Tran­script of Radio Show: Where are we now – The End of an Age – The Pandemic

The Pan­dem­ic
As you might imag­ine these last cou­ple of weeks almost every ses­sion I have done has always begun, though I have hour long ses­sions, the first 20 or 30 min­utes have been tak­en up with the events of the time, (and then I cer­tain­ly give that client their one hour ses­sion too). But most peo­ple want to talk about what is going on and what the stars have to say about it, and we share our expe­ri­ences and how we are try­ing to cope with this.

Whether it is clients in Europe who have had an ear­li­er taste of this, and here now in the US and around the world, we are try­ing to make sense of what is hap­pen­ing here. Of course for me in terms of what I have stud­ied, and rely­ing upon the ancient wis­dom, (being a stu­dent of his­to­ry and also stu­dent of astrol­o­gy for many years), I try to under­stand these things in big his­tor­i­cal terms and look­ing at the “arc of his­to­ry”, and I try to under­stand how that fits into the “arc of the plan­ets and their cycling”.

I always tend to frame it that way, and I am always opti­mistic because we have come through very trou­bling times before, again and again through­out his­to­ry, and Spir­it and the human spir­it finds a way through. It is always a time, I would say, of a quick­en­ing of spir­it, that when things have great “fric­tion” we reveal the “shin­ing” under­neath, and that behind all the incrus­ta­tions we see our love and com­pas­sion and car­ing for one another

Heroes of Humanity
That is show­ing up in leaps and bounds now, right here inti­mate­ly in our dai­ly lives as well as what we watch on the stage of the world with all those heroes out there. The front line, of course, con­sid­er­ing the con­di­tions were going through, our health care work­ers and oth­er lead­ers who are try­ing to fore­stall any greater calami­ty to us all. And we praise them like we did our 9/11 respon­ders here in New York, who rushed in with­out think­ing of them­selves. Their exam­ple is tru­ly the shin­ing star of human con­scious­ness; it is our self­less­ness and sac­ri­fice for one anoth­er, which is our love for one anoth­er. And it gives me goose­bumps when I watch what is going on, and what we will be going through, and hope­ful­ly we will have a lot of those shin­ing moments here to look back upon.

The End of an Age
But of course, you want to know why; why is this hap­pen­ing now? And again, Astro­log­i­cal­ly, as I have been say­ing, and prob­a­bly get­ting very dull now since before 2008, I have kept on this drum­beat that this is going to be a time that we will not for­get. Because this is a time much like it was in the 1700s and before that in the 1500s and so on that every 240, 250 years or so, one of those great plan­ets, the plan­et Plu­to the plan­et that rules Trans­for­ma­tion, Death and Rebirth, (I say it rules the will). But it is the pow­er of Cre­ation, of death and rebirth and renew­al. When it is mov­ing through cer­tain signs, it is affect­ing the qual­i­ties and con­di­tions that sign gov­erns. It always goes through a series of steps and stages, and we can look at them all at some point his­tor­i­cal­ly. But for our pur­pos­es, just to focus on today, I have said that in the 1500s was a time where a “world” came undone, in terms of how it was struc­tured eco­nom­i­cal­ly and polit­i­cal­ly and cul­tur­al­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly. It set in motion a new kind of cul­ture and econ­o­my and way of life for the next 250 years. And that came undone in the next episode of Plu­to through Capri­corn which was 1760 to 1770s.

The Answer or Solu­tion becomes the problem
In each of these peri­ods, what had been the dom­i­nant way of meet­ing human needs, because that is what we are talk­ing about, (we are humans, we take care of one anoth­er), whether with­in fam­i­lies or in com­mu­ni­ties, and then in larg­er social orga­ni­za­tions on up to state and transna­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions, it is all about meet­ing human needs. We cre­ate these sys­tems to meet our needs with­in fam­i­lies and then expand­ing out­ward, and the sys­tems we put in place, the pat­terns that we cre­ate will work for a time, per­haps for a very long time, but they are not for­ev­er. And they need to change because of their own inter­nal dynam­ic of no longer meet­ing the nature of what humans need at that time, but also exter­nal­ly, because of exter­nal events and changes in cli­mate and oth­er things, that make it no longer ten­able to meet our needs that way.

