Tran­script of Radio Show – Uranus and Nep­tune, Free­dom and Sacrifice

In Mun­dane or World­ly Astrol­o­gy, we focus first upon the three out­er plan­ets as the Avatars or Instru­ments that pro­vide illu­mi­na­tion and guid­ance as to what is dri­ving the sto­ry of human devel­op­ment. The con­tent of each soci­ety, and the indi­vid­ual strengths and weak­ness­es that dri­ve their sto­ry, are cre­at­ed by the choic­es made in the past and present by the peo­ple of that soci­ety. But the under­ly­ing rhythms and themes, the spir­i­tu­al nature of the oppor­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges, the spir­i­tu­al mean­ings in each peri­od or epoch can be framed by the under­stand­ing of these inter­lac­ing orbits of Uranus, Nep­tune, and Pluto.

I have been writ­ing and speak­ing and focus­ing upon the influ­ence of Plu­to for some time. But today I want to look at these oth­er two, Uranus and Nep­tune, and look at their cycle of rela­tion­ship by review­ing pre­vi­ous peri­ods in his­to­ry and com­par­ing those to our time.

Uranus and Neptune
The Orbit of Uranus is rough­ly 84 years, and Nep­tune 164. Their cycle with one anoth­er, that is from one Con­junc­tion of Uranus with Nep­tune to the next is about 170 years. As in any plan­e­tary pair, we not only con­sid­er the Con­junc­tion as being sig­nif­i­cant, but we also look at the series of aspects from Con­junc­tion to the next Con­junc­tion, their cycling through how far along or apart they are from one anoth­er, much like the Sun/Moon cycle, as they go from a “New Moon” to an oppo­si­tion or “Full Moon” and then back again to their next conjunction.

The con­junc­tion, like a New Moon, is a time of “Seed­ing”, and releas­es a new qual­i­ty or theme in Uranus and Neptune’s rela­tion­ship to one anoth­er, which unfold and man­i­fest over the next 170 years. That theme, as in all plan­e­tary pairs, will be struc­tured and informed by the mean­ings of these two plan­ets. I like to say, that Uranus and Neptune’s rela­tion­ship illus­trates one of the great spir­i­tu­al truths and chal­lenges we have faced through­out the cen­turies: How does any soci­ety, cul­ture, econ­o­my, and polit­i­cal sys­tem struc­ture the inte­gral bal­ance of Indi­vid­u­al­i­ty (Uranus) and Com­mu­nal­i­ty (Nep­tune)?

His­to­ry of Uranus/Neptune Conjunctions
Their last con­junc­tion was 1993 and it released the seed for the next iter­a­tion of this inte­gral bal­ance. His­tor­i­cal­ly, their con­junc­tions can be seen to frame the weav­ing and inter­play that shapes soci­eties. Those pri­or con­junc­tions were: 965, 1136, 1307, 1479, 1650, 1821 and ours in 1993. If we look to Europe, (though there are par­al­lels to peri­ods in Asia and Africa too), the first three could be seen as the begin­ning, mid­dle and end of what we call the Mid­dle Ages, then 1479 was the Renais­sance and Ref­or­ma­tion, and 1650 was the Enlight­en­ment and Age of Rea­son, and 1821 (with the end of Bonaparte’s attempt to form an Empire of Europe), led to the 1800’s and 1900’s, to what we call the “Mod­ern Age” of Lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy vs Socialistic/Communistic for­ma­tions of soci­ety, and that par­a­digm of order end­ed between 1989 to 1993.

The 1993 Conjunction
What our peri­od is tru­ly about, no one can say for cer­tain, because we were still very much in the begin­ning or ini­tial phase of the dream-seed that is emerg­ing. But it is now, in 2016 through 2020, and maybe just a lit­tle beyond, that we are encoun­ter­ing the first major aspect in the Uranus/Neptune cycle, which is the Semi­Square or 45-degree aspect. Much like when a seed sprouts, there is no know­ing what it can mean as it grows beneath the soil; but it is at this moment of the Semi­Square, when the sprout emerges above the ground, it is then, (or for us now) that we face our encounter with what it is or may be. How­ev­er, just as much as we can get a glimpse of the future, we will also face our past.

This stage of the cycle is likened to a quick­en­ing or a spurring to devel­op­ment of the new impulse released by the seed; but it is equal­ly the chal­lenge thrown down by the past which often will resist this new form of being. It is, and we are in it now, a strug­gle between the future and the past. The move­ment towards the New meets the resis­tance of the Past. It is quite under­stand­able, as some of this resis­tance will come from our inher­ent, nat­ur­al uncer­tain­ty and hes­i­ta­tion, the cau­tion any­one of us might feel when start­ing some­thing new. But some of the resis­tance will be root­ed in deep­er fears, by the attach­ment to and fear of the loss of present advan­tages or priv­i­leges which the new way threatens.

The promise of a New World is tak­en up by some or by the many at the time of the seed­ing, in our case from 1993 to now; but the fear of loss held by the old real­i­ty and its ben­e­fi­cia­ries is encoun­tered most clear­ly at this turn­ing now.

We need to remem­ber, the New is but a dream, it comes from the Spir­it with­in, it is sub­jec­tive. Now those dream­ers meet with the phys­i­cal real­i­ty, with the objec­tive real­i­ty of the world as it is; that means in many parts and places, the dream­ers encounter those who not wish to change, they do not want to lose what they have, and there are also many who wish to retake what they feel they have already lost.

What is the mes­sage of Uranus and Nep­tune for us now? It is what it has always been:

Mes­sage of Uranus/Neptune
Uranus rules “Indi­vid­u­al­i­ty”; and it is the Avatar of the High­er or Freer Mind that forms one of the three aspects of Spir­it. Nep­tune rules “Com­mu­nal­i­ty”; Nep­tune is the Avatar of the Ener­gy-Form that holds the whole of Cre­ation as One. The truth of Spir­it is found by these two being held togeth­er, where the essence of the Indi­vid­ual is cel­e­brat­ed and made real­iz­able by the sup­port and the mean­ing­ful­ness of being part of or one with the many. We are here to be an Indi­vid­ual; we are made of one anoth­er too. “I am that; I am”; but also, “I bow to the Divine with­in you too”.

The inte­gral rela­tion­ship between Uranus and Nep­tune illus­trates the para­dox­i­cal truth behind the mys­tery of the Universe’s con­sti­tu­tion. Every­thing, every speck and mote of Cre­ation, every par­ti­cle, every atom and mol­e­cule, and every “Being” in this Uni­verse is an indi­vid­ual; each one is a unique instance or man­i­fes­ta­tion of spir­it, formed and informed by what I call its own Quin­tes­sence, its essen­tial iden­ti­ty or essence.

Yet, at the very same time, all of these “ones” are part of the One, and so they are fun­da­men­tal­ly, essen­tial­ly, and equal­ly indi­vis­i­ble from one anoth­er. They are all part of the One Life, and the One Love that binds and holds all togeth­er. But how much of the Indi­vid­u­al­i­ty man­i­fests, and how much of the Com­mu­nal­i­ty shines through, that bal­ance or imbal­ance between them, as we look at all the king­doms of life, in the var­i­ous life-forms and species of ani­mate life, through­out the ages, we will see that there is an ever-shift­ing bal­ance between these two prin­ci­ples, between the One and the many.

Indi­vid­ual vs. Community
For us humans, this ten­sion between the Indi­vid­ual and their Com­mu­ni­ty has waxed and waned with­in any cul­ture or civ­i­liza­tion as well as between them. For exam­ple, when we look at human forms of lifestyle or life ways, like the Hunter/Gatherer, of the Farmer/Craftsperson or in our soci­ety for exam­ple of Rural/Urban, we will see dif­fer­ing mix­tures and bal­ances of the rela­tion­ship between how much free­dom an indi­vid­ual has, and how much lim­i­ta­tion of free­dom they will expe­ri­ence as they sac­ri­fice for and to their community.

The Whole or Com­mu­ni­ty is essen­tial for all human beings, for their shared sense of belong­ing to some­thing larg­er and more encom­pass­ing, and so we yield some of our indi­vid­ual free­doms to the very source of our nature, because that very com­mu­ni­ty pro­vides the con­text of mean­ings, val­ues and beliefs which form each indi­vid­ual in that com­mu­ni­ty. You can­not have one with­out the other.

At var­i­ous points in his­to­ry, with­in any cul­ture as well as between dif­fer­ent cul­tures, there has been this rec­i­p­ro­cal bal­ance between the degree to which peo­ple are freer to express them­selves as more indi­vid­ual, to dif­fer­en­ti­ate them­selves from their var­i­ous groups, and times when the larg­er social order, (of fam­i­ly, com­mu­ni­ty, eth­nic­i­ty, and state) are able to more close­ly or nar­row­ly define and often cir­cum­scribe that indi­vid­ual freedom.

