The New Year – Part 1 (Jan­u­ary 2019)

Whence – Where – Whither

Part 1 – Whence

As we attempt to dis­cern the spir­i­tu­al themes of the com­ing year, it is help­ful to con­sid­er what we have just encoun­tered in 2018. It is most cer­tain­ly true that the tests faced, and the lessons learned in any one year may con­tin­ue into the fol­low­ing year (or sev­er­al years), as the unfold­ment of one day into the next is cer­tain­ly dri­ven and informed by ener­gies and expe­ri­ences that wax and wane over many weeks, months and years.

Plu­to in Capri­corn — The End of an Age

For Earth as a whole, the most impor­tant plan­e­tary influ­ences remain in place, with some vari­a­tions on a theme we have been faced with for some time now. Cer­tain­ly, the pas­sage of Plu­to through the Sign of Capri­corn, (2008 through 2024), con­tin­ues to pro­vide the pri­ma­ry heart­beat of our spir­i­tu­al chal­lenge. I have called this once every 250-year cyclic peri­od the “end of an age”, which was clear­ly so for the pre­vi­ous pas­sages in the ear­ly 1500’s and the 1700’s. In those ear­li­er peri­ods, and I would think most by now would agree it is true for our own time too, the world seemed to fall apart as Polit­i­cal, Eco­nom­ic and Cul­tur­al dis­in­te­gra­tions rever­ber­at­ed through all realms. But these spir­i­tu­al earth­quakes also her­ald­ed each time that a new age was dawning.

A new world is com­ing, but that requires that an old order give way. Of course, the fun­da­men­tal nature of what it means to be human, our needs for food, shel­ter, com­pan­ion­ship, love and secu­ri­ty are ever-present, but they are also evolving/transforming, seem­ing­ly (or actu­al­ly) at an expo­nen­tial rate, which is in large part due to what is known as “the sci­en­tif­ic rev­o­lu­tion” that began sev­er­al cen­turies ago.

Coper­ni­cus, Bacon, Galileo, New­ton among many oth­er “less­er knowns”, ques­tioned assump­tions passed down from time immemo­r­i­al. This quick­en­ing of the human capa­bil­i­ty to know and alter our world has endowed human­i­ty with pow­ers that have seem­ing­ly out­stripped our wis­dom to wield them, whether in Physics = Nuclear weapons, or Biol­o­gy = Bio-engineering.

Much that was will con­tin­ue in some form of course, but much more of our social, eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal struc­tures will be reformed/transformed into new modes of expres­sion, and they will cer­tain­ly be informed by new ideas (or old ideas renewed) and mean­ings. The ques­tion remains, will we devel­op enough wis­dom and humil­i­ty to wield our “ring of pow­er” (Intel­li­gence) with uncon­di­tion­al love and compassion.

Uranus and Nep­tune — Indi­vid­u­al­i­ty vs. Communality

Con­tribut­ing to this shift of his­tor­i­cal pat­terns last year (and the year before), was the first major align­ment of Uranus with Nep­tune after their his­toric con­junc­tion in 1993. From 2017 on through into the begin­ning of 2019, we have been influ­enced by the Uranus/Neptune Semi­Square which is the first sig­nif­i­cant aspect in their 170 cycle from con­junc­tion to conjunction.

Uranus rules “Indi­vid­u­al­i­ty”; I call Uranus the “Awak­en­er”, as 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 one abid­ing force that binds all to all, Uni­ver­sal or Uncon­di­tion­al Love.

The inte­gral rela­tion­ship between these two reveals the para­dox­i­cal truth behind the mys­tery of the Universe’s con­sti­tu­tion. Every­thing, every par­ti­cle and every “Being” in this Uni­verse is an indi­vid­ual that is a unique instance of spir­it informed by its own Quin­tes­sence; yet all of these “ones” are One in Spir­it and fun­da­men­tal­ly indi­vis­i­ble from one anoth­er. Through­out all king­doms of life, in age after age, there is an ever-shift­ing bal­ance between these two prin­ci­ples, between the One and the many.

The ten­sion between the Indi­vid­ual and the Com­mu­ni­ty wax­es and wanes in any cul­ture or civ­i­liza­tion. Whether we look at human “types” like Hunter/Gatherer, Farmer/Craftsperson or Rural/Urban (among many pos­si­ble dis­tinc­tions and dif­fer­ences), there will be found dif­fer­ing mix­tures and bal­ances (and often­times like now, imbal­ances), between these two great Ener­gy-Forms that deter­mine the degree to which Indi­vid­ual Free­dom and Com­mu­nal Har­mo­ny does or does not co-exist.

The recent past has seen a world­wide upheaval, marked now by the extremes of anar­chic indi­vid­u­al­ism and suf­fo­cat­ing com­mu­nal­ism, which sig­nals we are at a most crit­i­cal stage, where the old mod­el of bal­anc­ing Individuality/Communality has bro­ken down, and the yet to emerge new mod­el has not been ful­ly formed nor under­stood. 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.

How we hold these prin­ci­pals of Free­dom and Com­mu­ni­ty togeth­er with­in our­selves, and between one anoth­er, is part of our Spir­i­tu­al Jour­ney which can only be formed and forged by hold­ing to an Inte­gral Way of Liv­ing. We are on a jour­ney from uncon­scious­ness to full spir­i­tu­al awak­en­ing, and as we remake our­selves and our world, we must strive towards ever more encom­pass­ing ways of hold­ing togeth­er our “par­a­digms of under­stand­ing” and our “ways of being”.

From the phys­i­cal through the spir­i­tu­al, from the sim­plest to the most com­plex enti­ties and sys­tems, we must always strive to live a whole life, a good and beau­ty-filled life, which can be found and restored by remem­ber­ing that there is a way to do this. That way can be found by remem­ber­ing that these crises have come before, and at each moment our ances­tors found a way by hold­ing firm to the great­est truths, those pre­cious jew­els of spir­it which nev­er fade or fal­ter. We need to remem­ber that these lumi­nous truths were dis­cov­ered and passed down to us from the very begin­ning of our journey.