That is what hap­pened in the 1500s, it hap­pened again the 1700s. What hap­pens is the very solu­tion that is for­mu­lat­ed and put forth and becomes dom­i­nant in a peri­od, that solu­tion cre­ates its own con­tra­dic­tions and lim­i­ta­tions. We see these amaz­ing chal­lenges and prob­lems in the 1700s, that set in motion cer­tain dynam­ics in terms of releas­ing great wealth and pow­er, and accu­mu­la­tion and growth in soci­eties on the one hand, but also had inher­ent side effects that were going to be catch­ing up to us at some point. And, here they are, as the very things that we used to solve our prob­lems, (of hav­ing enough food and hav­ing enough pow­er and hav­ing and accu­mu­lat­ing more wealth and well-being in the world), is now chok­ing and destroy­ing the world, caus­ing all these dis­lo­ca­tions in the nat­ur­al world and our human made world.

That is the result of things we know, in terms of many sci­en­tists for years talk­ing about this, and that as we broke down the nat­ur­al sys­tems, and they came under greater stress, there would be reper­cus­sions. And as we moved into all spaces on the Earth, and came into con­tact with spaces that we nor­mal­ly would not, with pathogens and life­forms, and these became intro­duced into our world, and we would have no defens­es against them.

When did this begin?
You could say this goes back 10 to 15,000 years ago, when humans decid­ed (and it maybe longer than that, depend­ing upon how you look at his­to­ry), when humans became no longer hunter-gath­er­ers, and began to set­tle down into com­mu­ni­ties, as agri­cul­tur­al­ist and pas­toral­ists, and we began to live with our ani­mals. At that very moment, we began to have more of this inter­fac­ing with life-forms that we had no defens­es against, and we had to accu­mu­late those defenses.

But of course, that sped up over time, to the point where now it is rac­ing across the globe in a mat­ter of hours, because of how we have con­nect­ed to one anoth­er through these amaz­ing tech­nolo­gies. But the down­side is yes, there is this greater con­nec­tiv­i­ty for all things trav­el­ing along those path­ways includ­ing things that are dan­ger­ous to us.

And so many peo­ple are say­ing, well why did we let this hap­pen? There were many voic­es speak­ing to this, say­ing it is going to hap­pen again, and to the extent that we have rig­or­ous pub­lic health struc­tures, and peo­ple look­ing out for these things, we could catch it in time.

Of course, in many places and cul­tures they have some of those sys­tems in place, and they may be far­ing a lit­tle bet­ter than oth­er places. And, in oth­er sys­tems, they took their “eye off the ball”, and they did not put the funds and resources there, they did not catch it ear­ly enough, and now they are try­ing to play “catch up”. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Amer­i­ca and oth­er coun­tries are in that role, of hav­ing not been as resilient in terms of some resources that we would like to draw upon at this time.

Why does this happen?
So, peo­ple ask, why does this hap­pen? The plan­ets do not cause this. They are what they are, in their reg­u­lar pat­tern­ing with each oth­er, and they set in motion peri­ods where there is a begin­ning of some­thing; and then it comes to a piv­ot point; then it comes to a cli­max; and around again until it begins a new cycle. What hap­pens with­in that cycle, any cycle, whether it is look­ing at things in the month­ly cycle of the Sun and Moon or oth­er kinds of week­ly cycles every 7 days, every 14 days, some­thing begins and goes through var­i­ous stages. Just like in dis­ease, a doc­tor will note the onset of a dis­ease and then you reach a crit­i­cal moment at 3 1/2 days, and then anoth­er inflec­tion at 7 days. There are these con­stants in terms of num­bers and Fibonac­ci sequences, that seem to time the unfold­ment of nat­ur­al and beyond nat­ur­al process­es, that seem to shape the tim­ing of things.

