Tran­script of Radio Show “One for all and all for one” (April 26, 2020)

The Tests, Lessons and Oppor­tu­ni­ties offered by Sat­urn in the Signs is some­thing I always dis­cuss with my clients, as it is a major indi­ca­tor for their life’s work. Much the same, the move­ment of Sat­urn through the Signs of the Zodi­ac, which takes about 29 years, pro­vides us with guid­ance year by year for one and for all of what is the chal­lenge in that time.

For the last cou­ple of years, Sat­urn was mov­ing through its own sign of Capri­corn, and the test and oppor­tu­ni­ty the world encoun­tered was sim­ply this. How respon­si­ble have we been in meet­ing our need to care for one anoth­er? We have moved from a way of life of sim­ple hunters and gath­ers to a com­plex social order, with a vast hier­ar­chy of social struc­tures, rang­ing from the fam­i­ly unit, to our com­mu­ni­ties and regions, and on up to nation­al and inter­na­tion­al insti­tu­tions that we formed to meet one another’s needs. The test of Sat­urn was how well do we ful­fill our var­i­ous roles in the hier­ar­chies of meet­ing needs; did we act with wis­dom and ful­fill our respon­si­bil­i­ties to one anoth­er. The prin­ci­pal focus of Sat­urn con­cerned the forms of our roles and rela­tion­ships, but now we need to con­sid­er the con­tent of our way of life too.

This year, Sat­urn has begun its two plus year jour­ney through the Sign of Aquar­ius. What is our test and oppor­tu­ni­ty now? What I hope you will see is that this test and oppor­tu­ni­ty of Sat­urn in Aquar­ius speaks direct­ly to the essen­tial char­ac­ter of any soci­ety and cul­ture, but for us espe­cial­ly with regards to the foun­da­tion­al core of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. It is by look­ing to our ori­gins, look­ing to our “roots”, that we can see what we built our nation upon. We can see how we have been guid­ed and cen­tered upon that which we hold in com­mon, and that this reminder can point the way to what this peri­od of time holds for us, and why I believe it holds out the promise of a re-birth of the dream that is America.

Dec­la­ra­tion of Independence
In the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence, the rad­i­cal nature of what was being estab­lished by the found­ing of our enter­prise, that we were estab­lish­ing a new kind of human order, of cre­at­ing a new form of human soci­ety, was beau­ti­ful­ly expressed when Jef­fer­son wrote, “…And for the sup­port of this Dec­la­ra­tion, with a firm reliance on the pro­tec­tion of Divine Prov­i­dence, we mutu­al­ly pledge to each oth­er our Lives, our For­tunes, and our sacred Honor.”

They (and we) were form­ing a new com­pact of men (at that time), who in agree­ment among them­selves, decid­ed to unite based upon their com­mon needs and inter­ests, and to mutu­al­ly sup­port one anoth­er, in order to meet one another’s needs in a freely cho­sen or self-direct­ed manner.

It was, and is, an extra­or­di­nary state­ment for the found­ing of a nation. Until this moment, all nation­al sys­tems had been found­ed upon a people’s his­to­ry as to their loca­tion by geo­graph­ic space, lan­guage, eth­nic­i­ty and cul­tur­al her­itage. Those group­ings were the “Eng­lish”, the “French”, the “Ital­ian”, and for most of the polit­i­cal con­structs over the cen­turies in those lands and through­out the world, this polit­i­cal order was based on rather fixed hier­ar­chies of the priv­i­leged in terms of title and land­hold­ings. Pow­er was in some “thing” that was inher­it­ed or seized by force, but cer­tain­ly did not come from “the peo­ple” as a whole.

Ori­gins of Self-Government
So, where did this belief in a freely deter­mined, self-cre­at­ed soci­ety come from? The major por­tion of the ear­ly set­tlers of North Amer­i­ca were prin­ci­pal­ly from Europe, from Eng­land, Hol­land, France. Many had left of their own accord in order to be “free” of reli­gious per­se­cu­tion dur­ing the 1600’s and 1700’s, as Europe faced wars and repres­sions by forces for and against Catholic ver­sus Protes­tant beliefs and practices.

These dis­si­dents had already, for more than a cen­tu­ry, expe­ri­enced through neces­si­ty the estab­lish­ment of self-formed com­mu­ni­ties of faith, and many of them had for years engaged in lengthy debates about the nature of human­i­ty, about the sources of moral author­i­ty, and the bal­ance between per­son­al free­dom and social responsibilities.