The Way

When­ev­er you are in doubt, you should turn (and so return) to the eter­nal truths of the Ancient Wis­dom that con­tin­u­al­ly re-emerge in age after age. This is so because Truth is equal­ly with­in you as it forms all the worlds that sur­round you too. These Spir­i­tu­al Truths are to be found every­where you look, but most impor­tant­ly, those very answers that you find “out there” will res­onate with­in you because your high­er self, your intu­itive-know­ing-self, will gen­tly whis­per “this is true”. This is because these Ancient Truths form the very sub­stance of your heart and mind too.

At the true core of any Reli­gion or Phi­los­o­phy, with­in what is known as the Eso­teric as dis­tinct from the Exo­teric forms of under­stand­ing, the Peren­ni­al Teach­ings are revealed and illu­mi­nate for you the one essen­tial path. The Great Ones, the teach­ers who form a lumi­nous riv­er of truth about life and love, all of them came to serve this cause of spir­i­tu­al integri­ty and truth, and they were guid­ed in their heart and through their soul by the fun­da­men­tal pre­cept that there is “no reli­gion high­er than truth”.

As you look back now to the year that was, and turn to face the year that is dawn­ing, take com­fort from those who showed you the way long, long ago. You will be filled with a renewed faith, and you will know that you will make a bet­ter future for your­self and for one anoth­er. Remem­ber you are nev­er alone, and you walk the same path of the Great Souls who came before you, and they strug­gled for their self-mas­tery which you will achieve one day too:

Be guid­ed by the Wise Ones, who know there is no reli­gion high­er than Truth.
Walk the path of the Great-Souls, who prac­tice the Wis­dom of Love.
Find inspi­ra­tion in the Lone­ly Ones, their Will­ing-Sac­ri­fice hon­ored by
the Angels and Devas above.
Lis­ten for the Voice of the Silence, attend the gen­tle whis­pers in your Heart,
And you will find “The Way”.

 

Next, “Where are we now?”

 

The New Year – Part 2 (Jan­u­ary 2019)

Whence – Where – Whither

Part 2 – Where

The Astro­log­i­cal cal­en­dar for 2019 appears to be some­what less event­ful than recent years, but appear­ances are often not what they seem. What are the Astro­log­i­cal con­di­tions that will pre­vail this year?

2019 will be like many oth­er years. We will have three peri­ods of Mer­cury ret­ro­grade, (March 5—March 28, July 7—July 31, and Octo­ber 31—November 20). There will be three Solar Eclipses (Jan­u­ary 5, July 2, and Decem­ber 26) and two Lunar Eclipses (Jan­u­ary 21 and July 16). Of course, there will be New Moons and Full Moons each month, and the year­ly pas­sage of the sea­sons and signs that mark your jour­ney through the stars. But what are the most impor­tant ele­ments that will inform your jour­ney this year?

Uranus in Tau­rus – Trans­for­ma­tion of Value

Many plan­e­tary fac­tors that were true for 2018 will con­tin­ue with mod­i­fi­ca­tions in 2019. The only sig­nif­i­cant shift of sign posi­tion will be the final move of Uranus into Tau­rus on March 6^th, where it will remain now until July 2025, (it had moved into Tau­rus on May 15^th, but it turned ret­ro­grade and re-entered Aries on Novem­ber 6^th, 2018).

The pre­vi­ous times for Uranus in Tau­rus were 1935–1942, 1851–59 and 1768–75. In each of those peri­ods, the effect of Uranus (The Awak­en­er) mov­ing through the sign of Val­ue (Tau­rus) wit­nessed sig­nif­i­cant shocks and con­flicts, lead­ing to cathar­tic trans­for­ma­tions, as dif­fer­ing val­ue sys­tems with­in and between cul­tures, broke the bonds of mean­ing­ful­ness that hold soci­eties togeth­er. With­out a strong con­sen­sus, lack­ing a sig­nif­i­cant agree­ment on com­mon­ly accept­ed val­ues and virtues, the “cen­ter can­not hold” because it seem­ing­ly (or actu­al­ly) does not exist.

For exam­ple, in the Unit­ed States the most recent pas­sage in the late 1930’s formed the lead up to the “War of Democ­ra­cies ver­sus Fas­cism” or World War II; the 1850’s led up to our defin­ing con­flict, “The Civ­il War” (1860–65), and the 1760’s‑70’s wit­nessed the break­down between the Amer­i­can colonies and Eng­land, lead­ing to our “The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War”. The his­to­ry of those three pre­vi­ous peri­ods should cer­tain­ly give us rea­son for con­cern as to what may lie ahead for us.

It is very appar­ent that our own peri­od is build­ing to a spir­i­tu­al­ly nec­es­sary and cathar­tic cri­sis from dif­fer­ences over, and con­flicts between val­ues once again. There comes a point when the divide with­in a peo­ple, or between one peo­ple and anoth­er, becomes so great that only a fun­da­men­tal shock to those sys­tems will pro­vide the rebirth need­ed to set things right again. Uranus ever serves the cause of Indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and Free­dom. The frac­tures and clash­es that Uranus elic­its will always serve to steer the human sto­ry towards the endur­ing light of this fun­da­men­tal Truth:

Until we cre­ate a world where all are free to be and be self-ful­filled, then none of us are tru­ly free.

Though it may be painful to expe­ri­ence these shocks that Uranus deliv­ers, it brings about the nec­es­sary next step we must take to cre­ate a world of freer minds and lives.