But what hap­pens in any one of those times, depend­ing upon what organ­ism we are talk­ing about, is depen­dent upon that organ­ism, espe­cial­ly when we are talk­ing about humans, since we have much greater pow­ers to change our world and ourselves.

We are the Cause
What is hap­pen­ing here, the con­tent of what we are fac­ing, that is on us. It is not caused by Plu­to in Capri­corn; it is not caused by Sat­urn going from Capri­corn to Aquar­ius, which it did last night. And we are thank­ful for that, because it brings a new kind of test here into the world for us all, one that is quite strik­ing in terms of what we are going through, and I will def­i­nite­ly men­tion that.

But in terms of what we are fac­ing, there is no deter­mi­na­tion com­ing from the plan­ets. They just say when and what the nature of it might be. That this is a time when the insti­tu­tions fall apart. And what will be revealed to us is how lack­ing they are in their capac­i­ty to han­dle cer­tain prob­lems, that in some sense they helped to cre­ate these prob­lems, that the way we did things help to cre­ate these problems.

And we will see indi­vid­u­als, some ris­ing to the occa­sion and being the heroes of the moment, peo­ple who are author­i­ties in var­i­ous posi­tions, that are car­ry­ing out their duties as best they can, giv­en the times they are in. And oth­ers we will see, like the insti­tu­tions them­selves, are fail­ing and flail­ing, because they do not have the char­ac­ter, they do not have the integri­ty, they do not have the virtue, they do not have the wis­dom, and they do not act with truth. That is revealed at a time like this, every­thing is exposed.

Most of us, as we have been told, will get through this fine. There will be incon­ve­niences, cer­tain­ly, and dev­as­tat­ing eco­nom­ic con­se­quences, but life will go on. There are those we should be rush­ing to help who are more vul­ner­a­ble, and those who are in the front lines who need our sup­port because they are putting their life on the line every sin­gle moment.

It need not have been this dif­fi­cult; there is no neces­si­ty to how dif­fi­cult it is now. That is through a series of choic­es or will­ful igno­rance or what have you, by those who might have tak­en steps. We nev­er lay this on the plan­ets and say they are the cause of some­thing. They are a way of look­ing for the mean­ing­ful­ness of some­thing. And yes, in indi­vid­ual charts we can say this is a time for hav­ing stress in your life, and then you need to be able to cope with that.

Cer­tain­ly, Plu­to going through Capri­corn is a stress­ful peri­od in his­to­ry for all places. But obvi­ous­ly, dif­fer­ent places and peo­ples and cul­tures will respond dif­fer­ent­ly giv­en their lev­el of devel­op­ment and integri­ty in han­dling those crises. And that is what we are see­ing play out across the plan­et right now in this quite lit­er­al­ly glob­al pandemic.

Sat­urn — Test of Respon­si­bil­i­ty, becomes the Test of Community
So what we can do right now is under­stand that the test we’ve been under­go­ing for the last 2 1/2 years, with Sat­urn also being in Capri­corn was a test of respon­si­bil­i­ty, where we would see how well our sys­tems were hold­ing and peo­ple with­in those sys­tems under­stood the exer­cise of their pow­er and car­ried it out cor­rect­ly or did not; or failed to do so, dropped the ball, stum­bled and caused greater harm. But just last night and now this morn­ing, and for the next cou­ple of years, the plan­et Sat­urn is in Aquar­ius. The next test for all of us, with­in this larg­er test of Plu­to going through Capri­corn, (which con­tin­ues till 2024), is that Sat­urn in Aquar­ius says we have got to think about and face our under­stand­ing of our Social Con­scious­ness and Conscience.

It is real­ly about com­mu­ni­ty, and that we real­ize that our true nature is not indi­vid­ual but that we are made of one anoth­er. And we need one anoth­er to devel­op intel­li­gence, to devel­op our know­ing, devel­op our feel­ings and have these con­nec­tions with­in our­selves that are formed by all these con­nec­tions we form out and around our­selves. I like to say, “we are more of a we than an I” and most of our thoughts and feel­ings and under­stand­ing has been formed by all these inter­ac­tions we have had with peo­ple through­out our lives, and through many lives.