A new kind of human­i­ty, a new age of human­i­ty, was emerg­ing out of the Protes­tant rev­o­lu­tion of the 1500’s and 1600’s, which then led in the 1700’s to anoth­er shift that became known as the “Enlight­en­ment”. Eng­lish, French and Dutch set­tlers had been deeply influ­enced by the ris­ing belief in indi­vid­ual moral author­i­ty, sev­ered from the old hier­ar­chi­cal order descend­ing from King or Lord to com­mon­er, and for some, this led them to ques­tion all author­i­ty based upon some­thing exter­nal to human­i­ty itself.

Alex­is De Tocqueville
One of the most illu­mi­nat­ing works on the foun­da­tion­al nature of the Amer­i­can sys­tem was a study by Alex­is De Toc­queville in his work, “Democ­ra­cy in Amer­i­ca”, which was pub­lished in two vol­umes in 1835 and 1840. His­to­ri­ans and social sci­en­tists to this very day mar­vel over his obser­va­tions and insights regard­ing “our great exper­i­ment”, what was called by our founders a “New Order for the Cen­turies”. (And, if you have not read De Tocqueville’s obser­va­tions , you can read it online at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/815/815‑h/815‑h.htm).

One of the defin­ing fea­tures he cit­ed in his work was this: that what was essen­tial to a self-gov­ern­ing, demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem was the inte­gral bal­ance of indi­vid­ual free­dom and social respon­si­bil­i­ty. He saw and under­stood that you can only have the true expe­ri­ence of the one when it is shaped and guid­ed by the oth­er (and vice ver­sa). In oth­er words, that indi­vid­ual free­dom and social respon­si­bil­i­ty are nec­es­sary to one anoth­er, they are part of a greater whole that cre­ates a tru­ly free society.

He observed that Amer­i­cans formed their soci­ety organ­i­cal­ly, from the local lev­el on up through a range of vol­un­tary orga­ni­za­tions of mutu­al help and sup­port, both sec­u­lar and sec­tar­i­an, in realms civ­il and reli­gious. Rather than a top-down order­ing of Regal or Author­i­tar­i­an con­trol imposed by fiat or Divine Right, the peo­ple of Amer­i­ca assem­bled for self-gov­er­nance because they had to. They were “on their own”, mak­ing their New World on a dis­tant shore.

In order to do pro­vide for them­selves, they agreed to pre­serve their self-deter­mi­na­tion by giv­ing up some “free­dom” for the good of the whole, and trust­ing in that larg­er whole, which was their col­lec­tive will, to equal­ly ensure their indi­vid­ual free­doms. This was and is rev­o­lu­tion­ary, a peo­ple gov­ern­ing them­selves voluntarily.

Toc­queville not­ed, “…when cit­i­zens are all almost equal, it becomes dif­fi­cult for them to defend their inde­pen­dence against the aggres­sions of pow­er. As none of them is strong enough to fight alone with advan­tage, the only guar­an­tee of lib­er­ty is for every­one to com­bine forces.” The cit­i­zens of Amer­i­ca agreed to form their var­i­ous lev­els of civ­il soci­ety for their mutu­al ben­e­fit, to meet one another’s needs and to pro­tect their freedoms.

He not­ed, and this is essen­tial for under­stand­ing the nature of the cri­sis we face now at the end of this age, that the most crit­i­cal ele­ment of our self-gov­er­nance would require this bal­ance of Indi­vid­ual Free­dom and Social Respon­si­bil­i­ty, and that it could only work if there was a more or less equi­table dis­tri­b­u­tion of the val­ue and wealth with­in the society.

As de Toc­queville not­ed, as have many oth­ers, the strength of Amer­i­ca was to be found in its vibrant social mobil­i­ty, where unlike the sta­t­ic struc­tures of nobil­i­ty, priv­i­lege and class in Europe, our social mobil­i­ty would pre­vent a per­ma­nent hier­ar­chy of pow­er and wealth from becom­ing estab­lished. Toc­queville observed that if that equi­table order were to be undone, that would be the begin­ning of the end of true democ­ra­cy here (or I would argue anywhere).

