Tran­script of Radio Show on April 12, 2020 — Astro­log­i­cal Mus­ings – A New World Will Rise, a look back and ahead (April 12, 2020)

I called today’s show, which is the 9th show of our 2020 series, a “New World will rise, a look back and ahead”. We need to do that because we are part of an ongo­ing devel­op­ment in terms of his­to­ry and human devel­op­ment, of spir­i­tu­al and cul­tur­al and eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment, and that all these things are tied to one anoth­er. We can find res­o­nances, if you will, of where plan­ets were at some point in time, and then look­ing at anoth­er time where they are in those same positions.

In this case, what I am doing is look­ing at the plan­et Plu­to being at the same Zodi­a­cal space, that it is in the same degree in Capri­corn, and look­ing at what was hap­pen­ing when it was there com­pared to now. And, again doing the same thing with the plan­et Nep­tune. Now these are sort of arbi­trary choic­es. Because you would want to exam­ine plan­e­tary pat­terns and plan­e­tary align­ments and all these oth­er things, and you would want to be con­sid­er these too in terms of com­par­ing one peri­od to anoth­er. But it just is kind of strik­ing to me, so I thought I would just look at these two for today.

1774–75
For the USA, and again just look­ing at the USA, (but we could look at oth­er places as well for this) the peri­ods that I found that were par­al­lel to the cur­rent year 2020 was 1774 to 1775, and that is formed by Plu­to. And, the year of 1857 to 1858, look­ing at the plan­et Nep­tune, look­ing at Amer­i­can history.

It was in 1774, and many peo­ple don’t real­ize this, because they think of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion as start­ing in 1776, and that is the most rec­og­niz­able date. But obvi­ous­ly we were build­ing towards that cir­cum­stance of an actu­al phys­i­cal war break­ing out, (and it actu­al­ly broke out in 1775). And things were hap­pen­ing in 1774, and before then, that led up to what hap­pened in 1776. In 1774, hav­ing had the “Boston Tea Par­ty” right before at the end of 1773, Eng­land, the King and the par­lia­ment, decid­ed to pass very pun­ish­ing laws on the colonies for these acts of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence. They broke with their com­pact of trade with the colonies, where we were sup­posed to be gov­erned fair­ly, and by which we would be rep­re­sent­ed by peo­ple in par­lia­ment for our own inter­ests. Instead, here par­lia­ment was pass­ing laws to pun­ish the colonies. The colonies, fac­ing these ter­ri­ble penal­ties and laws, called “the Intol­er­a­ble Acts”, decid­ed to meet in this first Con­ti­nen­tal Con­gress. They came togeth­er, as these sep­a­rate colonies, and they said to one anoth­er, “what do we do for our con­ti­nent, for our country?”

Basi­cal­ly, they were begin­ning to form their union, though they maybe would­n’t have under­stood it as such at that point, but that what was hap­pen­ing. And then, they agreed to boy­cott the goods from the UK, and in so doing the UK sent forces to Boston, to shut it down, to put it under mar­tial law, and the peo­ple of Boston were harassed and abused. Sol­diers were being quar­tered, forced into people’s homes, and all these ter­ri­ble things hap­pened. And, this even­tu­al­ly led to the bat­tles of Lex­ing­ton and Con­cord, and the siege of Boston in 1775, and the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War became inevitable.

The issue for the colonists was quite sim­ple. They want­ed to have the right to self-deter­mi­na­tion, to have their val­ue as cit­i­zens of a coun­try, Eng­land, be count­ed as equal to those who remained in Eng­land. So, they chose a path of self-gov­ern­ment, break­ing with the Lords and King­ly hier­ar­chy and declar­ing them­selves to be, and this was rev­o­lu­tion­ary, “Free Men” who had a divine right to deter­mine their own future.

And, it was short­ly after the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion, that we had the French Rev­o­lu­tion, though that was fraught with even greater upheaval and vio­lence. They pro­duced, in the very begin­ning of their rev­o­lu­tion in 1789, the very famous “Dec­la­ra­tion of the Rights of Man”, which was a very his­toric step in the march towards the prin­ci­ple of self-deter­mined gov­ern­ment, which is what was emerg­ing in that his­tor­i­cal peri­od of the 1700s. The world was mov­ing from feu­dal­ism to monar­chies in the 1500s and now in the 1700s mov­ing from monar­chies to this form of self-gov­ern­ment, of par­lia­men­tary democracy.