It is how this bal­ance is achieved and main­tained, the extent to which there is a mutu­al ben­e­fit from one to the oth­er, or times like our own which seems out of bal­ance, that deter­mine the degree to which bal­ance of Indi­vid­ual Free­dom and Com­mu­nal Har­mo­ny does or does not prevail.

Our Time
Remem­ber, the time we are in is crit­i­cal; it is when the emerg­ing new theme released at the con­junc­tion (or New Moon) in 1993 is encoun­ter­ing the coun­ter­vail­ing forces of the past. It is very much a strug­gle between a new way of being con­fronting the fear­ful pulls and push­es of the old order try­ing to main­tain or restore itself. This strug­gle between more indi­vid­ual free­dom and more com­mu­ni­ty or com­mu­nal con­for­mi­ty will play out dur­ing the entire 170-year cycle again and again. But the great­est promise and the great­est threat is felt at these crit­i­cal moments of choice. We are at such a time right now.

What­ev­er par­a­digm of order had pre­vailed from 1821 to the late 1980s, those major divi­sions gave way with a claim by some that “His­to­ry is over”, with the so-called tri­umph of Lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy and the defeat of Com­mu­nism. We must cer­tain­ly see now, as we encounter the first turn­ing from the seed that was plant­ed in 1993, that we face the plain and unde­ni­able truth that we are not done with his­to­ry, nor she with us.

We are expe­ri­enc­ing a world­wide upheaval, between the reemer­gence of Author­i­tar­i­an­ism (not that it ever real­ly went away), and the strug­gle of Lib­er­al Democ­ra­cies, which in many ways is just a con­tin­u­a­tion or a new for­mu­la­tion of the old bat­tles, between and with­in, “the haves and the have nots”, between old and new elites, as the hope for the future for the vast major­i­ty of human­i­ty seems to slip fur­ther away as they just try to survive.

The Present Crisis
In the North and the South, in the East and in the West, all lands and peo­ples are marked now by the Social Pan­dem­ic of the pathogens of extreme social schisms, of anar­chic indi­vid­u­al­ism and suf­fo­cat­ing com­mu­nal­ism, and these are signs that we are at this crit­i­cal turn­ing in the Cycle of Uranus and Nep­tune. The old mod­el of bal­anc­ing Individuality/Communality has bro­ken down, and the yet to emerge Par­a­digm has not been clear­ly stat­ed nor act­ed upon.

This world-wide con­fu­sion has pro­duced a cri­sis of order and mean­ing­ful­ness for the many who yearn for a life and world that is “Fair and Free”. With­out a sig­nif­i­cant major­i­ty of peo­ple who hold to and act through an accept­ed inte­gra­tion of these two ener­gy-forms, we are liv­ing through a peri­od that is like an “in-between world”, where extrem­ists are dri­ving and divid­ing us fur­ther from one another.

When either of these ener­gy-forms becomes imbal­anced with the oth­er, we either move towards extreme forms of inde­pen­dence, (and break our bonds of fel­low­ship), or we bind our­selves into indi­vid­u­al­i­ty-deny­ing forms of com­mu­nal­ism, (which can or will lead to the break­down in the integri­ty of each mem­ber of the group). There is a need for Life, for Spir­it to find itself by being One and True, but it also can only do this by being part of some­thing greater, of belong­ing and being formed by some­thing larg­er too. As I like to say, “We all want to be One of a Kind; but we also can only find our Mean­ings and Val­ues by being part of some Kind”.

We are all indi­vid­u­als who are nest­ed with­in greater and greater “wholes” or com­mu­ni­ties, from the fam­i­ly unit, to the imme­di­ate com­mu­ni­ty, to the region, and state and nation, and ulti­mate­ly the plan­et itself as our largest space of com­mu­ni­ty. But the mean­ings and bal­ance of the Indi­vid­ual and Com­mu­ni­ty are in great per­il at this time.

The cycle that began in 1993 has now reached a crit­i­cal moment. It should be appar­ent and clear to many if not most peo­ple, that we are wit­ness­ing through­out the world this high­er ten­sion between Free­dom and Com­mu­nal life-ways, and it is rip­ping cul­tures, eth­nic­i­ties, com­mu­ni­ties and even fam­i­lies into ever more frag­ment­ed rela­tion­ships and groupings.

Free­dom vs. Love
On the one hand, you could say that the Cen­tripetal force of Free­dom has become severe­ly unbal­anced in its inte­gral rela­tion­ship with the Cen­trifu­gal force of Love. The ego­is­tic, nar­cis­sis­tic, and divi­sive ener­gies appear ascen­dant; Love, sac­ri­fice and com­mu­nal­ism are in retreat. As they become unhinged or out of bal­ance with one anoth­er, each seem­ing­ly devolves into a twist­ed or warped ver­sion of its high­er nature.

Yet, it is equal­ly true, that in such a time, as Free­dom becomes ripped from shared affec­tions, becom­ing self­ish and nihilis­tic; then equal­ly in response, the prin­ci­ple of Love becomes bound­ed by the fear of the unfa­mil­iar, affec­tions are nar­rowed and retreat inward­ly, to the poi­soned wells of trib­al attach­ments and group­ings based on Race, Eth­nic­i­ty, Creed and Class. The true com­mu­nal foun­da­tions of our com­mon ances­try, that we all can trace our phys­i­cal and spir­i­tu­al roots to the same cause, this essen­tial root of us all seems to devolve, and the Cen­ter that is the force that binds the entire uni­verse, true spir­i­tu­al Love, that love is lost as soci­eties break apart into dis­so­ci­a­tions, made of fear-filled group­ings, tribes formed upon fear, who look upon the “the oth­er” as the car­ri­er of dark­ness, blame and fear.

Yes, it seems all too clear today, that what we have expe­ri­enced in the dark­est parts of our his­to­ry is crash­ing into us once again; fear and hatred are dark­en­ing our minds, hearts, and lives. If we were only to go by the news of this past week, we could con­clude that the cata­bol­ic forces of fear and hatred are out­pac­ing the one abid­ing, true and supreme force in this uni­verse, which is Love.

Orig­i­nal Sin
But we can­not, nor should we ever retreat or suc­cumb to fear. Why? Because, we can also find com­fort and reas­sur­ance that we have faced such times before, and we did take steps to try and right the wrongs of the past, that we did face and accept both the beau­ty and the hor­ror of how our sto­ry began.

Though our sto­ry claims we dis­cov­ered a “vir­gin land”, this land was filled with the beau­ty of vibrant cul­tures and peo­ples, and they were exter­mi­nat­ed. We were found­ed upon Geno­cide.

Though our founders wrote those immor­tal words, “…that all men are cre­at­ed equal”, more than half of them held fel­low humans as prop­er­ty. We were found­ed upon Racism.

This coun­try is being called to account, to answer the call of Spir­it, where all crea­tures, great and small, where all of life on this plan­et is loved and held sacred; and we should treat any fel­low human as who they are, a being who is equal to myself, a lumi­nous spark of the divine.

We can­not escape our his­to­ry, but we need to heal our bro­ken minds and hearts. We need to re-build the sto­ries we tell one anoth­er, of what our lives are for, why we are here, and what we hope to leave to those who come after. We are only here for such a very short time, and many lives are being lost or short­ened because of the sins of the past which cast a dark shad­ow upon on our hearts and minds.

We can take inspi­ra­tion from our heroes who rose to their chal­lenge and look around to our present-day heroes risk­ing their lives to save oth­ers. There is much to give us hope, but there is need on the part of each one of us to re-estab­lish trust in one anoth­er; we need to build our greater faith on kind­li­ness and lov­ing deeds.

We can look for inspi­ra­tion and guid­ance from one anoth­er, in the small­er and greater acts of indi­vid­u­als and their com­mu­ni­ties, who are putting aside their dif­fer­ences and weav­ing togeth­er a new com­pact, a fair­er and more just soci­ety. We each have a vital stake in this, we each have many oppor­tu­ni­ties to help our­selves and one anoth­er. We should remem­ber the spir­i­tu­al truth that is held in our pledge to one anoth­er, and we should hon­or and remem­ber our spir­i­tu­al com­pact, which is inscribed upon the Great Seal of our nation­al motto:

E Pluribus Unum—Out of Many One

The truth is in the stars; the truth is your heart.

You know what to do,

Love one another…

As we are watch­ing the news and events of this time, and our hearts are deeply sad­dened by the suf­fer­ing, we are equal­ly inspired by the those who shine, who save and res­cue and heal those who are in dire need, it is indeed so clear what is going on right now. We are being asked to choose where we stand in the halls and his­to­ry of spirit.