 

Sat­urn in Capri­corn – The Test of Responsibility

Sat­urn con­tin­ues to move through Capri­corn in 2019, and although it will enter Aquar­ius on March 20, 2020, it will ret­ro­grade back into Capri­corn on July 1, 2020, and then re-enter Aquar­ius on Decem­ber 17, 2020. This means that the plan­et known as “The Teacher”, will con­tin­ue to chal­lenge every indi­vid­ual, com­mu­ni­ty, and cul­ture as it tests and so reveals the essen­tial char­ac­ter or wor­thi­ness of the var­i­ous hier­ar­chies and insti­tu­tions that we have formed to meet our needs for one another.

Whether we con­sid­er the most fun­da­men­tal struc­tur­al unit of the fam­i­ly, then on up through more encom­pass­ing com­mu­ni­ties formed by geog­ra­phy, inter­est or belief, or cor­po­rate struc­tures, or state and nation­al polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions, it is through and by means of all these hier­ar­chies that we have incor­po­rat­ed our val­ues and formed the endur­ing lega­cies of our ways of meet­ing one another’s needs. This Hier­ar­chy of Insti­tu­tions form and serve to ful­fill the real­ized (or crystallized/materialized) rela­tion­ships of each of us to one anoth­er. From them we cre­ate our titles and roles, and we under­take our respon­si­bil­i­ties so that we can claim our rights with­in the social order that we have made with one another.

But it is pre­cise­ly this Insti­tu­tion­al Order that is being bro­ken down and trans­formed by the pas­sage of Plu­to in Capri­corn (from 2008–2024), just as it did in the late 1700’s and in the ear­ly 1500’s. Now joined by Sat­urn in Capri­corn, we see this chal­lenge to our Insti­tu­tion­al order fac­ing extreme stress­es and strain. Each of us, with Sat­urn mov­ing through Capri­corn needs to be ask­ing, “What is my pur­pose here?” What is the respon­si­ble way to act in a world turned upside down? What is our prop­er role and what is the truth that will guide us as we face this “end of an age”?

Of course, I main­tain that the answer must always be that these crit­i­cal moments require a return to the ever-last­ing val­ues that have guid­ed our foot­steps from the very begin­ning. The answer is always the same: we must hold to the Spir­i­tu­al, Philo­soph­i­cal and Sci­en­tif­ic truths that form the foun­da­tion of the Human Story.

But, in each cri­sis of tran­si­tion through­out his­to­ry, there have been three nec­es­sary, dif­fer­ent and yet inte­gral respons­es and call­ings depend­ing upon the indi­vid­ual and their community:

There are those who are called to pre­serve, who will seek to main­tain what is good and true, to hold fast to that which still has val­ue and meaning.

There are those who cre­ate, who look ahead, as they seek to build a new mod­el of meet­ing needs and ful­fill­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties for the new age that is dawning.

There are those whose role is to destroy, to be the very break­ers of the old idols and icons, and though they are often seen as pure­ly neg­a­tive and with­out a sense of respon­si­bil­i­ty or hon­or, they also serve to bring about the new age.

More­over, (and I will com­ment more about this in the fore­cast for the Unit­ed States), I not­ed last year that this pas­sage of Sat­urn through Capri­corn has his­tor­i­cal­ly been a rather chal­leng­ing time for the USA. That is prin­ci­pal­ly because as Sat­urn moves through ear­ly to mid-Capri­corn degrees, it forms an Oppo­si­tion to the Venus, Jupiter and Sun in the Unit­ed States’ chart.

In pre­vi­ous Sat­urn pas­sages, (1988–91, 1959–1962 and 1929–32), the USA expe­ri­enced strong if not severe social, eco­nom­ic and busi­ness chal­lenges. These dis­rup­tions were fol­lowed by cul­tur­al upheavals and polit­i­cal upsets. We can now see that although 2018 start­ed with rosy fore­casts, the clouds of doubt (and fear) came to shad­ow the eco­nom­ic land­scape as 2018 end­ed. It will take thought­ful and wise mea­sures to pre­vent even fur­ther upsets and loss­es in 2019.

Yes, 2019 will be a chal­leng­ing year, and you may be for­giv­en for wish­ing that you lived in a qui­eter, more har­mo­nious peri­od of his­to­ry. But you must know, that all who live through such trou­bled times have wished for this too. But they found a way through and helped to bring about a new age, as you will too.

You are here because it is your sacred duty and hon­or to cre­ate a new­er and bet­ter world for your loved ones, com­mu­ni­ty, and soci­ety. The prob­lems and chal­lenges we face are for the most part self-made; we are the Cre­ators and we made the world that is.

The great and good news that we should take from this is that we also have the very Intel­li­gence, Love and Will to make a bet­ter world too. It is real­ly a choice you must make, each and every day, to stay true to the path of Light and Love. And remem­ber this is often made so through the small­est acts of kind­li­ness and con­sid­er­a­tion, and by this you will help one anoth­er to turn back the shad­ow­ing clouds of doubt and fear and build a bet­ter tomorrow.

When­ev­er you find your mind is trou­bled or fear is grow­ing with­in you, remem­ber the ancient Invo­ca­tion that can help you hold to the path of Light, Love and Will:

THE GREAT INVOCATION

From the point of light with­in the Mind of God

Let Light stream forth into our minds

Let LIGHT descend on Earth.

From the point of love with­in the Heart of God

Let Love stream forth into our hearts

May LOVE increase on Earth.

From the cen­ter where the Will of God is known

Let pur­pose guide our wills

The PURPOSE which the mas­ters know and serve.

From the cen­ter which we call Humanity

Let the Plan of Love and Light work out

And may it seal the door

where evil dwells.

Let Light and Love and Pow­er restore the Plan on Earth.

 Next, “Whith­er are we going?”