Inequal­i­ty
But look at Amer­i­ca now, where a very few have man­aged to obtain and con­trol the vast major­i­ty of the wealth of the nation. And, most impor­tant­ly for the destruc­tion of real social mobil­i­ty, they can pass on that wealth to whom they choose. Today, we find, for exam­ple, that instead of the top income earn­ers mak­ing 5 times what the low­est income work­ers make, say $100,000 for the top and $20,000 for the bot­tom, we now have a gross­ly unequal dis­tri­b­u­tion of income where the top earn­ers make at least if not more than 400 times the bot­tom, $8,000,000 ver­sus $20,000. And the very top per­centiles acquire and secure much of their wealth and pow­er through invest­ments yield­ing inter­est and div­i­dends. And by hold­ing that much wealth, the top one per­cent can influ­ence the eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal order and shape the laws and reg­u­la­tions in order to rein­force, retain and make even more inequitable the dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth and pow­er over time.

In fact, the wealth and income inequal­i­ty in Amer­i­ca today rivals that of the late 1920’s. Of all the mem­bers in the G‑7 nations, America’s eco­nom­ic and social order is the most unequal. Since the great reces­sion of 2008-09, only the rich­est mem­bers of our coun­try have become bet­ter off than before, and the vast major­i­ty are poor­er, and many are strug­gling to survive.

For the past 40 years, the growth of incomes for the mid­dle and low­er eco­nom­ic sec­tors in the US has fall­en far behind that of the upper brack­ets, and that dream of a mid­dle-class life for many Amer­i­cans has become bro­ken. For many, they look at their lives and their future, and they know that their lives will be less for­tu­nate than their par­ents for the very first time in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. Then they look at their own chil­dren and they are filled with sor­row; there is no bright future there, only a life filled with despair. They ask: what has gone wrong; what have they done wrong? The answer is noth­ing; it is not their fault.

Plu­toc­ra­cy
The truth is Amer­i­ca is not a tru­ly func­tion­ing Democ­ra­cy, it has become a Plu­toc­ra­cy, with the overt and covert rule of the extreme­ly rich over the many. This is what is tear­ing at our social fab­ric, divid­ing regions and groups from one anoth­er; those regions and groups, that should be com­bin­ing to right this wrong, are instead being fur­ther ripped apart by false nar­ra­tives and dis­trac­tions. Our agree­ment to sac­ri­fice our indi­vid­ual lib­er­ty for the com­mon good has been bro­ken. But it is not by some acci­dent of fate or caused by some nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na. It is caused by the very few hold­ing the pow­er to make and shape a sys­tem that rein­forces their wealth and power.

Sat­urn in Aquarius
To bring this back to the Astro­log­i­cal world, Sat­urn mov­ing through Aquar­ius pre­cise­ly encap­su­lates this ques­tion as it has done each time it moves through this sign. It shines a light on the ques­tion of our Com­mu­ni­ty Spir­it, of our Social Con­scious­ness and Con­science, and the degree to which we are hold­ing togeth­er by bal­anc­ing our Indi­vid­ual Free­dom and our Social Respon­si­bil­i­ties to one another.

The answer has always been the same; each time Sat­urn has been in Aquar­ius we have been remind­ed that we have not been hold­ing togeth­er and sup­port­ing one anoth­er fair­ly. Today, we have become divid­ed even more than before because the foun­da­tions of our democ­ra­cy have been shat­tered by the extremes of wealth and want. This is what Sat­urn in Aquar­ius is call­ing for, a return to a tru­ly sup­port­ive com­mu­ni­ty which will fos­ter greater oppor­tu­ni­ty for each and every indi­vid­ual to real­ize their fuller poten­tial, and which will equal­ly ben­e­fit that very com­mu­ni­ty, for it will ben­e­fit one and all. We must reaf­firm the prin­ci­ple of equal oppor­tu­ni­ty, to cre­ate a social order that is fair and just, and which will be based upon a more equi­table shar­ing in the wealth that we, every one of us, create.

Look at the pre­vi­ous years of Sat­urn in Aquar­ius, and you will see this pat­tern of social and eco­nom­ic reform for over 100 years: 1991–1994 (Clin­ton), 1962–1964 (JFK), 1932–1935 (FDR), and 1903–1906 (Ted­dy Roo­sevelt). In each of these peri­ods, some more and some less, the eco­nom­ic order was re-ordered, pow­er was re-dis­trib­uted as laws were enact­ed, poli­cies and mech­a­nisms forged that restored (for a time) a more just and equal society.

But the chal­lenge we face now, with not only Sat­urn mov­ing through Aquar­ius, but expe­ri­enc­ing for the first time, the return of Plu­to to its posi­tion in the chart of the Unit­ed States, means that this reck­on­ing, this realign­ment or reform will be much more con­se­quen­tial than any we have ever faced. And that is very good because this coun­try, and our com­pact with one anoth­er needs to be reborn.