Will we stand for love, will we stand for one anoth­er, will we reach across the divides that are there but need not be there?

We can and must when we under­stand that who I have before me is myself.

Astro­log­i­cal Mus­ings – Uranus and Nep­tune, Free­dom and Sac­ri­fice (May 31, 2020)

In my four­teenth show of 2020, I will con­sid­er the cycles of Uranus and Nep­tune, and how their inte­gral rela­tion­ship marks the shift­ing bal­ance between the Indi­vid­ual and the Com­mu­ni­ty in his­to­ry. We are at a crit­i­cal stage now, where the Seed of a new Civ­i­liza­tion that was plant­ed in 1993 has reached the first major cri­sis of becom­ing, and we find our­selves being torn between the hopes for a bet­ter future and the fear­ful ghosts of the past.

As before, I will answer your ques­tions dur­ing the show, whether on this top­ic or some oth­er mat­ter, includ­ing per­son­al ques­tions about your astro­log­i­cal chart. If you do wish to ask a per­son­al ques­tion, please be ready to pro­vide at least your birth date and birth­place, and time of your birth if you have that too.

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 May 31^st @ 2 pm EDT:

https://www.blogtalkradio.com/astrologerbillattride/2020/05/31/astrologer-bill-attride-radio-showuranus-and-neptune-individual-and-community

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 May 31^st @ 2 pm EDT as we look at the cur­rent astro­log­i­cal indi­ca­tions and what they mean for you.

Tran­script of Radio Show: Amer­i­ca at a Turn­ing Point — Plu­to and Nep­tune in 2020 and 2021

Our main top­ic today is about the cor­re­spon­dence of ener­gies or res­o­nances regard­ing the plan­ets in terms of their orbital paths, and how long they take to make a cir­cuit around the Sun. The plan­ets form these def­i­nite ratios with one anoth­er, and it is inter­est­ing that the out­er plan­ets of Uranus, Nep­tune, and Plu­to form a ratio of one to two to three.

In oth­er words, Uranus’ orbit is about 84 years and you dou­ble that rough­ly to get to Nep­tune’s orbit of 164 years, and then by three times that we have the orbit of Plu­to which is 245. It is not an exact 1 to 2 to 3, but just like we humans, the plan­ets are indi­vid­u­als too, and they speed up and slow down and bob­ble and weave just like we do. So, every­thing is not a per­fect one thing or anoth­er, but indi­vid­u­at­ed and indi­vid­ual in nature.

But we find this gen­er­al ratio cor­re­spond­ing to many things. Because of these ratios, the plan­ets line up with them­selves, (and with the plan­ets in any chart), and they will have a res­o­nance or har­mon­ic of meet­ing up at the same times or off­set by a cer­tain amount of time, which will rein­force their mes­sag­ing. I found it kind of fas­ci­nat­ing that right now we have in the USA chart two big align­ments hap­pen­ing simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, over­lap­ping with one anoth­er, which they have done in the past.

Plu­to
I have been talk­ing, as you know, quite a bit about Plu­to and in many episodes, and that from 2008 to 2024 Plu­to is march­ing through Capri­corn, (and it has not been back there for 240 years) and indeed this is this what is com­ing up here in 2021 and 2022, which will be Pluto’s return to the USA Plu­to which is the first time it has hap­pened, so it is big.

If we look at Plu­to lin­ing up with Plu­to, and because we have Mer­cury oppo­site to Plu­to in our Natal chart for the USA, there is a res­o­nance of this hap­pen­ing through­out our his­to­ry that seems to deal with our ques­tion about how we think of our­selves (Mer­cury) and how we deal with these ques­tions of val­ue, and in our capac­i­ty to have con­trol, self-con­trol or be under the con­trol of oth­ers (Plu­to).

For instance, if I was to look at this his­tor­i­cal­ly, Plu­to kept mov­ing along after the birth of our coun­try in 1776 and formed its first major aspect to itself and to Mer­cury which hap­pened in the late 1840s into the 1850s. That is when this coun­try was grap­pling with ques­tions about how we were going to devel­op in terms of our econ­o­my and cul­ture, as we were mov­ing towards a crit­i­cal divi­sion between a freer sys­tem in the North and a slaved base sys­tem in the South, that a strug­gle was form­ing in our coun­try between a slave or free econ­o­my, and whether new states would be admit­ted as either slave or free.

When we flash for­ward to the 1930s, that is when Plu­to is oppo­site to Plu­to and con­junct Mer­cury. That is what we have in the 1930s and FDR and the New Deal, and there is once again a restate­ment of eco­nom­ic, polit­i­cal, and cul­tur­al life.

We flash for­ward again to when Plu­to squares to Plu­to and Plu­to squares Mer­cury, and that was in the ear­ly 1980s and that is the era of Rea­gan, where the mod­el set in place in the late 1930s into the 1940s was bro­ken, and we had a new way of divid­ing up the wealth and well-being of our coun­try between the var­i­ous sectors.

That brings us to our time, and here in 2020 and 2021 and 2022, Plu­to again lines up with Plu­to and Plu­to lines up with Mer­cury, and again we are address­ing the same ques­tion: Is our soci­ety based upon a clear divi­sion that is equi­table and mean­ing­ful between the dif­fer­ent sec­tors and how they share in the wealth of this coun­try, or have we reached a break­ing point in terms of how unequal the bal­ance is between those who have and those who have not?

Nep­tune
Well, fold­ing that into some­thing else we can look at the pat­tern­ing as revealed by the plan­et Nep­tune. Nep­tune is extreme­ly impor­tant in a chart. (Plu­to rules the will in the sense of integri­ty, and are we respect­ing our own space and keep­ing our­selves with integri­ty in our own inter­nal spir­i­tu­al space, and equal­ly respect­ing and not infring­ing or vio­lat­ing or tres­pass­ing upon the space of oth­ers). Nep­tune is the prin­ci­ple of our vision and dream, of our spir­i­tu­al self. The dream of Amer­i­ca, of any­one, is held by the plan­et Nep­tune. When it is lin­ing up with itself, we are ques­tion­ing or ask­ing, “what is the dream of America?”

We start with Nep­tune in Vir­go in the USA chart, right at the top of the chart, so it is part of this dream struc­ture that is quite strong, and we go from 1776 and by the late 1850s and Nep­tune is oppo­site to Nep­tune. And, we are deal­ing with the first great exam­ple of our coun­try, of com­ing to a head over this divi­sion, will we be a “slave coun­try” or will we be a “free coun­try”? The dream of Amer­i­ca is split between two dif­fer­ent soci­eties, North and South.

And there were great debates and strug­gles over that. And, of course, the great­est speech or one of the great­est speech­es ever giv­en at that time, and peo­ple refer to this again and again through­out our his­to­ry since then, was Lin­col­n’s great “house divid­ed speech” dur­ing the Lincoln/Douglas debates when he was run­ning for Senate.

Abra­ham Lin­coln - “A house Divided”
So, I would just like to quote him in terms of what he was faced with at that time, what the coun­try was faced with at that time, which of course is like our time. Because what is hap­pen­ing here in 2020, in 2020 and 2021 and 2022, Nep­tune is once again oppo­site our Nep­tune. And just like then these words hold true, and the words of Lin­coln are:

“…a house divid­ed against itself can­not stand. I believe this gov­ern­ment can­not endure per­ma­nent­ly half slave and half free. I do not expect the union to be dis­solved, I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divid­ed. It will either become all one thing or all the oth­er. Either the oppo­nents of slav­ery will arrest the fur­ther spread of it and place it where the pub­lic mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ulti­mate extinc­tion or its advo­cates will push it for­ward till it shall become law­ful in all the states, old as well as new, North as well as South.”

And here we find our­selves in the begin­ning of the 2020s, with a coun­try that seems utter­ly divid­ed between cities and the rur­al states, between peo­ple of mixed back­grounds and diver­si­ty and peo­ple who are iden­ti­fy­ing as “white”. And so, we are strug­gling once again with the iden­ti­ty of Amer­i­ca, what is the dream of this coun­try, what shall we do with this dream, is cer­tain­ly some­thing that we are strug­gling with now, just as our great ances­tors strug­gled in their time with their great division.

I hope and believe it will not be resolved by war; I do believe we can find a way through with a call­ing to, as Lin­coln said, “the angels of our bet­ter nature”, but it is cer­tain­ly a time where we see divi­sions with­in and between one anoth­er that are grow­ing and mount­ing. It has reached such a the point where, as Nep­tune would say, “we are all con­fused, we are all dis­il­lu­sioned, and we are sim­ply not under­stand­ing one anoth­er”, because some of the basic fram­ing and visions, the par­a­digms that we are liv­ing through in these dif­fer­ent cul­tures and sub­cul­tures do not hold together.