 

The New Year – Part 3 (Jan­u­ary 2019)

The First “Earth Rise” for Human­i­ty — Apol­lo 8 mis­sion — Our Beau­ti­ful, Blue Home

 

Whence – Where – Whither

Part 3 – Whither

So, let us now cast our gaze for­ward to the years that lie ahead. As I have already not­ed, there are sev­er­al plan­e­tary influ­ences that are remain­ing in place now, some for quite a few years, yet their influ­ence will be con­stant­ly influ­enced and mod­u­lat­ed by align­ments and tran­si­tions of oth­er plan­ets too. The Uni­verse is formed by these undu­lat­ing rhythms of Con­stan­cy amidst con­stant Change; for the under­ly­ing essence of Spir­it is formed by these Eter­nal Truths. which play out in these worlds of Being as the pro­found­ly mov­ing res­o­nances of the cos­mos, the eter­nal Songs of Spir­it.

As I men­tioned in last year’s look ahead, we have now, (after Uranus moves into Tau­rus to stay for sev­en years on March 6^th), Sat­urn, Uranus and Plu­to all mov­ing through Earth Signs. It is per­haps a fit­ting and final chap­ter in this “Age of Earth” that we have been mov­ing through since the 1840’s, as indi­cat­ed by one of the sig­na­ture cycles in Astrol­o­gy, the con­junc­tions of Jupiter and Sat­urn every 20 years occur­ring in one ele­ment after another.

Astrologers have always paid very close atten­tion to this series of align­ments, each one defin­ing a peri­od char­ac­ter­ized by a def­i­nite spir­i­tu­al-cul­tur­al res­o­nance, the “tone of the time”. I have named the last 3 ele­men­tal pas­sages, and the upcom­ing 4^th as:

Water             1425–1663 (The Age of Faith) pre­vi­ous was 571–809

Fire                 1663–1842 (The Age of Explo­rations) pre­vi­ous was 809‑1047

Earth              1842–2020 (The Age of Man­i­fes­ta­tion) pre­vi­ous was 1047–1226

Air                  2020–2219 (The Age of Ide­al­iza­tion) pre­vi­ous was 1226–1425

 

This is known as the “Great Muta­tion Cycle”, the series of Jupiter/Saturn con­junc­tions tak­ing place in the Four Ele­ments one after the oth­er, (Water, Fire, Earth, and Air). The com­plete series is formed by 40 con­junc­tions around the zodi­ac, which is divid­ed into rough­ly 4 peri­ods of about 180 to 230 years each, or an entire series last­ing about 800 years.

What this means is that we are on the cusp of some very impor­tant shifts as we move from this Age of Man­i­fes­ta­tion (or Mate­ri­al­iza­tion) into an Age of Ide­al­iza­tion (or what I call Ethe­re­al­iza­tion). Per­haps, our pas­sage will mir­ror that of the 1200’s to 1400’s, and that this New Age will equal­ly bring forth a “lit­tle Renais­sance”, (or some­thing even more profound)?

It will begin as 2020 ends, as Sat­urn moves into Aquar­ius and Jupiter joins it on the very day of the Win­ter Sol­stice of Decem­ber 21, 2020. Then in the year 2024, Plu­to will leave Capri­corn and like­wise enter Aquar­ius. And yes, there are some who believe that these shifts, along with oth­er indi­ca­tors, point to the true begin­ning of what many have called the Age of Aquar­ius.

This much longer cycle of Astro­log­i­cal Ages, (which is also known as the Pre­ces­sion of the Equinox­es) is formed by the Earth’s posi­tion as indi­cat­ed by the North Pole being aligned to a series of Polar stars over the course of about 26,000 years, (or about 2,100 years per sign). As these align­ments unfold, the first day of Spring rotates back­wards through the Zodi­ac, (from Aries to Pisces to Aquar­ius…). It forms the dif­fer­ence between what Astrologers know as the Trop­i­cal Zodi­ac (mov­ing) and the Side­re­al Zodi­ac (fixed) which were aligned at 0 Aries around 254 BCE.

We are said to be at end of Pisces and the begin­ning of Aquar­ius, though the tran­si­tion between one to the oth­er is not def­i­nite, and there are var­i­ous dates for when the Aquar­i­an Age will begin (or has already begun). There are seri­ous (but also wild and rather sil­ly) the­o­ries about what this Age of Aquar­ius will bring. I hold that we can more clear­ly under­stand what may be com­ing, by look­ing to the most sig­nif­i­cant theme of the past 2,000 years, or what was the root issue that formed this Age of Pisces. It is from this that we may be able to dis­cern what may lie ahead for us all.

Though vol­umes have (and will) be writ­ten about the 20 Cen­turies we have just come through, the most salient fea­ture to me comes from the cen­ter that forms the Sign of Pisces. I like to say that Pisces, being the last sign, (and from a strict­ly “human” per­spec­tive of course), is the sum­ma­tion and com­ple­tion of the jour­ney in spir­it that we humans are all engaged upon.

What dri­ves our sto­ry as human is not our won­der­ful “oppos­able thumb”, (though cer­tain­ly it has spurred the devel­op­ment of our tool-mak­ing nature and the growth of our self-con­scious­ness). Or, some would point to that fea­ture as the key to form­ing our capac­i­ty to make tools, and it was this which led to our defin­ing fea­ture, to our “self-aware­ness”, which then forms the key to what makes us human, and we are cer­tain­ly clos­er to the “truth” with this it seems.

But I am fond of say­ing, that in the end it all comes down to this, and look­ing to this last sign of Pisces, (and we all have Pisces some­where in our chart and nature), what tru­ly makes us human is our Capac­i­ty to Dream, to look at the world and one anoth­er with won­der. We are endowed with Imag­i­na­tion, and so our great­est gift is formed and held by the very heart of Spir­it, we are Cre­ators.

We dream, we imag­ine and so we create…and then we dream again. We encounter the world “as it is”, and we dream of a bet­ter one. We have and find our way through this Liv­ing Faith as Cre­ators, and we under­stand, because we know, that we can form a bet­ter life, and a bet­ter world for us and for those who follow.

