Tran­script of Radio Show: The Path of Light, The Way of Will and Purpose

I want­ed to talk today and I titled the show, “The path of Light, the Way of Will and Pur­pose”, and what I meant by that is that we find our­selves here on Earth, and we are all part of this great cos­mos, and involved in all these expe­ri­ences of ener­gies and ener­gy-forms that we are par­tak­ing in or influ­enced by. Astrol­o­gy is the study of all these dif­fer­ent cos­mic influ­ences from very near at hand like the Moon, and we see the tides ris­ing and falling, and the cycles of night and day and every­thing else that goes on that have framed our exis­tence and formed our sense of time and space, and from this we began to notice pat­terns as we became self-aware.

So what I would like to do is go into this under­stand­ing of Astrol­o­gy and the study of cycles and see how we might under­stand it, or how Astrologers under­stand it and help you under­stand it too. Astrol­o­gy in many ways can be large­ly under­stood as the study of cycles. From the dai­ly rev­o­lu­tion of the Earth mov­ing from day to night, to the Moon’s orbit around the earth in 29 days, in wax­ing and wan­ing, and the plan­ets orbit­ing around the sun, and on to the Sun’s cycle around the Milky Way, Astrologers have always sought to under­stand these var­i­ous and hier­ar­chi­cal “wheels with­in wheels” that map out the real­i­ty of we call Space-Time.

When try­ing to under­stand the life of an indi­vid­ual, or a group of indi­vid­u­als, or small­er or larg­er orga­ni­za­tions, it real­ly is impor­tant to keep in mind how var­ied and inter­re­lat­ed all these cycles are. Depend­ing upon what you are try­ing to deter­mine, you may focus upon just the imme­di­ate fac­tors form­ing the con­di­tions for a per­son. Or we may pull back to con­sid­er the fate of nations and civ­i­liza­tions that span the range of many cen­turies. These vary­ing influ­ences are a won­der to behold but mak­ing sense of them and under­stand­ing the true nature of what is hap­pen­ing can be con­fus­ing and often hum­bling, but ulti­mate­ly and reas­sur­ing­ly com­fort­ing to see that there is an order to the uni­verse. It is what I like to call the “Music of the Stars”.

Galac­tic
I thought it would be use­ful to con­sid­er the hier­ar­chy of influ­ences that we should always remem­ber are work­ing togeth­er to influ­ence what hap­pened before and what is hap­pen­ing now. Tak­ing it to the high­est lev­el, the first lev­el is Galac­tic. Our Galaxy, the Milky Way, rotates in about 250 mil­lion years, which in effect becomes one Galac­tic Year. As we spin around with the sun, our plan­e­tary sys­tem moves up and down with­in that galac­tic plane, weav­ing and bob­bing. It is beyond our mor­tal lim­its to know what are the dif­fer­ent divi­sions of space that we encounter in these 250 mil­lion years, but there are those who spec­u­late that it would prob­a­bly illus­trate or form long wave geo­log­i­cal changes and oth­er changes upon the earth. And we know that our very Milky Way Galaxy rotates with­in a vaster col­lec­tion of local galax­ies, which in turn are mov­ing in an even greater rota­tion­al cycle, “Wheels with­in wheels” indeed!

Solar Sys­tem
The sec­ond lev­el is our solar sys­tem. We have all seen mod­els of our plan­e­tary sys­tem, with the con­cen­tric ring of plan­ets around the Sun, from the plan­et Mer­cury to Venus to Earth, and then beyond the Earth to Mars, Jupiter, Sat­urn, Uranus, Nep­tune and Plu­to. The phe­nom­e­na of cycles astrologers use are focused upon the cycle of rela­tion­ships of the plan­ets to the Earth, and their cycles with one anoth­er. This is what I prin­ci­pal­ly use in my read­ings for indi­vid­u­als, and for exam­in­ing the world of Mun­dane or World­ly Astrol­o­gy too.

Pre­ces­sion of Equinoxes
But there are oth­er cycles with­in this realm, and one that many of you may have heard about. The Pre­ces­sion of the Equinox­es is formed by anoth­er motion of the Earth rel­a­tive to the local area of our Galaxy. We all know that the Earth tilts in one orbital year, hav­ing the north­ern then the south­ern hemi­sphere be more direct­ly point­ed towards the Sun. It is the cause of our sea­son­al expe­ri­ences here on Earth.

But the Earth also “wob­bles” in such a fash­ion, that look­ing to the North Pole, we find it aligns with a dif­fer­ent star over­head over the course of some 25,000 years or so. For Astrologers, this pre­ces­sion of the equinox­es moves back­ward through the Signs in about 2,000 years per Sign. This cre­ates a divi­sion between the Side­re­al (star­ry) and Trop­i­cal (local) astrol­o­gy. Where exact­ly a Side­re­al Sign begins or ends is not eas­i­ly deter­mined, but the study of these pre­ces­sions is cer­tain­ly some­thing intriguing.

