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.

Astro­log­i­cal Mus­ings – A New World Will Rise, a look back and ahead (April 12, 2020)

In my ninth show of 2020, I will look at this piv­otal moment and how it con­nects to oth­er moments of great change. This is tru­ly the “end of an Age”, which most cer­tain­ly means it is equal­ly the rise of a New Age.

For the USA, the peri­ods that par­al­lel our time are, 1774–75 and 1857–58. The years 1774–75, as defined Astro­log­i­cal­ly by the posi­tion of Plu­to, formed the seed for the real begin­nings of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion. In 1774, Eng­land passed the “Intol­er­a­ble Acts” as pun­ish­ment for the Boston Tea Par­ty in 1773, remov­ing self-gov­ern­ment from Mass­a­chu­setts and impos­ing penal­ties upon the colonies. This led to out­rage through­out the colonies, and they agreed to meet for their mutu­al self-defense in the First Con­ti­nen­tal Con­gress. In effect, the colonies began to form a union, and they agreed upon a boy­cott of goods from the Unit­ed King­dom. This was the match that lit the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War, and the bat­tles at Lex­ing­ton and Con­cord and the siege of Boston, Mass­a­chu­setts fol­lowed in 1775.

The years 1857–58 defined by Nep­tune, (when Nep­tune was in this same Zodi­a­cal posi­tion), wit­nessed the Dred Scott deci­sion by the Supreme court, which deter­mined that slaves and descen­dants of slaves were nev­er nor would they ever be cit­i­zens, i.e. that they would remain the per­ma­nent “prop­er­ty” of their mas­ters. It was also defined by the Lincoln/Douglas debates made famous in Lincoln’s dec­la­ra­tion that, “a house divid­ed from itself can­not stand”. It was also a defin­ing moment for the emer­gence of a new real­i­ty, of “One World”, as the first ever world-wide eco­nom­ic pan­ic in his­to­ry swept across the plan­et, (and from which the USA did not real­ly “recov­er” until the Civ­il War in the 1860’s).

What will our cri­sis bring about; and, what will our New World look like? Will we under­stand our respon­si­bil­i­ty now; will we grow in wis­dom and bow our heads in humil­i­ty? This is absolute­ly nec­es­sary now; we must face and accept the truth, that we made the won­ders and the hor­rors of the world that is pass­ing. The pan­dem­ic, and what fol­lows, this was and will be our creation.

There is only one ques­tion now: how will we make a bet­ter world for one and for all?

As it was in 1774 and in 1857, the fun­da­men­tal chal­lenge in our time is Spir­i­tu­al. In both peri­ods, as always, we shine and reveal what is best when we fol­low the one True Spir­i­tu­al Imper­a­tive: “We are all relat­ed”; and, what we do to any oth­er, we do to ourselves.

Held with­in this shin­ing Truth is that we are on an “arc of awak­en­ing”, and our path will ever bend towards the truth to see one anoth­er as “cre­at­ed equal”. Behind all of Cre­ation, there is the One. We were made by this one True Love; and we are sim­ply, but most pro­found­ly, here to love one anoth­er as we are loved.

We real­ize that all humans are pre­cious; and our divi­sion from one anoth­er is tru­ly our great­est per­il. Now, we must decide, how will we hold to the one absolute spir­i­tu­al truth, that all of life is sacred. Our lives 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 with whom we share this beau­ti­ful world.

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 April 12^th @ 2 pm EDT:

https://www.blogtalkradio.com/astrologerbillattride/2020/04/12/astrologer-bill-attride-radio-show-the-end-of-an-age-a-new-world-will-rise

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 April 12^th @ 2 pm EDT as we look at the cur­rent astro­log­i­cal indi­ca­tions and what they mean for you.

Astro­log­i­cal Mus­ings – The Test of Lead­er­ship and Com­mu­ni­ty (April 5, 2020)

In my eighth show of 2020, I will look at the charts of Andrew Cuo­mo and Antho­ny Fau­ci, each of whom are set­ting an exam­ple of lead­er­ship in this time of cri­sis. Who are they, what kind of lead­er­ship do they show, and why does their exam­ple stand out now?

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 April 5^th @ 2 pm EDT:

https://www.blogtalkradio.com/astrologerbillattride/2020/04/05/astrologer-bill-attride-radio-show-saturn-2020-leadership-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 April 5^th @ 2 pm EDT as we look at the cur­rent astro­log­i­cal indi­ca­tions and what they mean for you.