E Pluribus Unum — Out of Many, One
We must find our way back to com­mon­ly held views or an agree­ment upon what is com­mon to us, in order bring us togeth­er in this time of great divi­sion and mis­un­der­stand­ing. Whether we can do so or not depends on you and I and every­one else reach­ing across that divide and find­ing ways in which we can work togeth­er to make it bet­ter for one and all; to real­ize that there are more things that we hold togeth­er than hold us apart.

But we are cer­tain­ly being divid­ed from one anoth­er and framed that way by var­i­ous instru­ments and vehi­cles of the mod­ern age, and these are mak­ing use of that divi­sion for their own prof­it and well-being. We must not suc­cumb to that siren call of divi­sion and of mak­ing the oth­er “the oth­er”, but we must see that every­one for the most part wants what we want, and we need to find a way to do that.

Plu­to and Neptune
I would point to anoth­er great moment in our his­to­ry, also when Plu­to was lined up with Mer­cury and Plu­to, and when Nep­tune was lined up also; it was when the Nep­tune con­junc­tion occurred. So, we had Nep­tune start­ing in Vir­go, and it reach­es its first oppo­si­tion to itself that was the great divide of the Civ­il War and it came around back to itself and we had a Nep­tune con­junc­tion, a return of Nep­tune in the late 1930s when FDR was in office. Roo­sevelt put out as one of his great state­ments on how we should try to build a bet­ter world, over­com­ing the divi­sions of the time, between Fas­cism and Social­ism, and the wars that ensued. What he talked about was our need to work at devel­op­ing and hold­ing to the “Four Freedoms”.

FDR and the Four Free­doms – Free­dom from Fear
The Four Free­doms for him were: First is Free­dom of Speech and Expres­sion, and he said for “every­where in the world”; the Sec­ond Free­dom is for every per­son to wor­ship God in their own way, every­where in the world; the third is Free­dom from Want which trans­lat­ed into world terms means eco­nom­ic under­stand­ings which will secure to every nation a healthy peace­time life for its inhab­i­tants, every­where in the world; and his great­est call­ing, of course, and it res­onates down the halls of his­to­ry, the fourth free­dom is the Free­dom from Fear, which trans­lates into world terms means a world­wide reduc­tion of arma­ments, of weapons of war, to such a point that in such a thor­ough fash­ion that no nation will be in a posi­tion to com­mit an act of phys­i­cal aggres­sion against any neigh­bor, any­where in the world.

Well, I know we are far from that free­dom from fear, but it is a goal, it is a dream that we should hold dear in our hearts if we are going to make it through these upcom­ing years. Because cer­tain­ly the world we know is falling apart, and it is not com­plete­ly lost, the world we had. We must pre­serve, pro­tect, and main­tain the val­ues, the struc­tures, and the insti­tu­tions that are still viable and car­ry­ing out their nec­es­sary duties of meet­ing one anoth­er’s needs, which is what we use them for. But cer­tain­ly, right now, we are deal­ing with the shat­ter­ing of our con­sen­sus and under­stand­ing of what our life is to be based upon.

Life, Lib­er­ty and the Pur­suit of Happiness
Much like our ances­tors faced the divi­sion between North and South, we face a divi­sion with­in our­selves and with­in our com­mu­ni­ties, and through­out this coun­try that must be addressed. And it must be addressed by hold­ing high to the ideals that we found­ed this coun­try upon; that we are here in a com­mon fel­low­ship, pledg­ing our­selves to one anoth­er, our “Life, Lib­er­ty and the pur­suit of Happiness”.

We must pre­serve, as much as we can, all Life and pro­tect it; we must have Lib­er­ty, which means to nev­er infringe upon the rights of any oth­er and to hold each oth­er sacred in terms of our sacred selves; to pur­sue Hap­pi­ness which means to encour­age and make pos­si­ble the means by which every per­son is able to meet the great­est degree of their own self-real­iza­tion and self-fulfillment.

Hap­pi­ness is not hav­ing more things, it is being your­self and being able to reach the finest expres­sion of that self by liv­ing in com­mu­ni­ties, by work­ing with one and for anoth­er, so that we cel­e­brate our diver­si­ty, cel­e­brate our indi­vid­u­al­i­ty, and we do not deny or den­i­grate it.

This is the dream of Amer­i­ca and Nep­tune rules our dreams. And right now, we are con­fronting what will be the dream or the restate­ment of dream that will get us through these dark times. I am always hope­ful, that in the long run every­thing is going to work out, but I know things looked dark right now. And every­one should be remind­ed that our ances­tors went through very dark times indeed and they came through it shin­ing, by build­ing a bet­ter world.

We are not done yet of course there is a lot of work to be done but this is our hour to stand and shine for truth, for love, and for one another.

Tran­script of Radio Show: A Deep­er View — Plu­to and the USA Mercury

What I would like to do today is pick up on things I have been talk­ing about for some time. As I did last week, I will talk about these peri­ods and moments in his­to­ry or in the world’s unfold­ing of events, and that there are plan­e­tary cycles with­in cycles. We look prin­ci­pal­ly at the main dri­vers of large and long range cycles, and they are held by the three out­er plan­ets: Plu­to going through Capri­corn from 2008 to 2024; and Nep­tune going through Pisces from 2011 to 2026; and Uranus going through Tau­rus from 2018 to 2026.

All these are quite potent, pow­er­ful forces and have inter­est­ing inter­sec­tions with oth­er his­tor­i­cal peri­ods that I men­tioned last time and with what’s hap­pen­ing now, and you can always lis­ten to that show if you want to hear that or read the tran­script, or find more on the blog about this stuff as well.

I thought today, though I will always keep in mind these uni­ver­sal ener­gies that are affect­ing the plan­et, we are also affect­ed in indi­vid­ual ways. You can also look at a chart of any enti­ty whether it be a com­pa­ny or a leader of a coun­try or a coun­try itself, you can look at their birth chart and get some indi­ca­tion as to what that coun­try or enti­ty may be going through.

Mun­dane Astrology
This kind of astrol­o­gy is called Mun­dane Astrol­o­gy or world­ly astrol­o­gy, not look­ing at humans or humans and their pets and oth­er kinds of things, but look­ing at look­ing at these larg­er enti­ties formed and often last­ing for many more years than a human. We look at these same ener­gies mov­ing through their charts to see what it might indicate.

Plu­to & Mer­cury in USA Chart
What I men­tioned in the last year or two, build­ing up in the USA chart, is a par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant aspect that is occur­ring this year. These long-wave aspects build in like a Bell curve, com­ing as a wax­ing of ener­gies that reach their cli­max at the most exact moments. This year in the USA, we are expe­ri­enc­ing this triple pass of Plu­to going back and forth over the USA Mer­cury. The exact time, not that it mat­ters for our pur­pos­es, is the end of Feb­ru­ary the mid­dle of July and the begin­ning of 2021.

We would expect this ener­gy to hold steadi­ly, since Plu­to hard­ly moves at all dur­ing the year. What is strik­ing about this align­ment is that this same aspect exists in the USA chart. The Unit­ed States was born with the plan­et Plu­to ris­ing in its Sec­ond House of resources and val­ue, (and the val­ue of any­thing is shown by the 2nd house). Where­as in the 8th house, Mer­cury is locat­ed and is oppo­site to Plu­to, (and the 8^th house rules how we join our val­ues togeth­er and com­bine our assets and resources, to do what we can­not do alone). In a Nation­al chart or a mun­dane chart, the 8^th would include things like inter­na­tion­al affairs and inter­na­tion­al trade and inter­na­tion­al finance and activ­i­ties that we are doing not by our­selves but in com­bi­na­tion with oth­ers. For a nation that means with oth­er enti­ties or nations for the most part and how we com­bine with them, and so this very much deals with our under­stand­ing of our own val­ue and wealth and our trade and wealth with oth­er nations and things of that nature.

But more espe­cial­ly, on anoth­er lev­el, Plu­to deals with, as I’ve been talk­ing about, the will and willpow­er. The cen­tral con­cern of Plu­to is to help us as indi­vid­u­als, or any enti­ty, to form and cre­ate its own sacred space that it exists and abides with­in; and, to turn that ener­gy back on itself in order to achieve greater self-mas­tery and self-deter­mi­na­tion. But often these ener­gies are mis­ap­plied and mis­used by those who live in fear or with a more neg­a­tive view­point, and then they will try to use this ener­gy-form to con­trol or vio­late the spaces of oth­ers, which is why we often have “hell on earth”.

