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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

E Pluribus Unum—Out of Many One

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

You know what to do,

Love one another…

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

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

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