, at around 1:34 pm EDT, and not vis­i­ble in the USA. Again, the sig­nif­i­cance of this Full Moon will depend upon where 15 degrees of Scor­pio is in your chart, and whether you have any plan­et near to this as well. But this is also a rather spe­cial Full Moon, which is because for many this is also known as the Bud­dha Full Moon or Vesak, as it is said that the Bud­dha was born, achieved enlight­en­ment, and passed at the Full Moon in Scorpio.

The next eclipse is a total Solar eclipse on Octo­ber 14, at 21 degrees, 58 min­utes in Libra, at around 1:55 pm EDT, and will be vis­i­ble from Ore­gon, Neva­da, Utah, New Mex­i­co, Texas, Yucatan and into South Amer­i­ca, and par­tial­ly through­out much of the USA. Con­sid­er where in your chart you have 22 degrees of Libra, or any plan­et near to that degree to under­stand the sig­nif­i­cance of the area of life being acti­vat­ed for you for the next six months.

And here is some­thing to note, there will be anoth­er very sig­nif­i­cant eclipse six months lat­er on April 8, 2024, that cross­es the mid­sec­tion of the USA from the South­west to the North­east. I men­tioned this eclipse in 2017, because the August 2017 total eclipse also went across the mid­sec­tion of the USA from the North­west to the South­east, and it seemed sig­nif­i­cant that these two eclipses in effect have formed an “X” where the two eclipse paths meet in south­ern Illinois.

Final­ly, the last eclipse of 2023 will be a Lunar eclipse on Octo­ber 28, at 5 degrees, 9 min­utes of Tau­rus at around 4:24 pm, and not vis­i­ble in the USA. Look to what house has 5 degrees of Tau­rus in your chart and that will be the area of your life that you will expe­ri­ence a les­son in the com­ing month.

Mer­cury Retrograde
Next up are the Mer­cury ret­ro­grades for 2023. For each ret­ro­grade, it is impor­tant to note what degrees of the zodi­ac it revers­es through and to see what house (or hous­es) of your chart it is acti­vat­ing. For all of us, the Mer­cury ret­ro­grade peri­od affords an oppor­tu­ni­ty to become more self-crit­i­cal, more reflec­tive, and more deeply intro­spec­tive; it is a spir­i­tu­al gift so that we may cor­rect our errors of per­cep­tion, cog­ni­tion, and communication.

Typ­i­cal­ly, we have three Mer­cury ret­ro­grades a year, and this is true this year, but with an excep­tion. That is because we will begin the year with Mer­cury in ret­ro­grade already, and it will have begun on Decem­ber 29, 2022, and will end on Jan­u­ary 18, 2023.

The first Mer­cury turn­ing ret­ro­grade in 2023 will be on April 21 and will end with Mer­cury direct on May 14, mov­ing from 15 to 5 degrees in Tau­rus. Behind all reflec­tions and recon­sid­er­a­tions for this peri­od we will be need­ing to focus our under­stand­ings with regards to sub­stance and val­ue, of which the ulti­mate truth being that the uni­verse is made of Divine Love.

The sec­ond Mer­cury ret­ro­grade in 2023 will begin on August 22 and end on Sep­tem­ber 15, with Mer­cury mov­ing from 22 to 8 degrees in Vir­go. For this peri­od, we will have to recon­sid­er our under­stand­ings about order and peace, with our need to strive to find our way to the source of ever­last­ing peace, which is found in our own hearts, as it is at the heart of Creation.

The third Mer­cury ret­ro­grade of 2023 will begin on Decem­ber 13 and end on Jan­u­ary 1, 2024, with Mer­cury mov­ing from 8 Capri­corn to 22 Sagit­tar­ius, and this will help us to bring togeth­er our need to not only know the truth (Sagit­tar­ius) but to embody it into our roles and respon­si­bil­i­ties too, (Capri­corn).

Venus Ret­ro­grade
We will also have anoth­er Venus ret­ro­grade in 2023, from July 22 until Sep­tem­ber 3, mov­ing from 28 degrees to 12 degrees Leo. Much like Mer­cury ret­ro­grade, Venus ret­ro­grade is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to turn inward, to heal and repair. Mer­cury ret­ro­grades rough­ly three times in a year, but Venus ret­ro­grades about every 18 months. Rather than a focus upon the mind as with Mer­cury, Venus ret­ro­grade encour­ages us to appre­ci­ate the com­plex hier­ar­chy of val­ues that shape our lives. It is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to bring forth a more insight­ful under­stand­ing about how we are held togeth­er or drawn apart by what we share or do not share with one anoth­er, of the val­ues we share or do not share with one anoth­er. The house that Venus moves ret­ro­grade in your chart will pro­vide the par­tic­u­lar focus for you with regards to the nature of the val­ues you must recon­sid­er dur­ing this 40-day period.