Pluto/Mercury Aspect in USA chart
So, in this regard, this is what is hap­pen­ing with­in the USA chart and its rela­tion­ship to the plan­et Mer­cury, which is the plan­et that rules com­mu­ni­ca­tions, the mind, and thought forms. So, this shows a very intense ener­gy form at the out­set of the USA’s con­sti­tu­tion and struc­ture to do with com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and the pas­sion­ate belief we would have in our thought-forms, ideas, and beliefs.

It is some­what quite well known in many cir­cles that Amer­i­cans can be a lit­tle off putting because we think we are right, all the time. We think our way is the best way and the only way; and that is where we make a mis­take. We do have great ideals and great aspi­ra­tions, to be this great exper­i­ment where all peo­ples come togeth­er and blend togeth­er. But then we our­selves can fall into dog­ma­tism and rigid­i­ty in our own think­ing when we press the case for being all know­ing or hav­ing the only answer, which is not true.

Yet, because Plu­to rules trans­for­ma­tion, rebirth and renew­al and Mer­cury brings the mind to bear, this pow­er that the USA does pos­sess is one that is very direct­ly tied to our pow­er in terms of delv­ing deep­er than oth­er peo­ples might do to under­cov­er under­ly­ing truth. That is why this coun­try has always excelled in terms of research and trans­for­ma­tion­al knowl­edge. I would say that with Plu­to ris­ing and Mer­cury oppo­site in our 8th house, and the fact that Plu­to rules the 8th sign of Scor­pio, I would say the USA is a very “Alchem­i­cal Country”.

Alche­my
What does that mean? Alche­my, like our mod­ern term of chem­istry, is how every­thing is made and cre­at­ed through com­bin­ing with oth­er things. Noth­ing exists by itself; every­thing is a com­bi­na­tion with some­thing else to make some­thing greater. And, in that process we elic­it growth and change and the unfold­ment of the entire cos­mos, (as in atoms devel­op­ing into larg­er atoms, and mol­e­cules devel­op­ing into larg­er mol­e­cules, and life­forms devel­op­ing and mul­ti­ply­ing, all through com­bi­na­tions and elic­i­ta­tions of growth and change). So, this is the very pow­er that dri­ves life itself. It is quite fun­da­men­tal, and one could say that in our coun­try we are dis­cov­er­ing the secrets of life (and oth­er coun­tries are as well), which is very amaz­ing (and scary).

But still, what does it mean for us now as a nation to be deal­ing with this Plu­to tran­sit over Mer­cury, what might it tell us? Well it is mak­ing us reex­am­ine, (as Plu­to march­es through our sec­ond house and lines up with Mer­cury), and deal with this ques­tion of our sacred space and each per­son­’s con­scious­ness; and it reminds us that we may mis­use that pow­er if we are not care­ful, when we try to force ideas upon one anoth­er, or one group to anoth­er, so that peo­ple become obsessed with their think­ing and nar­rowed in their under­stand­ing. Then, rather than hold­ing truth and delv­ing to a greater truth through humil­i­ty and open­ness to a greater under­stand­ing, we end up try­ing to beat each oth­er up with our points of view and “truth”, which is cer­tain­ly hap­pen­ing out there in all dif­fer­ent forms and medi­ums in our world right now.

What hap­pens is that nobody is lis­ten­ing, and every­body is shout­ing at one anoth­er, and we do not find the truth because it gets drowned out in all this noise. So, there is a need for all of us to step back as indi­vid­u­als and take con­trol of our own minds; we need to see how our thoughts and ideas are being swayed and pushed by forces bend­ing them beyond our under­stand­ing. And this holds true not just for thoughts but also for our val­ues, because this is the House of the USA val­ues. Of course we all know and have heard about how our tastes and long­ings, our fears and our hopes, are being shaped by oth­ers who are gath­er­ing all this data on us, and they are learn­ing how to shape our own thoughts and aspi­ra­tions and desires and buy­ing habits, they are shap­ing our val­ues through algo­rithms and all this big data.

Val­ue of a Nation
And again, that is what I would want us to con­sid­er, that if the 2nd house is the House of Val­ue: what is the val­ue of a nation? I’ve talked about this many times, and many peo­ple would con­sid­er in a tra­di­tion­al house chart of a nation, that it is that country’s stocks and bonds, and oil and coal and gas, and all the nat­ur­al resources, and that is the wealth and pros­per­i­ty of that nation. And though I would grant, that on a phys­i­cal lev­el there are phys­i­cal facts that can make one nation have more of these so-called “nat­ur­al resources” than anoth­er. But what I would pre­fer to focus upon, giv­en that we’re deal­ing with humans, and look­ing at things spir­i­tu­al­ly, is that the real source of val­ue of course in any­thing is Spirit.

And there­fore, the val­ues of a nation would then come from its peo­ple, in terms of deal­ing with the human con­di­tion. There­fore we would look at this type of hier­ar­chy of val­ues in terms of our expe­ri­ence of one anoth­er as human, and how we work towards bring­ing out the val­ue and self-worth and lead­ing to the self-ful­fill­ment of every per­son in this nation (of course even in this world) in order to reach the high­est lev­el of a cul­ture and an expe­ri­ence for one and all.

So, these nat­ur­al resources can have val­ue, cer­tain­ly. And what is of val­ue to any cul­ture can change. Obvi­ous­ly, if you are in a cer­tain kind of agrar­i­an cul­ture cer­tain things are use­ful to you. But if you are in a very indus­tri­al kind of cul­ture oth­er things that look like they were use­less now take on great val­ue, like min­er­als and such. So, it varies our expe­ri­ence of the val­ues of this world around us, but our fun­da­men­tal val­ue, the source of val­ue, is the val­ue we have for and between one another.

And so, this is what is going through a trans­for­ma­tion right now as we address this ques­tion of how we work this notion of val­ue in our life. We real­ize that indeed, though we saw humans hav­ing val­ue by the sweat of their labor, and com­bin­ing with var­i­ous resources they were able to pro­duce added val­ue through that effort, (and some were then able to accu­mu­late that val­ue to build larg­er orga­ni­za­tions and insti­tu­tions of value).

Com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of Humans
What is our val­ue, what is your val­ue, in this Amer­i­can econ­o­my? We have come to real­ize this: We are the prod­uct now! There is a whole indus­try devot­ed to exam­in­ing us, to col­lect­ing our “data”, in order to fig­ure out our wants and desires, our fears and long­ings, through all these algo­rithms, so that they can “sell us”. We are what they are sell­ing to others.

So, we have to say: “wait a minute, what is my val­ue and why are you using it in this fash­ion to dri­ve our expe­ri­ences and make us go in this direc­tion ver­sus that direc­tion?” This is a call­ing for all of us to think about how we hold sacred our val­ue and wish to pro­tect our pri­va­cy to what­ev­er extent we wish, and open in oth­er ways to every extent we wish, because these ques­tions have not been addressed but need to be addressed at this time. Because oth­ers may be abus­ing us as a val­ue, and that they seem­ing­ly can own us, and slice up and dice up this infor­ma­tion and share with oth­ers for mon­e­tary gain.

Those are some things that are sort of swirling in my mind about this ques­tion of val­ue for our country.

His­to­ry of Pluto/Mercury Tran­sits in USA Chart
But again, what is also inter­est­ing his­tor­i­cal­ly is to look at oth­er points in his­to­ry in which Plu­to made this align­ment to Mer­cury. And, as I have men­tioned before, there were two such times. The pre­vi­ous two align­ments of Plu­to to Mer­cury was 1933 to 1937, and 1981 to 1983.

1930s
And so, I said to myself well let us com­pare those peri­ods and see what hap­pened at each of those moments. Well, obvi­ous­ly in the ear­ly 1930s, it was the begin­ning of the Great Depres­sion, the world came almost to a com­plete stop, and Amer­i­ca was tee­ter­ing at that moment between going one way and anoth­er. Some oth­er solu­tions through­out the world at that time was a fusion of cap­i­tal­ism and the state in terms of Fas­cism; and some went oth­er way towards a fusion of the state and the econ­o­my with Social­ism and Communism.

Amer­i­ca sort of found a way through, not doing one or the oth­er but try­ing to hold togeth­er you might say the labor move­ment and the cap­i­tal­ists and forge an agree­ment of how we would share the ben­e­fits and pro­tect peo­ple but also allow for rea­son­able growth. And there was a mod­el set in place then in the 1930s into the late 1930s that held until the late 1970s. And if we look at the eco­nom­ic mod­el­ing of that, and how the wealth was shared in our econ­o­my from the late 1940s, let’s say from late 40s after the war on up to 1980, the lines of dif­fer­ent income seg­ments in both the bot­tom per­centiles that the top per­centiles went in step with each oth­er, steadi­ly climb­ing so that pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and the gains and the wealth was being dis­trib­uted more or less fair­ly among the dif­fer­ent sec­tors. One could argue how fair, but fair­ly equitable.