We are not so much “human beings” as much as we are “human becoming’s”. It is pre­cise­ly from this essen­tial qual­i­ty of Spir­it, of being “Cre­ators”, that we have brought about remark­able changes in our very nature, and in the world around us. But now our “Ring of Pow­er”, (our Imag­i­na­tion and Intel­li­gence, our Curios­i­ty and Cre­ativ­i­ty), threat­ens to under­mine our very exis­tence, as well as fun­da­men­tal­ly change the com­plex hier­ar­chy of fel­low Life-Forms on our Earth.

Yes, into our “Cre­ations” we have poured our hopes and dreams and revealed the awe­some gift of our Imag­i­na­tion and Dreams. But we are also imper­fect, and we have nei­ther the req­ui­site wis­dom nor humil­i­ty, as yet, to use our pow­er with true under­stand­ing and com­pas­sion. So, the trag­ic result has been that we inevitably wove into our cre­ations the anx­i­eties, doubts and fears that have shad­owed our jour­ney of awakening.

Yes, we had dreams and visions, and we had inven­tive­ness, curios­i­ty and crit­i­cal think­ing and we acquired more and more knowl­edge. But both the Dream and this Knowl­edge were imper­fect and woe­ful­ly inad­e­quate. We lit­er­al­ly opened “Pandora’s Box”, and set so many things in motion that we now threat­en to over­whelm our­selves and the life­forms that share this world with us.

When we exam­ine the his­to­ry of life on Earth, sci­en­tists have deter­mined that sev­er­al Great Extinc­tion events have occurred. Today many observers are not­ing that what they are call­ing the “Sixth Great Extinc­tion” is tak­ing place all around us now…and the rea­son for this tragedy is quite sim­ply us.

For the human part in this Sto­ry of Life we have come through sev­er­al key turn­ing points: What is known as the Cog­ni­tive Rev­o­lu­tion 70,000 years ago, and then the Agri­cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion 12,000 years ago, and most cer­tain­ly since what we know as the Sci­en­tif­ic Rev­o­lu­tion 500 years ago.But nev­er have our future prospects (and the world’s) been so shad­owed by the fear of what may be unfold­ing now and by what lies ahead.

I have hope, that we will find a way to use our amaz­ing gifts, to Dream and Rea­son, to be guid­ed by our Spir­i­tu­al Intu­ition, Com­pas­sion and Wis­dom, and that this will lead to a New Age in the years ahead. Per­haps this is what this Age of Aquar­ius will bring. That it will be wit­ness to the next great step in Human Awak­en­ing, and we will come to a Greater Under­stand­ing through the core expe­ri­ence of Aquarius.

The prin­ci­ple of Aquar­ius is Fel­low­ship, it is Broth­er­hood and Sis­ter­hood, it is Com­pan­ion­ship and Com­mu­ni­ty and the Spir­i­tu­al Truth that we are all made of and by one anoth­er. We can­not be, Life can­not be, with­out blend­ing, mix­ing, com­bin­ing, and then shar­ing and grow­ing togeth­er. Life, Con­scious­ness and Spir­it are forged and formed by Inter­re­la­tion­ship, Diver­si­ty, Com­plex­i­ty and our essen­tial Inter­de­pen­dence with one anoth­er and all Life-Forms. Every Par­ti­cle of Cre­ation is a Spark of the Divine, formed in its core by its own Quin­tes­sence. Every tree and every leaf on every tree, every being and each cell form­ing that being, every­thing is formed by “ones” formed into a greater One. All of life is part of some­thing greater, yet it is pre­cious­ly and won­drous­ly its own unique instance of that Greater Whole.

Aquar­ius is all about the One and the Many, and we are each a pre­cious part, a unique one of a “Kind”, but formed and held and made pos­si­ble by that Kind, by that whole, and then the next greater whole, which ulti­mate­ly forms the whole of this entire Cre­ation or the ONE.

Let us make this pledge to one anoth­er, in the spir­it of Human­i­ty, with Love for one anoth­er and for all of Spirit-Life-Consciousness:

May we lis­ten to our High­er Self and find in our hearts the Wis­dom and Love to approach this Sto­ry of Life on Earth as our respon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­tect. May we turn our Dreams and Intel­li­gence to pur­pose­ful preser­va­tion of Life in all its mag­nif­i­cent Diver­si­ty. May we become ever more Con­scious Co-Cre­ators of this beau­ti­ful blue Ark of Life. May we take care, and think of our chil­dren, and our children’s chil­dren, and all who will come after us. May we rise and shine as the Stars in the heaven’s above and be tru­ly Con­scious Co-Cre­ators of this Creation.

Let us hope, when we are all long gone from this world, that our descen­dants will look back upon us and say that we rose to our chal­lenge, that we faced our fears and found our faith. That we made com­mon cause among our­selves and with all who would fol­low us. We lis­tened to the Winds of the Spir­it, and we passed the torch of Light, Love and Will for the gen­er­a­tions to come.

May it be so.

Next, The Chart of the USA

 

The New Year – Part 4 – The USA (Jan­u­ary 2019)

The USA

The three pre­vi­ous post­ings for the 2019 fore­cast, (past, present and future) con­cerned the uni­ver­sal ener­gy-forms of plan­e­tary con­di­tions, known as “Tran­sits to Tran­sits”, that reveal and inform our jour­ney in mean­ings and mes­sages for one and for all.

Now I will con­sid­er the con­di­tions for an indi­vid­ual enti­ty and the aspects formed to their chart, or what are termed “Tran­sits to Natal” indi­ca­tions. I will begin by con­sid­er­ing the chart of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, and in the next post­ing con­sid­er the chart of the Pres­i­dent, Don­ald Trump.

Nep­tune and Saturn

The prin­ci­pal tran­sit in the chart of the USA in 2018 was Nep­tune to Sat­urn (an incon­junct aspect or 150°). This tran­sit was exact from 2017 into ear­ly 2019, (although we should always look at all these out­er plan­e­tary align­ments as peri­ods of time, as process­es that build in over sev­er­al years lead­ing to these more exact peri­ods of culmination).