Major Plan­e­tary Shifts
Now we will con­sid­er the two big shifts that lie ahead in 2023, which is Sat­urn mov­ing into Pisces and Plu­to begin­ning to move into Aquarius.

Sat­urn into Pisces
The move­ment of Sat­urn through the twelve signs of the Zodi­ac forms one of the prin­ci­pal shapers of our expe­ri­ence of real­i­ty. Since Sat­urn is the plan­et known as the “Teacher”, and rules Real­i­ty and the hier­ar­chy of insti­tu­tions in the world, its pas­sage through the signs pro­vides the focus for our fac­ing our respon­si­bil­i­ties and devel­op­ing our expe­ri­ence and wis­dom from year to year. Since 2020, those lessons have been expe­ri­enced in the realm of Aquar­ius, (the pre­vi­ous times for Sat­urn in Aquar­ius were 1991–93, 1962–64 and 1932–35), but start­ing on March 7, 2023, Sat­urn will focus its influ­ence through the last sign of Pisces until 2025–26. We should note that the pre­vi­ous times for Sat­urn in Pisces were 1993–96, 1964–67 and 1935–37, and though the con­tent of those peri­ods is very dif­fer­ent from our present day, the basic mes­sage of Sat­urn in Pisces remains the same.

As much as Sat­urn in Aquar­ius will always be a time of test­ing and teach­ing for our social con­scious­ness and con­science, a tester for the strengths or the weak­ness­es in our com­mu­ni­ties, for the integri­ty of our social net­works and the depth of our essen­tial human­i­ty, Sat­urn in Pisces brings us into the final realm in the Cir­cle of the Liv­ing Ones, which is to the very ques­tion of our Faith ver­sus our Fears.

Every pas­sage of any plan­et through a sign is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to rise to the chal­lenge, and we can either move high­er or fall back­wards. Hav­ing wit­nessed the chal­lenges that the world has encoun­tered since 2020, we can cer­tain­ly see how well or poor­ly our com­mu­ni­ties met the many crises of cli­mate change, of a pan­dem­ic, of the many crises and cries for social jus­tice and sim­ple human togeth­er­ness ver­sus our divi­sions from one another.

So, it does seem espe­cial­ly time­ly for Sat­urn to turn our atten­tion to the foun­da­tions of our jour­ney, to the very essence of what dri­ves our human sto­ry which is also the sto­ry of Spir­it. The peren­ni­al ques­tion of spir­it is before us which is this: will we find the way to restore our faith and face our fears, or will we suc­cumb to those fears and fall fur­ther from the path of Truth and Light? What do we mean by this essen­tial nature of Truth, of the Light that makes “all things shin­ing”? What is the Foun­tain-Source of our Faith?

Behind the whole of Cre­ation, encom­pass­ing and per­vad­ing every par­ti­cle of being and every vibra­tion of ener­gy-forms, it is there that we find the mon­ad of Spir­it, the divine spark of Cre­ation. And every par­ti­cle and ener­gy-wave of cre­ation is its own hier­ar­chy too, descend­ing from the mon­ad, the most sub­lime root essence of divine spir­it, on down through the dimen­sions and realms to the most phys­i­cal. That means that with­in each par­ti­cle or ener­gy-form, each of the mon­ads in these realms or dimen­sions of being is striv­ing to rise in its own spir­i­tu­al devel­op­ment too.

That is why the whole of Cre­ation can be seen as a great Jour­ney, of the Invo­lu­tion of Spir­it into Mat­ter-Forms, and then the Evo­lu­tion of these forms as they move up the Spir­i­tu­al Lad­der of Light, for all are inspired by the essence that is the One which is omnipresent and all-encom­pass­ing. Behind it all, the whole pur­pose of Cre­ation is for the One, for the One Spir­it to be and to become, to unfold, through all the hier­ar­chies that are Cre­ation, and that is why we are all here to be the One made Manifest.

This hier­ar­chy of cre­ation is what makes us Divine and human, it is why the very core of us nev­er left (what we might call) “heav­en”, and this is why we say that “heav­en is with­in us”, because it is tru­ly at the root of one and all. But because we are a hier­ar­chy of ener­gy-forms, rang­ing from the most ethe­re­al down to the less evolved, we are each indi­vid­u­al­ly, and as a host of beings, on our own human jour­ney to become more aligned and guid­ed by the light that is with­in our high­er self. It is by this Light that is Love that we will lift our own indi­vid­ual hier­ar­chy and our fel­low humans into ever high­er dimen­sions of a Liv­ing Faith. We humans began our jour­ney as sparks of the divine, we came from a star, and we will even­tu­al­ly return one day to become our very own star too.