1980s
But when we get to 1980 the lines com­plete­ly diverge. And I said to myself, “isn’t that strik­ing, that we were hav­ing this increas­ing­ly grow­ing but fair econ­o­my that broke down, what changed?” What changed in 1980 was the so-called Rea­gan Rev­o­lu­tion, where we cut the mar­gin­al rates of tax­es dra­mat­i­cal­ly; we were promised by cut­ting tax­es we would have extra­or­di­nary growth. George Bush the senior at that time, run­ning against Rea­gan for pres­i­den­tial office, said it is “voodoo eco­nom­ics”. He was right, because the promis­es of great growth pay­ing for the tax cuts and every­body would be made whole, every­body would ben­e­fit from this, did not pan out and for the next 40 years, from 1980 to now 2020, these lines have been diverg­ing. And the major­i­ty of peo­ple have had their incomes flat­ten­ing out, and their wealth decrease. And many of them were wiped out in 2008 when econ­o­my was crashed again by the finan­cial “titans” who sup­pos­ed­ly run these things; they broke the eco­nom­ic machine and it was nev­er fixed or made whole.

From 1980 to 2020, we have been expe­ri­enc­ing a grow­ing unfair shar­ing of our wealth that we all pro­duce. In fact in terms of the share of total US income held by the top 1%, it reached its high­est pro­por­tion right before the great crash in 1929, it got to its low­est lev­el and fairest dis­tri­b­u­tion of US income was reached in the late 70s, and ever since then it’s been climbing.

Inequal­i­ty in America
So this is part of what’s dri­ving our divi­sions now, (there are many oth­er changes that took place in terms of eco­nom­ic laws being changed, not just mar­gin­al tax rates, in terms of how invest­ment banks oper­at­ed, how dif­fer­ent things were hap­pen­ing in the econ­o­my) that led to a skew­ing of out­comes. But one fun­da­men­tal fact is, that unlike oth­er advanced indus­tri­al coun­tries, we changed our tax struc­ture in a dra­mat­ic way that dis­al­lowed the gen­er­al shar­ing of wealth in this coun­try and skewed it to the top 1%, to the top .1%, even the top 5%, and so the rest of us were left to strug­gle more and more to make ends meet.

And so, what is hap­pen­ing here in 2020 is we are going to have this con­ver­sa­tion again about what is right. We should be look­ing at what hap­pened in the 1930s and com­pare it to what hap­pened the 1980s and see where we are now in the 2020s and say, “can we do bet­ter than this, how can we do bet­ter than this”?

This is part of the con­ver­sa­tion that is cer­tain­ly hap­pen­ing in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic side; it should be hap­pen­ing on the Repub­li­can side too, because if these increas­ing divides con­tin­ue this coun­try can­not be held togeth­er and we will divide up and fight one anoth­er or it will be imposed upon us, and we should agree to agree as to what is fair.

That is cer­tain­ly an espe­cial­ly impor­tant con­ver­sa­tion, that will be the con­ver­sa­tion here, as the 2020s begin. Just like we had this same reset eco­nom­i­cal­ly in the 1930s and again in the 1980s, count on there being a major reset of US under­stand­ing and rela­tion­ship to how we han­dle our wealth and val­ue, how there­fore we treat our peo­ple in this upcom­ing period.

Sat­urn and Pluto 
What is also strik­ing about this to my mind, is that at the same time that Plu­to is going over our Mer­cury, Sat­urn now every 29 years comes around the solar sys­tem, that’s how long it takes to make a com­plete cir­cuit of the solar sys­tem,  and this is the year that it’s once again lin­ing up with the USA Plu­to. The very plan­et we have been talk­ing about. Sat­urn lin­ing up a Plu­to is deal­ing with ques­tions posed by Sat­urn which is about ques­tions of author­i­ty, and how we struc­ture things in terms of, in this case, state orga­ni­za­tions or busi­ness orga­ni­za­tions or what­ev­er orga­ni­za­tion we are talk­ing about.

Sat­urn is in a sense the ruler and the leader, and the insti­tu­tion itself, the struc­ture of author­i­ty; and Plu­to is the issue of the will. So how does that author­i­ty wield the will that is put at its dis­pos­al. Again, I always say the will is this ener­gy that we have cre­at­ed by hold­ing our­selves with­in a con­tain­er and then direct that ener­gy out­ward to serve that enti­ty, and as long as whether you’re the head of a fam­i­ly, or the head of a com­mu­ni­ty, or the head of a com­pa­ny or coun­try, as long as you serve the ends of that enti­ty then you are safe and can wield that pow­er correctly.

But when you seize it for your own use or mis­use that author­i­ty, that is when you are brought down. What is hap­pen­ing here with Sat­urn going over the USA Plu­to is that we are deal­ing with this issue of how author­i­ties are wield­ing their will appro­pri­ate­ly, nei­ther over or under doing that, or are they in need of being restruc­tured because they have abused that author­i­ty, because the struc­ture or author­i­ties have let us down, which is cer­tain­ly a big com­plaint of late.

His­to­ry of Sat­urn Con­junct Pluto
So, in look­ing at the times that this hap­pened before it will be about every 29 years, the years that come out are strik­ing. It is 1932, that was when Roo­sevelt comes into office to try to heal the coun­try and move it on a path of good growth again, which took quite some time. 1961, when Kennedy came in and brought about cer­tain reforms and changes that that were fore­short­ened by his assas­si­na­tion. 1991, we go from the years of Rea­gan and Bush to the years of Bill Clin­ton. And now, it is hap­pen­ing again in 2020.

Each one seems to be a piv­otal moment in the rela­tion­ship between pow­er and the author­i­ty, between the state and how it wields its pow­er. So, there is a great strug­gle over who will wield pow­er and how pow­er should be exer­cised in our coun­try from the local lev­el to the state lev­el to the nation­al lev­el. In each peri­od, we had to address these ques­tions of how we wield author­i­ty and pow­er: Are the author­i­ties wield­ing it cor­rect­ly, have they done right by their office? These were the ques­tions in the ear­ly 1930s and the ear­ly 1960s and the ear­ly 1990s. In 2020, these very same ques­tions regard­ing the will and the author­i­ty con­front our coun­try once again.

Tran­script of Radio Show: The look ahead for 2020 

For today I thought we would look ahead and see what is com­ing. But of course in look­ing ahead we are always look­ing back because, unlike our civ­il cal­en­dar which we begin on Jan­u­ary 1 and ends on Decem­ber 31^st and every­thing is encap­su­lat­ed with­in that year, the plan­e­tary motions, being what they are, are rather longer than that. For many of them, they last tens if not hun­dreds of years; their “year”, if you will, can be as long as 250 years rough­ly with Plu­to, and 170 years with Nep­tune to get around the solar sys­tem once. Their align­ments are reg­u­lar­ly spaced out with regards to them­selves, and with regards to any indi­vid­ual chart, whether it is a per­son or com­pa­ny or coun­try. A lot of these phe­nom­e­na are what we call “long wave phe­nom­e­na” of the out­er plan­ets, of Uranus and Nep­tune and Plu­to. We con­sid­er them to be the fun­da­men­tal “beats”, set­ting the tone for a peri­od or an age, and so they are espe­cial­ly important.

Then we look at more inter­me­di­ate changes indi­cat­ed by the plan­e­tary motions of Sat­urn, two of those inter­me­di­ate plan­ets, but Sat­urn for itself and then Jupiter of course also; and then the inner plan­ets are much quick­er and get around with­in a year or so if not sooner.

Plu­to
So, we would tend to want to focus on these larg­er wave phe­nom­e­na and work our way in. Again, start­ing with the plan­et that I have been talk­ing about quite a bit now since the mid-2000s, antic­i­pat­ing its move into Capri­corn, and now it has been there for some time , it has been there since 2008 and remains there till 2024, we are deal­ing with Plu­to in Capricorn.

Capri­corn
And it is always impor­tant to under­stand, how do we derive this infor­ma­tion, where does this come from? Capri­corn is the sign of insti­tu­tions, that we take human needs such as they are, because we are deal­ing with humans obvi­ous­ly, and as opposed to spon­ta­neous­ly try­ing to meet the needs on the fly, moment to moment, we learn to sys­tem­atize and orga­nize things and cre­ate struc­tures with­in a fam­i­ly, with­in a com­mu­ni­ty, with­in a com­pa­ny or coun­try, region or coun­try, or inter­na­tion­al­ly, we cre­ate insti­tu­tions that serve to hold these ways of meet­ing needs and offer­ing ser­vices or mean­ing in life that last for a long time.