1857–58
Well, we flash for­ward in our coun­try to address one of the remain­ing great sins of our country’s ori­gin in 1857–1858. Things were becom­ing very fraught in our coun­try, over the strug­gle over slave or free states, and whether or not slav­ery was going to spread through­out the coun­try or not. And in that peri­od, when Nep­tune was in the same Zodi­a­cal space or posi­tion as it is now, (and this is kind of strik­ing in terms of how we are again deal­ing with this very same ques­tion in our coun­try, of what does it mean to be “Amer­i­can”, and who can who is allowed to come here, and how do we treat fair­ly and equal­ly or not all peo­ples, again being the ques­tion). The Dred Scott deci­sion, by the Supreme Court, deter­mined that slaves would nev­er be cit­i­zens and no mat­ter where they went, they could be seized as prop­er­ty of their for­mer Masters.

And so, this was high­light­ed in the Lin­coln-Dou­glas debates, where Lin­coln most famous­ly stat­ed, “…that a house divid­ed against itself can­not stand.” He was say­ing that we were two peo­ples, two dif­fer­ent economies, two dif­fer­ent cul­tures, and we were divid­ed from one anoth­er, and this divi­sion of our coun­try had to be resolved some­how. And, of course, it was resolved in the Civ­il War of the 1860’s.

Yet, after the Civ­il War the promise of a bet­ter and more just coun­try was thwart­ed. There was the pol­i­cy known as Recon­struc­tion, but that recon­struc­tion was blocked even­tu­al­ly. And, a new sys­tem of nom­i­nal slav­ery was imposed by the share­crop­per sys­tem, of basi­cal­ly peon­age for the for­mer slaves. It was only, real­ly, dur­ing the “sec­ond civ­il war”, as I would call it, in the 1950s and 60s, the civ­il rights move­ment, which brought about the legal reforms and pres­sures upon the for­mer con­fed­er­a­cy, most­ly the South, which opened the door to greater free­dom for the black cit­i­zens in the South and of course those in the North too, who had also faced great inequal­i­ty and seg­re­ga­tion. And, still to this day, the work is not done.

But also, in that peri­od, and this is quite inter­est­ing, with Nep­tune being this uni­fi­er, and encom­pass­ing and bring­ing every­thing togeth­er in one uni­ver­sal expe­ri­ence, that this same peri­od wit­nessed the first ever world­wide economic/financial pan­ic that swept across the entire plan­et. This hap­pened when Nep­tune was in the same posi­tion as today, and it is kind inter­est­ing, that we are hav­ing this world­wide “pan­dem­ic pan­ic”, which is crush­ing economies around the world here at the same time. It is very much a par­al­lel expe­ri­ence, but also very much is dif­fer­ent too.

Our Time
So, what we all want to know is what’s com­ing next, what’s our future? What will this world we are going into look like? What is our respon­si­bil­i­ty now?

We real­ly must face and accept the truth, that as much as we made the won­ders of this world, we also made the hor­rors of the world that is now con­fronting us.

This pan­dem­ic and what may fol­low, this was and will be our cre­ation. And there is only one ques­tion, how do we make a bet­ter world for one and all?

Just as in 1774 and 1857, as always, the chal­lenge in any time, is spir­i­tu­al. Will we reveal what is best in us by fol­low­ing the one true spir­i­tu­al imper­a­tive: “That we are all relat­ed”; and what we do to any oth­er we inevitably will be doing to ourselves.

I hold that this is the shin­ing light, that we are on an “Arc of Awak­en­ing”, and our path will ever bend towards the truth to see one anoth­er as cre­at­ed equal. And that behind all of cre­ation there is “the One”.

We were made by this One True Love; we are sim­ply and most pro­found­ly here to love one anoth­er as we are loved.

So, my ques­tion is what comes first, what mat­ters most? And, we real­ize that we must now decide how we will be guid­ed by this absolute spir­i­tu­al truth, that all life is sacred. Our lives, right now, will be for­ev­er mea­sured by our love for one anoth­er and our lives will also be mea­sured by how we treat all the life forms on this plan­et, with whom we share this beau­ti­ful world.

What comes first? Life comes first. 