The USA & Plu­to, the End of an Age

The USA & Plu­to, the End of an Age

Today’s dis­cus­sion is about the cycling of the plan­et Plu­to through the sign of Capri­corn. It goes around the solar sys­tem in about 245 years, and into Capri­corn on a peri­od­ic basis. So, if we look at this , and we are going to talk about why this is so, but if we look at Plu­to going through Capri­corn which is the thing I’ve been talk­ing about since the mid 2000’s and Plu­to is back in Capri­corn start­ing in 2008.

The last two times before this was 1516 to 1532, a very long time ago, and then more recent­ly 1762 to 1778. That peri­od would raise eye­brows, wow that’s when the USA was born, and sure enough the USA chart has Plu­to in Capri­corn (and we’re going to talk about that). And then, our time right now, Plu­to went into Capri­corn once again in 2008 and it lasts until 2024.

Capri­corn
Capri­corn is the sign of insti­tu­tions, of how we take our human needs and how we meet those needs and rather than just always wing­ing it and being spon­ta­neous we cre­ate sys­tems with­in a fam­i­ly cer­tain­ly, as well as build­ing on that fam­i­ly mod­el in terms of com­mu­ni­ties and larg­er orga­ni­za­tions, in com­pa­nies and regions and nations in the world. We cre­ate all these instru­ments of our own that serve ulti­mate­ly to meet our needs for one anoth­er and to one anoth­er in sig­nif­i­cant ways, and those sys­tems are amaz­ing and resilient and pur­pose­ful and infused with our intel­li­gence and love and can last for a long time.

But this is the nature of the world, of the phys­i­cal realm: noth­ing lasts for­ev­er. Things will even­tu­al­ly fall apart and need to be remade and redone and that’s what we’re encoun­ter­ing when Plu­to goes through Capri­corn. The insti­tu­tions we have cre­at­ed are now fail­ing us. Whether it’s the indi­vid­u­als in the insti­tu­tions who have “dropped the ball” or aren’t of the cal­iber we need them to be, that they do not under­stand their mis­sion and how to car­ry it out, or because the insti­tu­tion itself has been falling apart for some time. Or, equal­ly because the sys­tem it’s serv­ing, the needs that are evolv­ing and chang­ing, and how we meet our needs and deal with the chang­ing world, have gone out of phase with the insti­tu­tions or they have gone out of phase with it, so that insti­tu­tion­al form no longer solves the problem.

So I made this short­hand anal­o­gy that in the 1500s we moved from, (look­ing at Europe only but it’s true in many places in the world, and it is increas­ing­ly becom­ing more true uni­ver­sal­ly as we go to a one kind of world in our con­nec­tiv­i­ty), we went from feu­dal­ism to monar­chies, the break­ing down of a feu­dal order and the rise of monar­chies. Flash­ing for­ward to the 1760s and of course then it’s the fall of the monar­chies and the rise of par­lia­men­tary democracies.

And, of course, that’s what’s falling now, it’s all com­ing undone, and so in each of these peri­ods not only did the polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al, the eco­nom­ic and oth­er sys­tems become trans­formed because they had to be to meet the chang­ing way we under­stand and meet our needs, but it also led or required or real­ly made a new kind of human per­son. The peo­ple or humans in the 1500s would not be like you and I, and the peo­ple of the 1700s, though more like you and I, would still not be you and I; they were not dri­ven by the same visions and goals and dreams and notions of what it means to be human. Yes, there are many things that car­ry for­ward and would be under­stand­able, but tru­ly a dif­fer­ent kind of char­ac­ter and per­son was evi­dent then. And we’re going through our own change now, a very big one. A new kind of per­son emerges in each era, a new kind of human type you could argue. And so, in each peri­od, what hap­pened is that the very solu­tions that were meet­ing human needs, that were formed in that peri­od, those ways of being become the very lim­it or obsta­cle that caus­es the sys­tem to fail. And so, it must make way for the next order in realms spir­i­tu­al and men­tal emo­tion­al and physical.

Plu­to
So why Plu­to? Plu­to is the will or the avatar of the Will I like to say. It is the third aspect of the divine which is held as a tri­ad by the three out­er plan­ets of Uranus, Nep­tune and Plu­to. Now, of course, they’re just time­keep­ers and place­hold­ers and avatars of this, this is uni­ver­sal ener­gy. This tri­ad of spir­it is formed by, in this con­text, of Uranus, Nep­tune and Plu­to form­ing us into ever freer minds, ever deep­er uncon­di­tion­al love, and ever more tru­ly cen­tered wills. And, that’s the third aspect, Plu­to the will. And, it is by the will or by Plu­to that each enti­ty, and here we are talk­ing about humans, but each enti­ty is formed into its own sacred space and for us humans that is some­thing we have become now more self-aware and ever more con­scious about, about our spaces.