Astro­log­i­cal Ages
When we look at these Astro­log­i­cal Ages let us begin at 12,000 years ago, (and there is a rea­son for that), in the Age of Leo from around 10,500 to 8000 BCE. That was the age that is crit­i­cal to our under­stand­ing as to what is hap­pen­ing now. That was the peri­od when human­i­ty took the fate­ful step of mov­ing from hunt­ing-gath­er­ing lifestyles to ever more seden­tary ways of a pas­toral and agri­cul­tur­al life. It was at that time that we began to alter our world ever­more sig­nif­i­cant­ly. And here we are, one half of a cycle of pre­ces­sion lat­er deal­ing with the end result of that choice, which is the mount­ing threats of Cli­mate Change.

From 8000 to 6000 BCE, we had the Age of Can­cer, because the pre­ces­sion moves back­wards through the signs, which wit­nessed the age of domes­ti­ca­tion and what became known as the wor­ship of the “Great Moth­er”. From 6000 to 4000 BCE, we had the Age of Gem­i­ni, and writ­ing and trade routes were flour­ish­ing, and poly­the­is­tic reli­gions were promi­nent. From 4000 to 2000 BCE, the Age of Tau­rus came to be, and we see the rise of the first true empires and of Bull wor­ship and imagery. Then from 2000 to O BCE, the Age of an Aries, we see the begin­ning of the move away from Poly­the­ism to Monothe­ism, and there is an erup­tion in this Age of Aries, the first sign, of new thoughts and philoso­phies seed­ing the world. This was the age of Con­fu­cius and Bud­dha and Lao Tzu and Zoroast­er and Pythago­ras and many, many others.

Then from 0 to 2000 CE, which is our time, this was the Age of Pisces, the Age of Monothe­ism, or some would argue spir­i­tu­al­ly and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly, the Age of the Indi­vid­ual and the Ego.

And now we find our­selves here, whether it has already hap­pened, or is hap­pen­ing or about to hap­pen, now from 2000s to the 4000, we are now mov­ing into the Age of Aquar­ius, which I argue will be the age when humans move beyond egoic lim­i­ta­tions, and form an ever more inclu­sive and  com­mu­nal based con­scious­ness. It is when we begin to man­age our­selves and our rela­tion­ships to one anoth­er, and with all life on this plan­et, in a holis­tic and heal­ing manner.

Now, when we want to under­stand what has been dri­ving our his­to­ry of late, I would cer­tain­ly want to begin with this obser­va­tion­al mod­el of the pre­ces­sion of the equinox­es as a big fram­ing of under­stand­ing. But then I would want to con­sid­er what var­i­ous plan­e­tary cycles are cur­rent­ly in play and com­pare them to pre­vi­ous moments in history.

Jupiter/Saturn, The Great Mutation
Of course, noth­ing is ever a rep­e­ti­tion as all these cycles move at var­i­ous time frames and though we can mea­sure repeat­ing align­ments of plan­ets, when look­ing at all the plan­ets togeth­er, there is nev­er going to be an exact rep­e­ti­tion between them. Of inter­est to us, con­sid­er­ing the pos­si­bly that we are in or at the begin­ning of the Age of Aquar­ius is anoth­er cycle astrologers study, the pat­tern of Jupiter and Sat­urn, which every 20 years move from con­junc­tion to con­junc­tion, and those con­junc­tions occur in a series, align­ing in one ele­ment for 200 years or so before the next 200 years in the next element.

The most recent ages as deter­mined by this cycling of Jupiter and Sat­urn were as fol­lows: We were in a Water Age from 1425 to 1663, that would be Jupiter and Sat­urn each time they came togeth­er every 20 years align­ing in either Can­cer, Scor­pio or Pisces. And I call that Age of Water from 1425 to 1663 an Age of Faith. The pre­vi­ous Water Age was 571 to 809. Then the next peri­od is the Fire Age from 1663 to 1842, called the Age of Explo­rations, (and the pre­vi­ous Fire peri­od was 809 to 1047). Then we have the age that is now end­ing, the Earth Age from 1842 to 2020, and this is an Age of Mate­ri­al­iza­tion, (and the pre­vi­ous time was 1047 to 1226). And what we are mov­ing into or we have just entered is an Age of Air, the Age of Ide­al­iza­tion from 2020 to 2219, (and the pre­vi­ous Age of Air was 1226 to 1425, which was also the time of the 12th cen­tu­ry renais­sance, it was called the “lit­tle renaissance”).

What this means for us is that we are mov­ing from a mate­ri­al­is­tic age into anoth­er, and what we will know or name it is yet to be deter­mined. Again, this Age of Earth is end­ing with the exis­ten­tial threat of cli­mate change, where­in our wor­ship of the mate­r­i­al life has been the very cre­ator of our present challenges.