What mat­ters most to us who are here now, and for all the gen­er­a­tions who will come after us, is that we, from this point for­ward, act with the under­stand­ing that our lives depend upon all the oth­er life forms on this plan­et. This pan­dem­ic, among many oth­er signs, is a warn­ing that we have made a world that is out of bal­ance. If we do not change our way of life, we will be fac­ing ever greater threats in the not very dis­tant future.

The accel­er­at­ing true glob­al pan­dem­ic is Cli­mate Change, of which this pan­dem­ic is mere­ly a symp­tom, and this virus real­ly only threat­ens us humans. All our plans and actions must be guid­ed by an absolute com­mit­ment now to pro­tect and pre­serve the diverse hier­ar­chies of life that make pos­si­ble all lives, includ­ing our very own.

What is the val­ue of any nation, and of our nation?

I always say, it is the peo­ple. As I have said many times in my blog, and on my radio show, and in read­ings with clients, the val­ue of the com­mu­ni­ty, of a vil­lage and town, region or nation, is not in its phys­i­cal attrib­ut­es, in its land or water, or oth­er nat­ur­al resources. Of course, those things mat­ter for life. But the source of val­ue in any human soci­ety is the val­ue of each and every human.

And the ques­tion will be for that cul­ture or peo­ple, for us here now, did you cre­ate the best pos­si­ble con­di­tions to help those humans real­ize their fullest potential?

Because that’s where val­ue comes from; we make it.

Injus­tice
His­tor­i­cal­ly, this essen­tial under­stand­ing of the val­ue of human­i­ty has often been cir­cum­scribed and lim­it­ed, arranged hier­ar­chi­cal­ly in the dif­fer­ent social orders through­out his­to­ry. Whether in a hunting/gathering cul­ture or a pas­toral cul­ture or farm­ers or crafts and trades, and on into this so-called mod­ern world filled with a range of occu­pa­tions and lifeways.

Though the foun­da­tion­al ideas of our own Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence were ide­al­is­tic and inspi­ra­tional; where­in we stat­ed, “…that we hold these truths to be self-evi­dent, that all men are cre­at­ed equal”, we know that at our found­ing, and for many years there­after, these fine ideals were not fol­lowed whatsoever.

The vast major­i­ty of humans on this con­ti­nent were con­sid­ered, for a very long time, to not even be human, and were sub­ject­ed to geno­ci­dal war­fare, the Native Amer­i­cans. And, anoth­er huge pop­u­la­tion of peo­ple were con­sid­ered to be only fit as beasts of bur­den, as prop­er­ty to be bought and sold by their so-called mas­ters, the black slaves. And we can­not for­get that most men with­out sig­nif­i­cant prop­er­ty and all women were regard­ed as not wor­thy of self-deter­mi­na­tion or equal rights to the men of property.

Yes, we have come a long way, but our present cir­cum­stance lays bare once again how far we have yet to go. Our his­to­ry of slow­ly extend­ing legal equal­i­ty for all has been hard and painful, but the lega­cy of racism, slav­ery and geno­cide still per­me­ates our cul­ture to this day, as we can see in the dif­fer­ing out­comes for dif­fer­ent groups, in the kind of health care and lives they can live and hope for. This has to stop; it has to stop now.

Inequal­i­ty
Over the course of our his­to­ry we have gone from a most­ly agrar­i­an nation to a man­u­fac­tur­ing colos­sus, to a ser­vice-based econ­o­my. The imbal­ances that led to the Great Depres­sion were addressed by the New Deal, and led to a peri­od of rel­a­tive­ly shared growth from the 1940s onwards in the var­i­ous per­centiles, the divi­sions of the coun­try, the bot­tom 20^th, the top 20^th and so on.

But since 1980 that shared pros­per­i­ty has been bro­ken. Part­ly it was the shift from a man­u­fac­tur­ing to a ser­vice econ­o­my. But it was also cre­at­ed by those with the means to influ­ence the laws of this nation, the rules of the econ­o­my, and they shaped those rules to serve the accu­mu­la­tion of wealth as opposed to hav­ing a more fair­ly shared dis­tri­b­u­tion as we had expe­ri­enced since the 1940s.