Plu­to as the avatar of the will rules the process­es of trans­for­ma­tion, of spir­it mov­ing from one form or man­i­fes­ta­tion to anoth­er, which are those most won­der­ful and mag­i­cal and mys­te­ri­ous process­es of pro­gres­sions that we see in so many realms, in all the realms. But most inti­mate­ly for us we expe­ri­ence this process as the mys­tery and joy and the awe-filled chal­lenge of birth, death and rebirth. It is through com­bi­na­tion that real­ly and tru­ly cre­ation exists and unfolds: From the one emerges the many, devel­op­ing from what are the infin­i­tes­i­mal’s I like to say, the mon­ads of spir­it, the spark of the divine at the core of every­thing. These com­bine to form as we call them and know them as atoms, which com­bined to form mol­e­cules, and into var­i­ous sub­stances, and into organ­isms, even­tu­al­ly lead­ing up to the plan­ets and stars and galax­ies. All of cre­ation exists because of what is fun­da­men­tal­ly known sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly as chem­istry, but it’s known in the ancient wis­dom as alchemy.

Plu­to & USA Chart
Plu­to in the USA chart and its oppo­si­tion to Mer­cury, this is the key as we are look­ing at the USA now, and we are a coun­try born with Plu­to and its most impor­tant rela­tion­ship is to Mer­cury. What is hap­pen­ing this year in 2020, and it was build­ing in 2019 but this year 2020 and into 2021, we are hav­ing the plan­et Plu­to go over Mer­cury in the US chart and then over Plu­to. And I will talk about when this has hap­pened before in var­i­ous ways, but this is the big one because it’s our Plu­to return, so it real­ly stands apart from the oth­er times.

Plu­to is in the sec­ond house of the USA chart and Mer­cury is in the 8th house. The 2nd House of a chart is the inher­ent val­ue of that being which indi­cates for us as a coun­try that the USA’s val­ue or strength is root­ed in the abil­i­ty we have, which all beings, but we espe­cial­ly as a nation have, the essen­tial nature of our val­ue or strength is our abil­i­ty to com­bine and trans­form val­ues, to remake and renew and restore and rebuild. Plu­to is the USA’s ris­ing plan­et, it leads us through life, which tru­ly makes the USA an Alchem­i­cal Nation.

What is the val­ue, the true val­ue of the USA, (and I would argue real­ly of any human group)? It is the val­ue of its peo­ple, it is their phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al, intel­lec­tu­al, and spir­i­tu­al devel­op­ment. It is their result­ing capa­bil­i­ty, each of us, to be alchemists. It is to live and love, to live and work in com­bi­na­tion with one anoth­er. And it is by this, this forge of union, this alchem­i­cal space of com­bi­na­tion, that we elic­it our own growth, indi­vid­u­al­ly and for one another.

This is how spir­it grows; it is how we make pos­si­ble our growth, and it is how we are cease­less­ly chang­ing one anoth­er and our world.

Mer­cury & Pluto
Mer­cury is in the oppo­site house in the USA chart. Plu­to is in Capri­corn, Mer­cury is in Can­cer, and we are a Can­cer nation. The USA, with the Mer­cury in the 8th house, is a coun­try that is dri­ven to probe beneath sur­face appear­ances. As Plu­to rules the sign of Scor­pio, and Mer­cury is in the 8th house which is like the eighth sign of Scor­pio, this is the house that deals with going deep­er than any place else to dis­cov­er and to con­nect and thrive through trans­for­ma­tion­al net­works, such as man­i­fest­ed in our trans­porta­tion, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and research efforts. The eighth house is the realm of unions; it is the very space of alche­my. So, both the Plu­to in the 2nd House of the USA chart, and with mer­cury the ruler up thought and edu­ca­tion and com­merce in the 8th house of joint endeav­ors, the USA will always reveal its strength, its spir­i­tu­al strength, in the mag­ic and mys­tery of alche­my, the pow­er of combinations.

We saw this in the begin­ning as we came togeth­er as a peo­ple, who had sep­a­rat­ed our­selves from oth­er times and places and cul­tures, and we tried to make a New World here. We choose to work togeth­er, vol­un­teer­ing to help one anoth­er, rais­ing barns togeth­er, and in so many oth­er ways, help­ing one anoth­er and reach­ing out to one anoth­er to form these com­bi­na­tions which elicit­ed our great growth.