This tran­sit involved the chal­lenge that any cul­ture will face (again and again), between its present-day struc­tures of Civ­il and Polit­i­cal Soci­ety (Sat­urn) and the pres­sure to incor­po­rate ever more Spir­i­tu­al Truths into that struc­ture (Nep­tune). This was the same align­ment for the USA that occurred in the mid 1850’s. That peri­od was char­ac­ter­ized by the strug­gle over the very nature of the USA, of what of kind of econ­o­my, cul­ture and spir­i­tu­al char­ac­ter the USA would have with regards for the prin­ci­pal of human equal­i­ty (as is affirmed in our sacred com­pact, The Con­sti­tu­tion), or turn against the tide of his­to­ry and human rights and con­sid­er some as less deserv­ing, in effect treat­ing some as objects (i.e. slavery).

There cer­tain­ly are major echoes of that strug­gle in our cur­rent peri­od, with the issue of how we view the true his­to­ry ver­sus the lega­cy (memo­ri­als) of the Con­fed­er­a­cy, how we treat var­i­ous groups with­in our soci­ety, (Minori­ties, LGBT, Immi­gra­tion, Refugees), the issue of vot­ing rights and rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and the con­tin­u­ing shad­ows formed by echoes of racism and the vir­tu­al geno­cide of the Native population.

Though this aspect will fade now, the echoes it stirred and the present-day divi­sions it high­light­ed will con­tin­ue to be one of the prin­ci­pal chal­lenges the USA will face for many years to come, as we will and must con­tin­u­al­ly strive to final­ly heal these divides between our dear­est ideals and our less than per­fect union.

Sat­urn in Capricorn

The oth­er major theme of 2018 will per­sist in a mod­u­lat­ed form through 2019, as Sat­urn mov­ing through Capri­corn con­tin­ues to make sig­nif­i­cant align­ments in the USA chart. The tran­sits in 2018 were to Venus and Jupiter, and 2019 begins with Sat­urn Oppo­site to the USA Sun. Then through­out 2019 Sat­urn will Square the USA Sat­urn. As I not­ed last year, this par­tic­u­lar series of align­ments of Sat­urn has his­tor­i­cal­ly been asso­ci­at­ed with eco­nom­ic, and then socio-polit­i­cal dis­rup­tions for the USA, (in 1988–1991, 1959–1962 and 1929–32), where each time not only did strong eco­nom­ic challenges/disruptions occur, but these also trig­gered social and polit­i­cal upheavals.

Steer­ing through such chop­py eco­nom­ic waters, one would hope to have well-found­ed trust in a strong, steady leader and staff to help us avoid the worst eco­nom­ic out­comes. We can only hope that by some for­tune of hap­pen­stance we will get through with­out too much harm, because most would agree that this neces­si­tat­ed form of lead­er­ship is sore­ly lack­ing now.

 

Plu­to and Mer­cury – A Reckoning

Build­ing in dur­ing 2019 and becom­ing ful­ly man­i­fest in 2020 is a rather pow­er­ful align­ment of Plu­to going over the USA Mer­cury. (I men­tioned this in my radio show this past week (Jan­u­ary 19^th) and will dis­cuss it in more depth for the next show on Feb­ru­ary 2^nd, and I will also con­sid­er Don­ald Trump’s chart and transits). 

This is a very pow­er­ful tran­sit gen­er­al­ly, but even more so as the USA has a Mer­cury Plu­to oppo­si­tion in its natal chart, (Mer­cury is at around 24° of Can­cer and Plu­to around 27° of Capri­corn). This two-year tran­sit will high­light a fun­da­men­tal con­di­tion that has great­ly influ­enced the char­ac­ter of the USA, and we may be able to antic­i­pate by the last two align­ments of Plu­to to the USA Mer­cury what this might mean for us now.

The two pre­vi­ous tran­sits of Plu­to to the USA Mer­cury (and to Plu­to) were 1981–83 and 1933–37. Those two peri­ods mark per­haps the two most sig­nif­i­cant shifts in mod­ern eco­nom­ic poli­cies for the Unit­ed States that led to two very dif­fer­ent types of eco­nom­ic conditions.

Dur­ing the ear­li­er peri­od, when the coun­try (and world) grap­pled with “The Great Depres­sion” the USA was on the “razor’s edge”, much like the rest of the world, between two paths of either Fas­cism or Social­ism. But the USA found anoth­er way with FDR’s New Deal, and oth­er polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic adjust­ments, which cre­at­ed a sus­tain­able path of growth for the next sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions (late 1940’s through the 70’s). Inte­gral to the suc­cess of this path was that the remark­able rise in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and wealth was more even­ly dis­trib­uted among the var­i­ous stra­ta of the country.

The 1981–83 peri­od was marked by the so-called “Rea­gan Rev­o­lu­tion”, which promised that by cut­ting tax­es dra­mat­i­cal­ly, espe­cial­ly the top mar­gin­al tax rates, the result­ing redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth would cre­ate more growth for one and all. How­ev­er, from the ear­ly 1980’s onward the share of the USA’s pro­duc­tive growth ben­e­fits sharply skewed to the upper­most per­centiles of the pop­u­la­tion. The mid­dle- and low­er-income groups began to steadi­ly fall behind in the degree to which they share and enjoy the ben­e­fits of the growth of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and wealth.

More and more peo­ple found they had to work hard­er and hard­er, as they received less and less. Oth­er fac­tors also con­tributed to this eco­nom­ic shift away from the more or less equal shar­ing of Amer­i­can pros­per­i­ty of the pre­vi­ous 40 years, (the move from an indus­tri­al to a ser­vice econ­o­my, increas­ing automa­tion, trade deals with­out enough pro­tec­tion or mech­a­nisms to help affect­ed work­ers, the shift to a stock mar­ket dri­ven by the short-term prof­its for invest­ment banks (the “tail wag­ging the dog”) as rais­ing cap­i­tal became an end unto itself rather than for pro­duc­tive and long-term invest­ment, etc.). But it was the change in the mar­gin­al rates of tax­a­tion which dra­mat­i­cal­ly shift­ed the dis­tri­b­u­tion of how equi­tably the dif­fer­ent sec­tors and stra­ta of Amer­i­ca ben­e­fit­ed in the last 40 years.