What is “the Good”, what is Happiness?
We must work at main­tain­ing and pre­serv­ing and extend­ing our com­mu­ni­ties, because it is all about this: How do we achieve the great­est lev­el of self-ful­fill­ment, for one and for all? What is hap­pi­ness? Hap­pi­ness is reach­ing one’s high­est lev­el of self-real­iza­tion, which has to be some­thing we all strive for, to bring every­body up to that greater lev­el of self-real­iza­tion, because then we will suc­ceed as a cul­ture and a peo­ple and a planet.

If we fail to cre­ate con­di­tions that allow for this greater self-real­iza­tion and there­fore of hap­pi­ness, we will go into a dark­er peri­od. So, right now, as we are being asked to phys­i­cal­ly sep­a­rate, we have to ever more pull togeth­er, call one anoth­er, speak to one anoth­er, wave to one anoth­er from a respect­ful dis­tance and hold togeth­er and help one anoth­er through this time.

Our social con­nec­tions are being test­ed, and I am sure that they will be found to be strong and true. This will revive a human spir­it in terms of fel­low­ship and com­mu­ni­ty and love of my neigh­bor. And love of all oth­ers in com­mu­ni­ties around the world, com­mu­ni­ty to com­mu­ni­ty band­ing togeth­er to solve our problems.

The Old Order, The New World
It is in the dark time, by Plu­to going to Capri­corn when the world falls apart, that a New World is also equal­ly emerg­ing, and that will become ever more evi­dent as we move into 2024 and 25 and 26. It is not going to be easy to build a New World, because we know there are sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems that we are con­fronting, not the least of which is the chal­lenge of dis­eases spring­ing out of nowhere like this, seem­ing­ly, but it is not from nowhere. Or watch­ing the eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion of this plan­et and the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of life itself in peril.

We are, as we like to think, a high­er life­form, hav­ing self-aware­ness and self-con­scious­ness. But we have been act­ing very stu­pid­ly for a long time in terms of think­ing we could get away with destroy­ing low­er life-forms and our own life-form be unaf­fect­ed by that.

Life depends on Life
All life depends on life; and the high­er life­forms even more so depend on all low­er life­forms, from the most micro­scop­ic to larg­er macro­scop­ic realms. We are right now remov­ing life from this plan­et, at an increas­ing rate. If we do not turn that around, (not that these oth­er eco­log­i­cal sys­tems and oth­er beings have inher­ent val­ue them­selves, vast val­ue) our poten­tial and our val­ue, and our real­iza­tion will very much dimin­ish as a result.

So, the hour is late, and I see these blows we are receiv­ing in eco­log­i­cal dis­as­ters and fires and storms and now waves of pan­demics, as signs of the plan­et is say­ing: “Stop! Change your way, wake up to the need for con­sid­er­ing all life is sacred”, pro­tect­ing all of life, and pro­tect­ing your own life through that.

First, we need to reach out to one anoth­er and then to all oth­er life forms, to con­tin­ue upon this won­der­ful “lifeboat of life” that we call our Earth. But right now the hour is late, and right now we are fac­ing this cri­sis that we have to get through, and we are being asked to make extra­or­di­nary changes and sac­ri­fices, which we will make for one anoth­er and for the future. But cer­tain­ly, it is not a neces­si­ty at all that this had to hap­pen. Some­thing would have to break­down, and things are break­ing down and cer­tain­ly around the world in var­i­ous ways, but that is also because it was time. But it is equal­ly time to start build­ing bet­ter sys­tems, a bet­ter way of meet­ing our needs and meet­ing the needs for one anoth­er that are sus­tain­able and can be passed down to future gen­er­a­tions as they improve upon that in many, many years and decades and even cen­turies to come.