Break­ing free from for­mer bound­aries and prej­u­dices and lim­i­ta­tions, we changed our­selves and the world. For the USA our true val­ue, our real strength and our most essen­tial truth is most per­fect­ly reflect­ed by our nation­al mot­to. Those founders knew what they were doing, they were wise men and they were wise women, who under­stood what they were about. What they inscribed on the seal of the Unit­ed States was our mot­to, “E Pluribus Unum”, “Out of many One”.

Mer­cury oppo­site Pluto
This oppo­si­tion of Mer­cury to Plu­to in the USA chart, (the very aspect that is being acti­vat­ed right now by Plu­to going over Mer­cury and then over Plu­to), can in its most pos­i­tive man­i­fes­ta­tions lead to a mind or con­scious­ness that is more able to probe beyond the lim­its hereto­fore accept­ed. It is by this that the light of aware­ness is drawn to go ever deep­er in an attempt to dis­cern the noume­na behind the appar­ent phe­nom­e­na of the world.

It is one of the instru­ments that steers all who have this to con­stant­ly strive to fol­low the path of truth. How­ev­er, Plu­to rul­ing “the Will” requires a per­son to have learned to turn that will back upon them­selves first and fore­most, to use their will for self-mas­tery. But, when Plu­to is devel­oped or exer­cised with­out a tru­ly cen­tered will it can often lead to a very dark place, and cre­ate an ener­gy-form that becomes dri­ven by fear, by shad­ows and destruc­tive­ness, and that mind or those minds grabbed by this form become obses­sive and con­trol­ling in their thought. This mis­use of the Will cre­ates divi­sions and self-blind­ing, and the loss of judg­ment in rea­son which can ulti­mate­ly result in a descent into madness.

Either you’re in con­trol or you’re out of con­trol, and this is the key for every­thing, but espe­cial­ly when it comes to con­trol­ling our minds. And that’s part of the chal­lenge and task we’re all under­go­ing right now, here faced with such great pres­sures in our lives per­son­al­ly, and region­al­ly and glob­al­ly. We must keep our minds cen­tered and calm even in the face of the great­est of fears. Because if we don’t do that, we will not be able to find a way through this challenge.

Plu­to in His­to­ry of the USA
The his­tor­i­cal align­ments of Plu­to with Mer­cury and Plu­to to itself in the chart of the USA are inter­est­ing. The last two times before now was 1933 to 1937, and I wrote about this in my fore­cast for 2019 because it was build­ing in and you could read that here.

From 1933 to 1937 Plu­to was con­junct Mer­cury and was oppo­site to Plu­to. and that was when we went through a great cri­sis in Amer­i­ca and changed fun­da­men­tal­ly the way we orga­nize our work and Com­merce, our under­stand­ing of Val­ue, and how we treat one anoth­er in terms of val­ue and as pro­duc­ers and cre­ators of val­ues. That was the new deal, that was FDR, and it set in motion a kind of econ­o­my and cul­ture from the late 1930s and ear­ly 1940s that con­tin­ued all the way up to the end of the 1970s.

But of course, it began to become undone and that “solu­tion” did not work so well, giv­en cer­tain choic­es that were made in the 1960s and 1970s, and things were falling apart. So, there was a call­ing to shift or change that way of struc­tur­ing things, and Plu­to was­n’t going to “say” which way it’s going to go, but it was time. That is when Plu­to lined up squar­ing the USA Plu­to and squar­ing the USA Mer­cury, which is more of a clash or con­flict, and a break­ing between one side and anoth­er. That was the “Rea­gan rev­o­lu­tion”, where again there was a reset of the eco­nom­ic way of life and it affect­ed cul­ture and every­thing else.

That car­ried us for­ward to this moment now, and so we’re in the next iter­a­tion. Now Plu­to is oppo­site Mer­cury and it’s going to come to con­junct itself. This is a big­ger moment more like the 1930s but per­haps even big­ger because this is a Plu­to return, so it is fun­da­men­tal in terms of a reset.

The Choice
Dur­ing each of these peri­ods though, as well as in our own, we have faced the chal­lenge and a choice. And, the chal­lenge is always:

“Will we be fear­ful; will we divide from one anoth­er and lose our great­est val­ue and strength which is our love for one anoth­er? Or will we be inspired by the actions of our heroes and true lead­ers who call upon us once again, and always, to help one anoth­er to pull togeth­er, to sac­ri­fice for one anoth­er, to love one another?”