Path to Restoration
We only need to remem­ber how this great exper­i­ment in Democ­ra­cy and Self-Gov­ern­ment began. We have to restore the bal­ance between the Indi­vid­ual and Com­mu­ni­ty Respon­si­bil­i­ty. Just like our founders, we are begin­ning to forge a new com­pact, a new agree­ment between one anoth­er. Like FDR’s New Deal, we will restore our ways and means of meet­ing one another’s needs by reform­ing our social order.

Much of this is already hap­pen­ing. Peo­ple always ask, “where is the New World com­ing from?” And the answer is, “we are mak­ing it now”. At the local, region­al and state lev­els, actions and poli­cies and pro­grams are being cre­at­ed as we help one anoth­er through this cri­sis. We are tak­ing actions, chang­ing our pri­or­i­ties, and being remind­ed once again about what is tru­ly most impor­tant. We had been sac­ri­fic­ing the qual­i­ty of our life for the mere quan­ti­ty of our things.

We can see and feel how unequal our world had become. In what kind of world do peo­ple who get to “play” for a liv­ing are reward­ed with lux­u­ries like pri­vate planes and mul­ti­ple homes, while, for exam­ple, the health­care work­ers on the front lines, like count­less EMT’s sav­ing lives day after day now, and they can­not afford to live with­out a hav­ing a sec­ond job, and they can­not even afford their very own health insur­ance, all while they risk their lives every day to save oth­ers? What is wrong with us? How did this happen?

This is what a cri­sis reveals; and this is the pow­er wield­ed by our great­est fear, the fear of death. That ulti­mate truth, that we are mor­tal, and the fear we have for our­selves and loved ones, this shat­ters our com­pla­cen­cy. It is Spir­it mov­ing through and around us, it is our man­i­fest Love for one anoth­er mov­ing through us now, and that will sup­port and guide us to a rebirth for our­selves, our com­mu­ni­ties, our coun­try and our world.

The Real Crisis
Yes, we are fac­ing an extreme test of our bro­ken social order; but the very good news is that we made this order and so we can fix it too. But what we must also under­stand is the largest com­mu­ni­ty on Earth is LIFE itself; and it is formed into a sim­i­lar order of com­mu­ni­ties and sys­tems, of intri­cate and mutu­al­ly inter­de­pen­dent hier­ar­chies of seem­ing­ly count­less life-forms. And we know that life depends upon life. And from the micro­scop­ic orders to the largest of life­forms, life has become dev­as­tat­ed, life is leav­ing the plan­et, and we only need to look in the mir­ror to see why.

As I have say­ing for many weeks now with my clients, this pan­dem­ic is mere­ly the very tiny tip of an immense ice­berg that is crash­ing into our dear lifeboat in Space, our home plan­et, our plan­et Earth. And the ever-grow­ing cri­sis, of which Covid-19 is but a symp­tom, is Cli­mate Change. Our work is not mere­ly with­in our human fam­i­ly. Our great­est respon­si­bil­i­ty, most cer­tain­ly, is for us to ded­i­cate our­selves to do every­thing we can to pre­serve all life on this plan­et. For our lives depend upon all those oth­er life-forms.

You are here at the end­ing of age; and it is ter­ri­ble, and it is won­der­ful. You are here at this his­toric moment, when human civ­i­liza­tion and life on plan­et earth as we have come to know it is threat­ened. What will you do?

The world is chang­ing; and we are the change mak­ers. We must choose wise­ly, by first help­ing one anoth­er in this time of fear and loss. But we must under­stand the solu­tion is not a vac­cine for this virus, but a spir­i­tu­al and social trans­for­ma­tion of how we care for anoth­er and for our beau­ti­ful world too.

When I spoke and wrote years ago about this time being an “end of an Age”, and that the world we knew was going to be end­ing start­ing in 2008, my clients asked me
“what does that mean?” I said, “I do not know; all I know is that we will be mov­ing into a New World”.

As we move through it now, it will become clear­er to us what things have to change to pre­serve life and to pre­serve this plan­et. We all real­ize how impor­tant this moment is, and in the days and weeks and months and years ahead, we need to be that change that cre­ates a New World.

Here is the radio show link: https://www.blogtalkradio.com/astrologerbillattride/2020/04/26/saturn-in-aquarius-all-for-one-and-one-for-all