But we must remem­ber the plan­ets do not cre­ate the man­i­fes­ta­tion, they inform it and they time it. We made choic­es, we dis­cov­ered how to release ener­gy that had been locked away for mil­lions of years and we released it in a geo­log­i­cal “sec­ond”. And now we see the con­se­quences in the loss of life, the nar­row­ing of diver­si­ty of all life forms, the extremes mount­ing in cli­mate and weath­er, and indeed the Nov­el COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, all of these reflec­tions and man­i­fes­ta­tions of what we have done by bring­ing about cli­mate change. We are crafty, we are high­ly intel­li­gent and capa­ble with our tools of sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy. But we lack wis­dom and humil­i­ty. To remind us of this, we are being hum­bled by the tee­ni­est of life forms, a sim­ple virus.

Plan­e­tary Orbits and Alignments
The orbit of the plan­ets and their align­ments with one anoth­er form a very intri­cate series of influ­ences, and some of these orbits are far longer than any indi­vid­u­al’s lifes­pan, with Plu­to being 245 years to get around the solar sys­tem or Nep­tune 164 years. So, they can only be par­tial­ly expe­ri­enced by any per­son. We then have Uranus’ orbit of 84, and Sat­urn 29 years, and Jupiter 12 years.

But then we have the syn­od­ic cycles of the plan­ets to one anoth­er, like that Jupiter-Sat­urn pair, and we look at all the pairs from Plu­to to Sat­urn. For Plu­to, the cycle with Nep­tune is 492 years, and with Uranus is 127 years, and Sat­urn is 33 years. Then for Nep­tune to Uranus is 171 years, and then to Sat­urn is 36 years. Final­ly, for Uranus the cycle with Sat­urn is 45 years.

With so many cycles inter­weav­ing and inter­sect­ing one anoth­er, what I like to call “The Dance of the Plan­ets”, it is quite a chal­lenge to ascer­tain exact­ly which influ­ences are more rel­e­vant or reveal­ing in any peri­od. So, what I like to do is pro­ceed in an order­ly man­ner, from longest to short­est, so I always look to Plu­to and then to Nep­tune and then Uranus, to see what the three Long-Wave Evo­lu­tion­ary influ­ences might be.

Plu­to in Capricorn
As many of you know, I have been exam­in­ing the role of Pluto’s cycle through the signs, and the sig­nif­i­cance of its series of pas­sages through the Sign of Capri­corn, the sign of Insti­tu­tions, Real­i­ty and Struc­tures, and look­ing at his­to­ry. Our moment from 2008 to 2024 can be under­stood as the next step after the pre­vi­ous times of 1762 to 1778, and before that 1516 to 1532, and then 1270 to 1287. In each of these peri­ods, we saw the end of a par­tic­u­lar form of Polit­i­cal-Cul­tur­al and Eco­nom­ic order and the emer­gence of a new one, along with a shift in the char­ac­ter and qual­i­ties of the kind of human that would exist in that period.

I am sure that the peo­ple in each peri­od that were going through this change felt that their world was com­ing undone, that it was for them like an “end of the world”. But giv­en the chal­lenges that have been cre­at­ed and pre­sent­ed to us, by us, in our time, this Plu­to pas­sage seems more con­se­quen­tial giv­en the exis­ten­tial threat of cli­mate change. Per­haps it is because we are at the end/beginning of a Jupiter-Sat­urn cycle, or more like­ly (or cer­tain­ly) because we are at the end of the 2000 year-long Age of Pisces, and the Age of Aquar­ius is upon us.

All the above is look­ing at his­to­ry with regards to the gen­er­al phe­nom­e­na and cycles of the plan­ets one to anoth­er. But there is also what many of you are more famil­iar with, the study of the plan­ets with regards to indi­vid­ual charts. In mun­dane astrol­o­gy, we look at the charts of lead­ers and nations and gov­ern­ments and com­pa­nies and oth­er forms of orga­ni­za­tion. With regards to the USA, I have been not­ing how once again how Plu­to is so instruc­tive here.

Plu­to in USA Chart
What the USA is expe­ri­enc­ing now is the very first return of Plu­to to its Natal posi­tion. Plu­to rules many things, but for me its root nature con­cerns the Third Prin­ci­ple of Divin­i­ty, the Divine Will, and then all the less­er wills that are formed from the One. As Uranus dri­ves the prin­ci­ple of humans devel­op­ing ever freer minds, to become ever more indi­vid­u­at­ed, and Nep­tune rules the prin­ci­ple of Uncon­di­tion­al Love that holds the whole of Cre­ation togeth­er by the love of the One in all us less­er ones, Plu­to holds these two togeth­er in the Ener­gy-Form of the “con­tain­er of spir­it”, a Cen­tered Will and Consciousness.