But this is our moment, this is our moment when we see the end of an age. And rather than strik­ing fear into our hearts we should real­ize: We are grate­ful for where it brought us, this civ­i­liza­tion and cul­ture; but we see its inher­ent con­tra­dic­tions and lim­i­ta­tions and how it is itself a very imped­i­ment to future human evo­lu­tion and fulfillment.

Spir­i­tu­al Awakening/Spiritual Praxis
There­fore, we must change, we must be these instru­ments of change, now. There is no time to delay. And maybe this is one of those shocks or wake up calls that makes us see that. That the epi­dem­ic, this pan­dem­ic COVID-19, is a bless­ing, because it makes peo­ple real­ize they can­not just get by, they can­not pre­tend that every­thing is okay, that this is mere­ly a pass­ing challenge.

There is a spir­i­tu­al awak­en­ing that will take place in many souls and in many hearts, and we are all expe­ri­enc­ing it on dif­fer­ent lev­els I am sure. I am cer­tain­ly hear­ing that from many peo­ple. We all wish it did not have to hap­pen this way, and I do not think it had to hap­pen this way, but it is where we are and it is where we are going to be for some time, to get our­selves out of this self-cre­at­ed mess that we are in.

The Way is Truth
We will do bet­ter, we will be fine, but we need to remem­ber how to find our way. And that is why I always return to ancient teach­ings, to ancient phi­los­o­phy, to meta­phys­i­cal prin­ci­ples to hold us true to the fun­da­men­tal teach­ings, which are:

Life is sacred and what­ev­er and whomev­er I encounter is an aspect of the divine, and to treat it as any­thing less than that is to harm myself.

Love is the is the ener­gy that holds this whole uni­verse together.

In think­ing you will find that truth is Wisdom.

In feel­ing you will find that truth is Beauty.

In liv­ing you will find that truth is Virtue.

And in action you will find that truth is Moderation.

Self-Mas­tery
Many dif­fer­ent philoso­phies under­stand this and have spo­ken to this. The sto­ic philoso­phers are amaz­ing, and they affirm that we can only con­trol our­selves. And so, self-mas­tery is the key, which comes from self-knowl­edge and knowl­edge of the world around oneself.

So, we need to do our own part in mas­ter­ing our­selves and con­duct­ing our­selves with integri­ty, and in search­ing for truth. By find­ing truth we will estab­lish greater equi­lib­ri­um and nor­mal­cy in our­selves and in our con­duct. No one pos­sess­es truth, but you can become pos­sessed by it, and know what is right and what is wrong, with­out think­ing about it; it requires no thought what­so­ev­er, it is an intu­itive feel­ing and this is what should guide us.

When will this end?
Prob­a­bly peo­ple want me to say when is this going to end, and there are experts in epi­demi­ol­o­gy and pan­demics that know far bet­ter than me, (and we are all read­ing about these things now), what the time­line is here. But I would stress, and as they stress, the time­line is not fixed; it is deter­mined by how we each act and fol­low what we find are the rea­son­able and right author­i­ties who have more under­stand­ing, the sci­en­tists and those polit­i­cal and oth­er lead­ers who are stay­ing on the straight and nar­row path, and fol­low their advice and do what we are asked to do and answer the call if we have to, and that will that will deter­mine how long this takes.

But there is no astro­log­i­cal deter­mi­na­tion that says this or that will hap­pen. Because obvi­ous­ly what is hap­pen­ing here on the plan­et for every­one is a response and result by each indi­vid­ual and com­mu­ni­ty and nation in its own fashion.

So, each of us must do our utmost and best, if we want to get through this more eas­i­ly and no longer be under this fear­ful ener­gy-form that seems to be hold­ing peo­ple in place right now. Instead, we should remove the fear by act­ing in lov­ing man­ners, in lov­ing ways and lov­ing actions towards one anoth­er, that is the great­est thing any of us can do right now, at any point in time, but espe­cial­ly a time when it seems as if we want to retreat and with­draw from one anoth­er. We need to stay dis­tant, but we need to be even more con­nect­ed is the message.

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.