What hap­pened is that the promise of Amer­i­ca, “of life, lib­er­ty and the pur­suit of hap­pi­ness”, began to fade for more and more. This was brought to bear bru­tal­ly in the sec­ond “Great Reces­sion of 2008” where­in mil­lions of Amer­i­cans saw their dream of a brighter future for their chil­dren dis­solve into bank­rupt­cy, fore­clo­sures, bit­ter­ness, fear and anger.

To illus­trate how this shared dis­tri­b­u­tion of growth was bro­ken and cre­at­ed a widen­ing gap in income gains, here is a graph of the shift in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of income gains for the USA from the late 1940’s through 2017:

And this graph shows the skew­ing of the con­cen­tra­tion of US Income for the 1%, which reached its high­est point in 1929, and is now (omi­nous­ly) approach­ing that same degree now, (just as it did in 2008):

Val­ue of a Nation

The Pluto/Mercury oppo­si­tion in the USA chart is from the 2^nd House to the 8^th House. The 2^nd House in the chart of a Nation is said to con­cern the “Wealth” of that nation and many would hold that means the tax rev­enue, stocks, bonds, shares, banks, exchanges, trade and com­merce, nation­al export and cur­ren­cy. It is the gen­er­al “wealth and pros­per­i­ty” of the peo­ple of that nation.

For me, though I agree with much of that on some lev­el, I pre­fer to focus upon the root or true source of val­ue by start­ing from a spir­i­tu­al approach. The 2^nd house will always rule “val­ues” in any chart, and in this case, it rules the “Val­ues of a Nation”. The ques­tion then remains, how do we know and mea­sure (or have a scale of mea­sure­ment) for the hier­ar­chy and types of val­ue in an entire nation?

Spir­i­tu­al­ly speak­ing, the Land and Water, the For­est and the Fields, the entire­ty of what is called “nat­ur­al resources” can cer­tain­ly be under­stood by any cul­ture to have “val­ue”. But the under­stand­ing and rela­tion­ship with that is far dif­fer­ent for a trib­al or hunter-gath­er­er cul­ture ver­sus an agrar­i­an cul­ture, or some oth­er eco­nom­ic-cul­tur­al type.

By stick­ing with the fun­da­men­tal ques­tion, “what is the root source of val­ue for any Nation?”, (or any unit of human soci­ety), I would always start with the premise that our truest mea­sure of val­ue is and must be cen­tered upon what forms the peo­ple of that nation. Yes, it is true that the 2^nd house also con­cerns the phys­i­cal val­ue of a geo­graph­ic space, but what will dis­tin­guish a Nation more than any­thing is the val­ue formed by and through the peo­ple of that land. Equal­ly, and even more impor­tant­ly, any soci­ety will be mea­sured spir­i­tu­al­ly by how it treats or val­ues those humans, and indeed how much it holds to the truth that all of life is sacred.

The Chal­lenge

Con­sid­er­ing this upcom­ing pas­sage of Plu­to over Mer­cury (and then the Plu­to return in 2022), what we are wit­ness­ing is anoth­er crit­i­cal moment where the very nature of our soci­ety is at stake. The ris­ing stress­es and schisms in our cul­ture, soci­ety and pol­i­tics are at the root a strug­gle over how we under­stand the nature of our core val­ues as a nation.

We face a time much like of the 1930’s, and the USA must once again address this most fun­da­men­tal ques­tion: How can we heal the divide that has formed between our var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties? How can we hold to our promise to be “A New Order for the Cen­turies”, (“Novus Ordo Seclo­rum”)? How can we restore our com­mon pur­pose and live by the love, respect and val­ue that we must have for one another?

We can if we remem­ber that our very well-being, “Our Hap­pi­ness”, depends upon one anoth­er. We should remain true to our found­ing doc­u­ment, our Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence, that “…we mutu­al­ly pledge to each oth­er our Lives, our For­tunes, and our sacred Hon­or”. For it is most cer­tain­ly true that none of us can be tru­ly hap­py if we do not strive to make it pos­si­ble for each per­son in our coun­try to achieve their Self-Fulfillment.

Our indi­vid­ual self-ful­fill­ment depends upon one anoth­er. We must restore our com­mon pur­pose to help one anoth­er, for we have come togeth­er, as the most vibrant and diverse mix­ing of peo­ples and cul­tures guid­ed by the fun­da­men­tal Spir­i­tu­al Truth that we are all “ones of the One”.

Our pledge to one anoth­er is reaf­firmed in our mot­to, and togeth­er they will always point the way and hold us to our path. That mot­to, “Out of Many, One”, (“E Pluribus Unum”), reaf­firms that our very diver­si­ty is our true val­ue and strength.

Yes, we are the future; we are a peo­ple of all peo­ples, cul­tures, creeds and faiths.

Out of Many, we are One.

Next, The Chart of Don­ald Trump

 

The New Year – Part 5 – Don­ald Trump (Feb­ru­ary 2019)

Don­ald Trump – The test of Power

It is most often true that the future of a nation and the for­tunes of its leader are inex­tri­ca­bly bound to one anoth­er. My pre­vi­ous post­ing not­ed that the most sig­nif­i­cant plan­e­tary tran­sit in the USA chart this year is the tran­sit of Plu­to over the USA Mer­cury. It may come as no sur­prise then that the most sig­nif­i­cant tran­sit in Don­ald Trump’s chart, for this year and for the next, is Plu­to as well.

In 2019 and 2020, Don­ald Trump will have Plu­to form­ing an Incon­junct aspect (150°) to his Sun. More­over, build­ing in dur­ing 2019 and becom­ing ful­ly man­i­fest­ed in 2020, Plu­to will be in oppo­si­tion to his Sat­urn. What do these two pas­sages indi­cate for Trump and the Nation?