The imbal­ance in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth in this coun­try is not a nat­ur­al result. It has been formed by changes in the econ­o­my. Yes, as the pow­er of unions fad­ed, as we moved from a man­u­fac­tur­ing econ­o­my and oth­er things, and no sim­i­lar orga­ni­za­tion was able to pro­tect the work­ers in the grow­ing ser­vice sec­tors (and this is most cer­tain­ly true for the emerg­ing econ­o­my of gig work­ers). But for many years the vast major­i­ty of our cit­i­zens have worked hard­er and hard­er for less and less of the share in the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty that they made pos­si­ble, that they created.

Many feel that there must be some­thing wrong with them, that it’s their fail­ure, it’s per­son­al instead of being the con­se­quences of a sys­tem that is not fair. But this was more as a con­se­quence of poli­cies and laws that accel­er­at­ed and pro­tect­ed the accu­mu­la­tion of wealth, that favored short-term gains over long-term invest­ments, cor­po­rate pow­er of the few out­weigh­ing the votes of the many, as con­gress­man and sen­a­tors wrote the laws that favored their finan­cial back­ers, and also cre­at­ed laws that apply to every­one but themselves.

Cri­sis and Opportunity
Yes, a cri­sis such as we face now reveals the great­est in our cul­ture and the rot and the cor­rup­tion too. As I have point­ed out in pre­vi­ous blog post­ings and shows, the shift in the 1930s and 1940s led to a very dif­fer­ent shift in the 1980s, where the fair­ness in the USA began to break­down. So here we are, again, 40 years lat­er, the 1940s the 1980s and now the 2020s, and this cri­sis is call­ing once more for a new way of orga­niz­ing our lives and livelihoods.

But this cri­sis, this turn­ing, will be much big­ger because the stakes are so much high­er. More than an eco­nom­ic cri­sis or a polit­i­cal cri­sis, we tru­ly face a spir­i­tu­al and exis­ten­tial cri­sis. Life on this plan­et is in cri­sis, and we have only to look in the mir­ror to see who is to blame.

The plan­ets, Plu­to or Nep­tune, Uranus or Sat­urn, they don’t cause any­thing, they just frame the tim­ing of the unfold­ment of pat­terns. And, they pro­vide mean­ing or con­text to what is hap­pen­ing, but the con­tent of this moment, the pan­dem­ic and what is com­ing after that we made and is what we will make.

We all have a choice and we must put first what is most impor­tant, life! The actions we are tak­ing now, to face this cri­sis, are the first steps that we are also tak­ing to make the New World.

The old world is bro­ken; the ways we sourced ener­gy, the ways we sourced our food, the way we cre­at­ed shel­ter and cloth­ing, the way we met our needs for one anoth­er, these will and must change. Because most of these ways that got us to here, they will not get us to where we need to go.

Our old ways were destroy­ing life on this plan­et, the beau­ty of the divine diver­si­ty of this world is rapid­ly becom­ing a mem­o­ry. With­out pre­serv­ing all oth­er life forms, from the most infin­i­tes­i­mal to the most majes­tic, from the plank­ton in the oceans and the fish­es is in the seas, from the bees and the birds that trav­el in the air, from the val­leys to the moun­tain tops, life is leav­ing this plan­et and we made this happen.

And that truth is our shame, but that truth can also be our salvation.

We made this hap­pen, and we can do bet­ter. And, now that we know, what choice do we have? Now that we live in fear, we are pay­ing attention.

This is the moment; our lives and our world will change, but only we can make a dif­fer­ence in the how. We must choose life; we must choose to love one anoth­er and all of life on this planet.

Okay, I know that was quite a lot, but I want­ed to try to get it out there for all of us to con­sid­er. That we should pause this time to con­sid­er this beau­ti­ful world we live in, and the beau­ty that we can behold in one anoth­er, and the beau­ty of nature all around us. That we should be so grate­ful and thank­ful for this gift, for this won­der. And our desire should only be to pre­serve and make it better.

We are not here to use up the world, there is no “Plan­et B”. We only have this, this lifeboat, this beau­ti­ful blue orb spin­ning through space, a won­der­ful lifeboat of life. And, we are the ones who can save it if we are not the ones who will destroy it.

I’m sure most of you know these things, think these thoughts, share these thoughts with those that you care for and care about. We all want the world to change, we all want to get back to a bet­ter life.

But we’re not going to go back, we have to go for­ward if we’re going to make a bet­ter life.

I hope we all take that mes­sage to heart. I hope we all do our part now, to make the world a bet­ter place, because it’s the only thing that matters.