Giv­en that at the core of every­thing down here, through­out the whole uni­verse, every speck and minor part to the largest sys­tems are all made of one thing fun­da­men­tal­ly, Spir­it; and Spirit’s imper­a­tive is to become, to grow, which means to change. No mat­ter what sys­tem or struc­ture or econ­o­my or cul­ture we cre­ate may last for a very long time, but it does have an “end date”, where things have to be bro­ken down so new forms can take their place. Much like mov­ing from life to life, the spir­it leaves the body, it is not a death but it is a release from that phys­i­cal frame, which could no longer con­tain the spir­it and the need for that spir­it to con­tin­ue to grow.

Sim­i­lar­ly here, with Plu­to going through Capri­corn, since Capri­corn rules insti­tu­tions, (and I have not­ed this by look­ing at his­to­ry, and I was his­to­ri­an long ago and stud­ied many dif­fer­ent approach­es) and when I came across Astrol­o­gy I won­dered how it might pro­vide a way of fram­ing his­to­ry. And it was remark­able how these plan­e­tary motions weav­ing with one anoth­er, char­ac­ter­ize or sort of explained in an Astro­log­i­cal way what was the pur­pose of this change that a cul­ture or civ­i­liza­tion was going through.

Plu­to and the Will
It is rel­e­vant for help­ing us under­stand where we are right now. As Capri­corn rules insti­tu­tions, Plu­to is the plan­et, that I say, is the prin­ci­ple of the will, which is one of the three aspects of the divine with­in all of us. The will is there to cre­ate the bound­aries with­in our­selves, where­by we con­tain our­selves and hold our­selves with will, and pro­tect our­selves from any kind of tres­pass­ing or vio­la­tion. And equal­ly, restrain us from try­ing to over­ly influ­ence or affect anoth­er, we want to do this freely and will­ing­ly and choose to work togeth­er, not force our­selves upon one anoth­er. That is the great spir­i­tu­al crime of Tres­pass­ing, which of course, while it pre­vails on this plan­et, we have hell on earth. And when enough peo­ple respect the bound­aries one to anoth­er and help each oth­er, to lift one anoth­er up, and become more cen­tered and will­ful peo­ple in a self-con­trol­ling way, then we begin to estab­lish heav­en on earth.

The pur­pose of the will is to make these bound­aries and struc­tures, but went these Plu­ton­ian ener­gies are mov­ing through a sign it tends to break­down and refor­mu­late that sign. So, Plu­to in Capri­corn, again from 2008 to 2024, like it was from the 1760s to the 1770s, and like the ear­ly 1500s, we have wit­nessed peri­ods where, as it is now, a time when the polit­i­cal, cul­tur­al, and eco­nom­ic order breaks down. Why?  Because it has out­lived its pur­pose. The things it erect­ed to solve cer­tain prob­lems now become the very imped­i­ments to future growth for Spir­it. It must be released so a new form can take hold.

Pre­servers, Cre­ators, Destroyers
We are see­ing insti­tu­tion­al break­downs, from the fam­i­ly on up to the nation­al and transna­tion­al struc­tures, because we are at the end of an age and the birth of a new one. So, as I say repeat­ed­ly, there are peo­ple on the plan­et now who are work­ing might­i­ly to pre­serve what can and should be in our cul­ture and cul­tures; as well as those who are trans­form­ing those mech­a­nisms and means of meet­ing needs and build­ing new insti­tu­tions or reform­ing the old ones; and then the peo­ple who are just destroy­ing, that is their pur­pose, is to expose the cor­rupt, the rot, and the inef­fec­tive­ness of these old struc­tures, as is true, and they take it down or break it apart. Every­body is play­ing their role here, in var­i­ous fashions.

This is the first thing we would con­sid­er, and since Plu­to con­tin­ues to go through Capri­corn now, we would want to see what it is affect­ing most strong­ly at any one time. What we are find­ing right now is that peo­ple are feel­ing this tremen­dous pres­sure of norms being bro­ken, and wills being bro­ken and they are being swayed in var­i­ous ways, through evok­ing our pas­sions and fears, to act in ways that are not as ele­vat­ed in con­scious­ness as they should be, and then we react to each oth­er and break apart from one anoth­er into these var­i­ous group­ings. Basi­cal­ly, it is fear that is dri­ving those who go to the low­er com­mon denom­i­na­tor or level.

Plu­to and the USA Mercury
What is hap­pen­ing this year in the USA chart with this? I spoke about this last year because things build in like a Bell curve over time. An ener­gy form wax­es in and reach­es a cli­max, then fades out again. And we were under this approach­ing ener­gy form of Plu­to com­ing over the USA Mer­cury all dur­ing 2019, and now it is ful­ly in place in 2020. It is a bat­tle with the Will and the Mind; and how we  deal with the neces­si­ty to hold, as a sacred space, each per­son­’s con­scious­ness, ver­sus the mis­use of will and pow­er to sway and influ­ence minds, whether it be “one on one” with­in a fam­i­ly or in groups, or larg­er group­ings of indi­vid­u­als. Peo­ple try­ing to use their pow­er or becom­ing inflamed and pas­sion­ate about some­thing, not try­ing to try to con­vince some­one through rea­soned debate, but real­ly try­ing to force the issue. There is a break­ing down of what we should respect, ulti­mate­ly, which is the sacred space of the oth­er. We should be respect­ing their con­scious­ness. You can­not force truth upon anoth­er; you can only elic­it their growth to reach a high­er lev­el of under­stand­ing, because the truth is all with­in us.

But right now this pow­er of sway­ing minds and hearts, whether through social media and the algo­rithms, whether dif­fer­ent peo­ple spout­ing through their var­i­ous vehi­cles of influ­enc­ing in media in dif­fer­ent forums, are push­ing out ideas and beliefs and sway­ing peo­ple to their side or against oth­ers. We are expe­ri­enc­ing a break­ing down of the integri­ty and sacred­ness of indi­vid­ual con­scious­ness, by hav­ing this forc­ing of ideas and beliefs, and by doing so we are break­ing the most impor­tant fac­ul­ty of “crit­i­cal rea­son”. That fac­ul­ty of rea­son is essen­tial, to build and hold our own minds true and fig­ure out things for our­selves and share with oth­ers. But when it becomes bro­ken, as it has been, there is no com­mon under­stand­ing, and peo­ple are being swayed by appeals to sort of “half-think­ing” or “wrong way think­ing” as opposed to clear­er thinking.

Plu­to to Mer­cury Historically
We have come through times like this before in the USA his­to­ry. We look at oth­er times that Plu­to lined up with Mer­cury, the last two times were 1933 to 1937 and 1981 to 1983. Both were crit­i­cal moments in the US his­to­ry, for vis­it­ing again and look­ing again at how we struc­ture our eco­nom­ic lives and well-being. The 30s with the New Deal and in the 1980s with the Rea­gan Rev­o­lu­tion, and it is inter­est­ing because in the US chart the Mer­cury and Plu­to are actu­al­ly lined up with each oth­er from the 2nd House of val­ues to the 8th House of col­lec­tive values.

Wealth and Inequality
And so it makes sense that we would, with­in the con­ver­sa­tion of how we hold our minds sacred at a time like this and try to help peo­ple pro­tect their bound­aries, that we are also deal­ing with the issue of how is it that we allo­cate and deal with the wealth of this coun­try and the val­ues of its peo­ple being embod­ied in that, and how they share in that. Our big, big ques­tion of the moment in in terms of our cul­ture and how divid­ed we are in terms of the dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth and what that means for eco­nom­ic growth and spir­i­tu­al well-being, are very big ques­tions that are front and cen­ter, as they were in the ear­ly 1930s as they were in the ear­ly 1980s. So here we are again. It is nev­er the same con­ver­sa­tion, of course, as plan­ets are lin­ing up, every­thing else is mov­ing around, oth­er plan­ets are in dif­fer­ent places, so there is no exact­ness in terms of the con­fig­u­ra­tion. But the rhyming and the rea­son­ing behind it is remark­ably sim­i­lar, if not the same.

Nep­tune
We will talk again more about this Plu­to and Mer­cury, and I want to get to all your calls. So, the sec­ond most impor­tant fea­ture in any year is of course what is Nep­tune doing? In an inter­est­ing way, Nep­tune also is going through a spe­cial sign, its own sign from 2011 to 2026. The  last time it did this was 1848 to 1862, a very crit­i­cal time, espe­cial­ly in Amer­i­ca, where there was a ris­ing wave of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and con­cern for the great sin of slav­ery, lead­ing to the “War of the States” over that very issue.