Plu­to and The Tri­ad of Spirit

Plu­to is part of what I like to call the “Tri­ad of Spir­it”. Uranus is the Avatar or prin­ci­ple of the High­er Mind; Nep­tune the Avatar of Uncon­di­tion­al Love; Plu­to the Avatar of the Will. Togeth­er, at the crown of the spir­i­tu­al hier­ar­chy they rep­re­sent the Mind, Love and Will of God. For humans, we are striv­ing to learn to wield these pow­ers cor­rect­ly, as we slow­ly but sure­ly walk the path of awak­en­ing by devel­op­ing freer minds, tru­ly uncon­di­tion­al love and guid­ed by ever more cen­tered wills.

Plu­to rules will-pow­er, and through our will we strive to mas­ter our­selves; we learn that we must focus inward­ly, and to use our will for greater self-con­trol and self-mas­tery. The num­ber one error (or sin) on this Earth is when we use our will and pow­er to con­trol, sub­ju­gate, manip­u­late and vio­late anoth­er (or oth­ers). The great­est spir­i­tu­al crime is tres­pass­ing, where we vio­late the sacred space of another.

We are here to mas­ter our­selves, and by our exam­ple, as well as by offer­ing lov­ing help and guid­ance to oth­ers, we help one anoth­er towards greater self-mas­tery and self-con­trol. By being tru­ly cen­tered by the will, (and guid­ed by Wis­dom and Uncon­di­tion­al Love), we are more able to use what­ev­er per­son­al, social or col­lec­tive pow­ers we hold and to exer­cise them cor­rect­ly; and we will serve the source of that pow­er and direct it in the prop­er man­ner as deter­mined by our roles and respon­si­bil­i­ties. Ulti­mate­ly, any exer­cise of pow­er must be in accor­dance with Spir­i­tu­al truth:

We are here to learn to wield our will in a Transper­son­al man­ner; through our per­son­al will we serve the “source” of that pow­er so that it is nev­er used for self­ish pur­pos­es. The teach­ing will ever be, to remain guid­ed by one’s High­er Self and so by the One; we resolve to serve and so remain true to the path, “Let Thy Will be Done!”

With­in any hier­ar­chy, (Fam­i­ly, Com­mu­ni­ty, Cor­po­ra­tion, State or Nation), the leader, (or lead­ers), the hold­er of any form of exec­u­tive pow­er is invest­ed with the respon­si­bil­i­ty to be the prime exam­ple (the “Exem­plar” or Avatar) of this spir­i­tu­al truth: That the exer­cise of Will and Pow­er must be held and cen­tered, yoked to serve the pur­pose and intent of what­ev­er office that leader is there to serve. That is why in many cas­es, a per­son will take a “oath”, which binds their indi­vid­ual will to the gen­er­al good or pur­pose which they serve; that pow­er is not “theirs”, but it is mere­ly entrust­ed to them while they hold that office.

Don­ald Trump

In 2019 and 2020 Don­ald Trump will expe­ri­ence Plu­to pass­ing over his Sun and over his Sat­urn. What will this mean for him and for the USA? Quite sim­ply and pro­found­ly, Don­ald Trump is going to face a fun­da­men­tal “test of pow­er”. If he has wield­ed the pow­ers of the pres­i­den­cy cor­rect­ly, if he has aligned his will to the office of the pres­i­den­cy, then he may pass this test, though it will be a very chal­leng­ing time. If he has not suf­fi­cient­ly and cor­rect­ly sac­ri­ficed his will to the greater good of his office, if he has not under­stood the nature of his oath and aligned him­self to the true source of the pow­er which he serves, then he will fail and fall one way or another.

The Plu­to align­ment to Trump’s Sun in 2019 and 2020 indi­cates that his exer­cise and expe­ri­ence of pow­er is shift­ing in ways that will bring about a grow­ing sense of unease and con­fu­sion for him. He may ascribe it to forces or per­son­ages out­side of him­self, but it will real­ly be the grow­ing schism between his low­er will and the high­er will to which he swore an oath to serve.

This grow­ing gap between the pow­er of this office and the expe­ri­ence of his per­son­al pow­er erod­ing may cre­ate with­in him, at least in part, a desire to walk away from or give up this posi­tion of pow­er as it has lost its appeal. It is no longer of per­son­al use to him. The rea­son for this will because he has failed to under­stand and serve in the office of the Pres­i­dent as those who came before him.

The align­ment of Plu­to to Trump’s Sat­urn dur­ing 2020 is even more chal­leng­ing, as it will direct­ly threat­en his sense of posi­tion (Sat­urn) and the con­fi­dence he has in main­tain­ing that role. Typ­i­cal­ly, an indi­vid­ual with this tran­sit feels that the effort to wield or main­tain their posi­tion is over­whelm­ing. Author­i­ties, who rep­re­sent oth­er realms and sources of pow­er, are coun­ter­ing or oppos­ing his form of exer­cis­ing his (pres­i­den­tial) power.

These oth­er cen­ters of pow­er may wield such a strong counter-force that he will not be able to per­form his duties, or thwart his attempts to do what he wish­es. He will either have to bend or break under the pres­sure of foes and forces that will appear unshak­able and unbeat­able. Again, as a result of this pres­sure he may wish to with­draw from his posi­tion or if he attempts to remain, he will find that his pow­er is cir­cum­scribed or rescinded.

There are sev­er­al oth­er chal­leng­ing tran­sits in Trump’s chart in 2019 and 2020 (Nep­tune Square his Uranus in 2019 and Square his North Node in 2020, Uranus Semi­Square his Uranus in 2019 and Uranus Square his Plu­to in 2020), and I will address these in future post­ings and radio shows.

But the prin­ci­pal chal­lenge for the next two years will be Trump’s encounter with this test of Plu­to, with this test of Posi­tion and Power.