Plu­to is sig­nif­i­cant in the chart of the USA as it is its ris­ing plan­et, lead­ing the nation and the chart in this case, and it is placed in the Sec­ond House, which is the House of Val­ue, and for a nation reveals the val­ue of a nation and its source of wealth. For me, Plu­to here spir­i­tu­al­ly means that the USA is endowed with the val­ue and pow­er of Alche­my, of the root pow­er of Com­bi­na­tion and Trans­for­ma­tion, the pow­er of Rebirth and Renew­al, and there is much to be said for the spir­it of renew­al and trans­for­ma­tion that the USA has demonstrated.

But I would also argue that what tru­ly con­sti­tutes the val­ue of any human orga­ni­za­tion, from a fam­i­ly to a cor­po­ra­tion to a coun­try, is the val­ue of the human beings who formed that group. Their intel­li­gence, their love, their wis­dom is the mea­sure of a coun­try’s wealth, and there­fore how we treat one anoth­er, how we encour­age and sup­port or deny and lim­it the self-ful­fill­ment of each and every per­son in the USA, is the mea­sure of how far we have come and how far we need to go with regards to ful­fill­ing our promis­es to one another.

But when Plu­to is chan­neled or expe­ri­enced in a neg­a­tive man­ner it becomes the vehi­cle for manip­u­la­tion, dom­i­na­tion, and enslave­ment. It is the will mis­used and break­ing the bar­ri­er of anoth­er per­son­’s will is the spir­i­tu­al crime of Tres­pass­ing. Giv­en the his­to­ry of the USA, found­ed upon geno­cide and slav­ery, it is quite telling that Plu­to is found here.

Plu­to & Mer­cury in USA Chart
The USA Plu­to is oppo­site to Mer­cury, and Mer­cury rules a nation’s means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, like a being’s ner­vous sys­tem. It rules the thought-form pat­terns and the devel­op­ment (or lack) of intel­li­gence. Each time Plu­to has aligned with Mer­cury and then with itself in his­to­ry, the USA has con­front­ed the nature of how we val­ue one anoth­er. The pre­vi­ous times in the late 1840s and into the 1850s wit­nessed the strug­gle over new states being allowed to enter as slave or free states; the 1930s with FDR and “The New Deal” in the attempt to pro­vide some greater sup­port to the gen­er­al wel­fare after the Great Depres­sion; and the 1980s and the Rea­gan rev­o­lu­tion, which in the suc­ceed­ing 40 years since then, has led to the most unequal dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth in the USA since the 1920s, a fac­tor which led to the Great Depression.

Now we are here in 2020 and 2021, with Plu­to oppo­site Mer­cury and Plu­to return­ing to its Natal posi­tion too. The plan­ets do not deter­mine what will hap­pen. We are the cre­ators and instru­ments of Action and Will, and the con­tent of what we made and the pain and joy we face is formed by us not the plan­ets. They time the unfold­ment of pat­terns, they guide our steps with mean­ings and under­ly­ing causal­i­ty, but we choose well or poorly.

The choic­es made in the 1980s and beyond, with­in the eco­nom­ic struc­tures them­selves and with­in the legal and tax struc­tures of gov­ern­ment, led to the great divide we face between one anoth­er now. For exam­ple, from 1980 to 2020 the gross domes­tic prod­uct of the USA rose by 80% in 40 years, it almost dou­bled. But the man­ner in which that growth was dis­trib­uted was far less equal than the pre­vi­ous peri­od from 1940 to 1980. In the last 40 years, the bot­tom 20% of the USA pop­u­la­tion gain 20% more wealth; the mid­dle 40% gain 50% more wealth; but the top .01% gained 420% more in their wealth.

In terms of wealth dis­tri­b­u­tion, the USA is one of the worst of all the so-called “advanced soci­eties” and this inequal­i­ty is even greater when dis­trib­uted and defined by race and eth­nic­i­ty. This is the prin­ci­ple rea­son why the USA has appalling life expectan­cies and health out­comes com­pared to much of the world.

Once again, here in 2020 and 2021, we are being asked to look at how we treat the val­ue of our nation, of how we care for the true wealth of the land, which is our peo­ple.

By many mea­sures we have been fail­ing and the crises of the pan­dem­ic and cli­mate change, and the ris­ing call for social jus­tice and the var­i­ous con­flicts between groups, all of this is call­ing on each of us to decide what kind of world we wish to leave to those who come after us.

Will we be the ones that made a bet­ter choice for the future? Will we sac­ri­fice for one anoth­er and for our chil­dren’s children?

We are at the end of an age; all these crises are real­ly one.

We are going through a Spir­i­tu­al Crisis.

It is a choice but let us choose to make this a Spir­i­tu­al Awak­en­ing and Rebirth too.