Nep­tune is the plan­et that, in a way, counter to Plu­to which estab­lish­es bound­aries in the sacred­ness of each indi­vid­ual, in their own sacred spir­i­tu­al space, and then shar­ing their spaces with oth­ers, Nep­tune is that counter that says yes, but the force that binds this whole uni­verse togeth­er, the force that breathes and gives life to all life and all con­scious­ness, because the whole uni­verse is con­scious, just on dif­fer­ent lev­els, is the one fun­da­men­tal val­ue or one fun­da­men­tal force, known as Uncon­di­tion­al Love.

So, Nep­tune’s role is to help us dis­solve beyond the bound­aries that are fram­ing things and see things more inclu­sive­ly, to see every­thing is part of one great life. So, when Nep­tune is strong it leads to a greater ris­ing in com­pas­sion and social move­ments and visu­al­iza­tions and cre­ativ­i­ty. So it is a won­drous time for peo­ple to become more per­cep­tive, more intu­itive and see things beyond what they were con­scious­ly see­ing; to intu­it and appre­hend things, just beyond the range of our words and knowl­edge as a con­crete fact.

But it also equal­ly, every plan­et has its neg­a­tive. Where Plu­to can lead to the rise of peo­ple abus­ing will and using guilt and manip­u­la­tion to dri­ve the sto­ry, as opposed to try­ing to help peo­ple take con­trol of them­selves. Nep­tune also when mis­ap­plied leads to out rise of delu­sion and escapism and con­fu­sion and decep­tion, these are the neg­a­tive influ­ences of Nep­tune in Pisces. Because we are now mov­ing in a place where there are less bound­aries, and so what is real­ly “real”, how do we deter­mine this?

So we will have moments of great illu­mi­na­tion and clear-see­ing; but also be grap­pling with all these sort of half-truths and things that do not make sense, and we can­not make sense of it, and “what do we believe”, “how do we know what we know” are impor­tant questions.

What is True
I would say we will start with the fun­da­men­tals, start with what we know to be absolute­ly true. Start with the core prin­ci­ples that have been there to guide human­i­ty from the begin­ning of time, in all the ancient teach­ings and all the ancient wis­dom, the sto­ry does not change, the Truth does not change, because they are Truths! We have to look with­in our hearts to find them and see them mir­rored in the world around us, in the plan­ets, in the plant life, and the ani­mal life, and in us, the truths are embod­ied in real life and liv­ing in spir­it. There are ways to get to them, always. “Walk in beau­ty”, Live in beau­ty”, “Be lov­ing” and it is shown to you.

This is the path. But it is a very con­fus­ing time, and so we are try­ing to pierce through that con­fu­sion to see what is real­ly “real”.

Uranus
Then we have Uranus, mov­ing through Tau­rus, from 2018 to 2026 also. The last time it did that was back in the 1930s, which is inter­est­ing. And, before that it was in Tau­rus in the late 1850s, inter­est­ing­ly. Uranus is the plan­et that deals with the need for each of us has to become a unique instance of spir­it, to become a free­think­ing being, to have a freer and freer mind, because we are on this path of self-con­scious­ness, of self-aware­ness, and so we need to free our minds con­stant­ly and be think­ing as a cre­ative spirit.

We want to lib­er­ate our minds and in this case Uranus’ influ­ence is mov­ing through the sign of Tau­rus, the Sign of Val­ue. There is a call now to renew our val­ues, to come up with new approach­es to: What is the val­ue of me; what is the val­ue of you; what is the val­ue of all that we have here? We need to real­ize that the way we had approached val­ues since the 1930s and ear­ly 1940s, that it now needs to be revis­it­ed once again as we restate and form a new sense of pro­por­tion­al­i­ty and val­ue in the world.

Sat­urn in Aquarius
So there these three beats, (Plu­to, Nep­tune, Uranus) mov­ing through and act­ing for many years here, and we will talk about oth­er align­ments that they make. Anoth­er big change com­ing up this year, we will talk a lot about it lat­er on the shows, is Sat­urn begins to make its move into the next sign, from Capri­corn where it has been since the end of 2017, and now moves dur­ing the course of 2020 back and forth from the end of Capri­corn into Aquar­ius and back again. Final­ly lin­ing up in Aquar­ius to stay for over two years in Decem­ber 2020.

We are mov­ing to a time where we go from the “tests of respon­si­bil­i­ty” and the “tests of self-ful­fill­ment” (Capri­corn), and tests of insti­tu­tions, to “tests of social con­scious­ness and com­mu­ni­ty”. So now we will see us all hav­ing to con­sid­er once again: “what is my hope and dream? My hope, my dream is to be hap­py with those who I can share this with, with those who make me hap­py and my hap­pi­ness is theirs.”

It is all about com­mu­ni­ty and friend­ship; it is about com­pan­ion­ship and social con­scious­ness. This is what Sat­urn will now stir up as a test for all of us. The ques­tion will be: Are you par­tic­i­pat­ing in a mean­ing­ful way to pre­serve your way of life, to make for a bet­ter future for your­self and your fel­low trav­el­ers; are you are you in this world as a mem­ber of a com­mu­ni­ty, or com­mu­ni­ties in a sig­nif­i­cant way? That will be very much on point.

Jupiter
Jupiter con­tin­ues to move through Capri­corn now, it entered in Decem­ber of 2019, and will catch up to Sat­urn in Aquar­ius at the end of the year, Decem­ber 2020. That is a sig­nif­i­cant align­ment indeed. Because Jupiter and Sat­urn repeat­ed­ly align every 20 years; it is one of the prin­ci­ple time­keep­ing ele­ments astrologers have used to look at a series of steps in a civ­i­liza­tion before it changes into anoth­er one, which hap­pens peri­od­i­cal­ly whether from inter­nal devel­op­ments and dynam­ics or exter­nal shocks and challenges.

The Great Mutation
For the last 200 years we have had Jupiter and Sat­urn form­ing con­junc­tions in Earth, a time of mate­ri­al­iza­tion. Because this is what they do, Jupiter and Sat­urn will repeat­ed­ly line up in one ele­ment or anoth­er for 200 years, and when they move into the next ele­ment, in this case air, for the next 200 years it is called the Great Muta­tion. And it seems to peri­odize times in his­to­ry where one ele­ment or the oth­er is dom­i­nant. So, this age we are com­ing out of was an age of man­i­fes­ta­tion, of earth­i­ness, of the phys­i­cal world and becom­ing ever more physicalized.

The next age is this age of air, the age of ide­al­iza­tion, often not­ed for great devel­op­ments in thought and rea­son and under­stand­ing. That is what is going to take hold here and last for the next 200 years. It is excit­ing, and many astrologers are think­ing about what this means for us. But cer­tain­ly, changes are com­ing giv­en all these series of alignments.

So, what I want to do in the next few shows is go into more detail, maybe about Plu­to in Capri­corn and how it is play­ing out in the world now, and Nep­tune and Uranus. But also talk about the par­tic­u­lar align­ments oth­er charts, like the USA chart which not only has Plu­to going over Mer­cury but also quite inter­est­ing­ly, Sat­urn is going over Plu­to, and I will take a look at what that might be in future shows.

Sat­urn to Plu­to in USA chart
It is inter­est­ing, that every time Sat­urn con­juncts Plu­to (in the USA Chart), it seems to mark an espe­cial­ly impor­tant peri­od. The last few times was again back in 1932, and then in 1961 and in 1991, and now. So, every 29 to 30 years, this Saturn/Pluto align­ment is sig­nif­i­cant for us. Because in the USA chart the plan­et Plu­to is the ris­ing plan­et; it is the plan­et that sort of defines us. We are a trans­for­ma­tion­al nation, and we look at the val­ues that we have and hold, because Plu­to is in our sec­ond house, and we are con­stant­ly rework­ing these val­ues, con­stant­ly trans­form­ing them, remak­ing and remold­ing things.

We are a coun­try that is deeply involved in what I call the “alchem­i­cal work”, of Alche­my. We are not­ed for this, in terms of our capa­bil­i­ty as a nation dri­ven by this pow­er. When plan­ets are going over that point in our chart it is some­thing to quick­ly take note and ask, what does this mean now for the Amer­i­can story?

This is an inter­est­ing expe­ri­ence that we are hav­ing now, because it is about Sat­urn, which is the struc­ture with Plu­to, which is the will; you could say it is about Author­i­ty and the Will, Sat­urn to Plu­to. It is a big issue each time Sat­urn aligns with Plu­to, but espe­cial­ly their con­junc­tion every 29 years. So, we will be talk­ing about that some more.

Again if you have ques­tions you can cer­tain­ly ask me in the show now, or send me an email, and I am going to be writ­ing quite a bit about this in the blog in the next few weeks.