Our human self, our human con­scious­ness, ris­es and falls day in and day out, it ris­es or falls from year to year and in life after life. Some­times we are filled with the most lov­ing and self-for­get­ful inten­tions and actions, and some­times there are more trou­bling thoughts and feel­ings that shape our actions and lives. This is what dri­ves the jour­ney of our self-becom­ing, this is what forms the path­way to Per­fec­tion framed by Kar­ma and Dhar­ma. We are on a jour­ney to per­fec­tion, and we learn that we have a choice to do and be bet­ter from expe­ri­enc­ing the con­se­quences of our thoughts, words, and deeds.

Ever inspir­ing us to move high­er on the path of light is our own inner light, our high­er self or spir­i­tu­al mon­ad, our essen­tial link to the One that is Cre­ation, the One that is pure Love. When we lose sight of this or feel alone and apart, we fall down into dark­ness and despair, and when we lis­ten to the gen­tle lov­ing spir­it that is with­in us all, we rise and shine brighter for one anoth­er too.

This is what we must remem­ber every day, and espe­cial­ly now as Sat­urn moves through the Sign of Reap­ing and Redemp­tion, of Kar­ma and For­give­ness. This will be the ques­tion behind the mes­sages of Sat­urn while in Pisces. The Ques­tion is, do you know and live with some form of this under­stand­ing, with this Liv­ing Faith, that you are here to learn one thing, which is how to be a bet­ter human, which means to know how to equal­ly have more self-under­stand­ing and self-mas­tery, yet to live and act with ever greater self-for­get­ful­ness. That your jour­ney is to work with your own com­plex host of hier­ar­chies and ener­gy-forms, to bring them into align­ment with Truth and Love; that your true work is this Great Work, which is to lift your­self and one anoth­er high­er. You will have moments of tran­scen­dence, and moments when you fall. But if you are to climb high­er you must for­give your­self and one anoth­er too. Your path of Light is a path of Love, it is the Path of Wis­dom which is revealed by your Humil­i­ty and Grat­i­tude, and it is this under­stand­ing that you have and will always make your future that will form your Liv­ing Faith and over­come your fear.

This is also one the prin­ci­pal lessons of Pisces, to know why you must, how you should, and when you will make a sac­ri­fice, because this is how you live a sacred life, a tru­ly lov­ing life. A mea­sure of any per­son or soci­ety to which they belong, is how much they reveal the love that they are, and they do this by how they hon­or those who came before them, how they con­duct them­selves with their con­tem­po­raries now, and most espe­cial­ly how they con­sid­er with love those that will come after them. Pisces is the time of Reap­ing; it is equal­ly the time then of the Sow­ing of the Seed.

Pisces is the last Sign, it’s mean­ings and mes­sages con­cern the entire­ty of any cycle, how in these fields of the One we har­vest the spir­i­tu­al gifts of under­stand­ing and love, which are to be held and passed on to the next cycle, to the next gen­er­a­tion, and beyond. You are the fruit of those who came before you, and your gifts to those who come after are formed by your ded­i­ca­tion to make pos­si­ble a bet­ter world for one and all. This is Pisces, this is the Cir­cle of Life; this is the Love of the One. With Sat­urn in Pisces, we must under­stand that we are mak­ing the future for those who will look back upon us, because our thoughts, words, and deeds will have formed their Real­i­ty, their fate.

This will be the heart of the Test with Sat­urn in Pisces, to face our fears and hold to our faith. With our under­stand­ing that we are the mak­ers of our fate, that we have noth­ing to fear but fear itself, we can remain in the light that is love, with our Liv­ing Faith of being co-cre­ators of Cre­ation and we will see the shad­ow that is fear fade.

When we con­sid­er all of the gifts of Life, of all the many lives of all the many crea­tures who form this Cre­ation, we see in the end that the Sto­ry of Cre­ation is about the Light shin­ing through the whole of this Cre­ation. It is your light; it is what is called That. In Pisces we remem­ber that All Things are Shin­ing, and that Spir­it-Life-Con­scious­ness forms the full­ness of Space.

This full­ness that many call empti­ness of space is the Plero­ma of Cre­ation, it is the Light that is Love.

It is the One.

It is you.

I had hoped to have time to talk about Plu­to begin­ning to enter Aquar­ius in 2023, but I see that our time is too short for that now. I will do anoth­er show this year but giv­en the cal­en­dar I will have to do it on anoth­er day of the week, so per­haps on Sat­ur­day the 31^st of December.

I will say this how­ev­er, that as much as Plu­to in Capri­corn was the time (once again) for an End of an Age, the pas­sage of Plu­to in Aquar­ius will be a time when we will be asked to begin to build a new world, to begin a New Age. Though it has been painful (and at times good) to see the end of an age, it will be an even greater chal­lenge to cre­ate a bet­ter world for us and our descen­dants. But this is our respon­si­bil­i­ty, this is our duty and our sac­ri­fice to make.

This promis­es to be a very sig­nif­i­cant shift in the ener­gies inform­ing and shap­ing our jour­ney through the stars, and I look for­ward to being with you all as we move into the New Year.