This is the only choice before you now; will you help or will you be the prob­lem? Major crises cre­ate a break. I always think of crises and con­sid­er the Chi­nese ideogram for “cri­sis” is made up of two ideograms, Dan­ger and Oppor­tu­ni­ty. I’ve always held to the notion that what that means is that if we face a cri­sis well, then we will rise above that dilem­ma and find a new way. But if we get frozen in fear, then we fail to rise, and we fall backwards.

Basi­cal­ly, it is our chal­lenge to grow and move to the next lev­el. So, major crises cre­ate a break between one form of life and anoth­er, whether in an indi­vid­ual or group or a nation, or in our case real­ly the whole world. And it chal­lenges us to break from the old way into anoth­er form of life.

There is noth­ing that focus­es any­one’s mind, let alone a peo­ple or nation or even now today the entire plan­et, than the one inescapable fact we “immor­tals in mor­tal frames” have to face in this or most any extreme cri­sis, and that of course is the fear of death.

Until the vast major­i­ty of peo­ple know that their chil­dren and their com­pan­ions and loved ones and col­leagues, that their friends and even strangers are safe, we are going to remain far away from any sense of nor­mal in our world.

The world that was will not be the one we return to; there is no return­ing. The prob­lem we are now encoun­ter­ing was cre­at­ed by the world we had made. Peo­ple often ask me what plan­et or align­ment caused this cri­sis, what indi­cates COVID-19. And, I say noth­ing in the plan­ets made this; we made this.

Life on Earth
We have made choic­es good and bad for gen­er­a­tions, set­ting in place a cer­tain engine of growth and devel­op­ment that was won­drous and won­der­ful in terms of what it pro­vid­ed. But it also cre­at­ed great destruc­tion and pol­lu­tion and dis­rup­tion to the nat­ur­al world, which is now also con­fronting us.

So, I will always gen­tly remind any ques­tion­er that the plan­ets did not cause or cre­ate this. The plan­ets can only pro­vide insight with regards to the mean­ing, and the tim­ing, of any cir­cum­stance. But in our human-formed world, which this is, the con­tent of what we face now, and always will be, is ours. We made this world, again with all its won­ders and its hor­rors too.

The good news there is that then we are the ones who can change it; we made it; we can change it. We have more than enough evi­dence before us now in our bios­phere, in all the realms of life on this plan­et, that the very ways in which we had been meet­ing our human needs, whether in terms of pow­er or food or shel­ter and trans­porta­tion, and also many oth­er ways, that it is those very sys­tems that are now threat­en­ing the very com­plex web in the hier­ar­chy of life on this planet.

And so, we must under­stand (or remem­ber, because we knew this before) that spir­i­tu­al­ly and sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly all high­er life forms depend upon the entire range of life forms below it. And life is leav­ing the plan­et now at an increas­ing­ly rapid rate. That not only makes our world less bright and beau­ti­ful, but it is also a direct threat to our own very lives too.

We are going to have to pull togeth­er to face and over­come this present cri­sis, and we will. But those very respons­es, our amaz­ing cre­ativ­i­ty, our won­drous inven­tive­ness, our inge­nu­ity har­nessed to and always guid­ed by our com­pas­sion, and love for one anoth­er, will change us and we will enter into a new world in the months and years to come.

The New World
Peo­ple want to know, when is the new world com­ing? We are mak­ing it now; it’s chang­ing before your eyes and there is no going back. But our most impor­tant val­ues and qual­i­ties will be reaf­firmed secured and renewed by what we do now.

We are going to shine in this moment because we love one anoth­er, and we see that love in small and larg­er acts of sac­ri­fice and sav­ing every day now. We are heal­ing our­selves and our plan­et and it is from this that we will be the seed humans for a bet­ter world for our chil­dren and their chil­dren too.

Well there’s so much to talk about here; I’m almost about to break into tears myself, con­sid­er­ing what we’re going through. But we’re all going through it; and, I know we’re all going to be cry­ing a lot and laugh­ing and shar­ing and help­ing one anoth­er get through this. And, that is what we’re here for, we are here for one anoth­er. And no one is alone.

So, all of us need to reach out, con­nect to one anoth­er, reach out but don’t touch. It’s a strange thing we; humans always hold each oth­er. We ache to hold each oth­er, we want to kiss and hold and stroke one anoth­er, and we can­not now.

And, that is our love now, in that very inac­tion in that form of our love now. But we can do so much for one anoth­er and we are, and we will con­tin­ue to do so.

And we long for that day, we will get to that day, when we will not have to pull apart phys­i­cal­ly, but we can join togeth­er and laugh and hold one anoth­er again.