Tran­script of Radio Show: The Great Muta­tion — Sat­urn and Jupiter

(If you wish to lis­ten to the show instead, here is the link on BlogTalk or Apple Pod­casts)

In my last three shows I spoke about the out­er­most plan­ets, Plu­to, Nep­tune, and Uranus, which I like to call the Tri­ad of Spir­it. They are the Avatars, for us here on Earth, for the upper­most prin­ci­ples of the Divine. In order they rep­re­sent the Will of God, The Love of God, and the Mind of God. They hold for us the truth about the path to our spir­i­tu­al unfold­ment, where­in we strive to devel­op ever more Cen­tered Wills, Uncon­di­tion­al Love and Freer Minds.

I exam­ined their role in their inter­sect­ing cycles and inter­de­pen­dent influ­ences for our cur­rent peri­od and com­pared that to sim­i­lar moments in his­to­ry. For today, I will con­tin­ue this expla­na­tion of mun­dane plan­e­tary influ­ences by exam­in­ing the cycle of rela­tion­ship of the next two plan­ets (mov­ing clos­er to Earth), Sat­urn and Jupiter.

Sat­urn and Jupiter
Sat­urn is the Avatar of Real­i­ty and is gen­er­al­ly known as the plan­et of lim­i­ta­tion and cau­tion. In Mun­dane Astrol­o­gy, Sat­urn is the ruler of Insti­tu­tions (fam­i­ly, com­mu­ni­ty, busi­ness, and gov­ern­ment). It rules Civ­il Soci­ety, Law Enforce­ment, Chief Exec­u­tives, Cor­po­ra­tions, Real Estate, and Pub­lic Build­ings. Sat­urn is the plan­et of Realism.

Jupiter is the Avatar of Truth, and as Saturn’s coun­ter­part it is gen­er­al­ly known as the plan­et of expan­sion and opti­mism. In Mun­dane Astrol­o­gy, Jupiter rules the realms of Truth and Wis­dom, (Meta­phys­i­cal, Reli­gious, Philo­soph­i­cal and Sci­en­tif­ic); it rules the Legal Sys­tem, Church­es, Uni­ver­si­ties, Pub­lish­ing. Jupiter is the plan­et of Idealism.

Jupiter pro­vides the mean­ings to Saturn’s real­i­ty struc­tures; Sat­urn pro­vides the vehi­cles for the real­iza­tion of Jupiter’s Truths. They are always held togeth­er; like all plan­e­tary pairs, they mod­u­late and shape one anoth­er, and we can see this dynam­ic inter­play in their cycle of rela­tion­ship with one another.

The orbit of Sat­urn is about 29 years, spend­ing about two and one-half years in a sign. The orbit of Jupiter is about 12 years, spend­ing about one year in a sign. Their syn­od­ic peri­od, mov­ing from one Jupiter con­junc­tion with Sat­urn to the next is about 20 years. Since they rule two oppo­site prin­ci­ples, “Growth” ver­sus “Lim­i­ta­tion”, these con­junc­tions every 20 years have been care­ful­ly not­ed by Mun­dane Astrology.

Jupiter/Saturn Con­junc­tions
What we find is that at each Con­junc­tion there is some change, often a rever­sal of trends from the pre­vi­ous 20-year peri­od in the cul­ture, econ­o­my and polit­i­cal nature of a com­mu­ni­ty or cul­ture. What hap­pens is that the Jupiter force expands along a cer­tain path­way of mean­ing until it encoun­ters the hard lim­i­ta­tions of Sat­urn real­i­ties. Astrologers call this end­ing and begin­ning of their cycle at the con­junc­tion a Mutation.

After three con­junc­tions or 60 years, their posi­tion will be rough­ly 9 degrees fur­ther along in that sign. That means in 40 con­junc­tions, (40 x 9 equal­ing 360 degrees), they com­plete a cycle through the Zodi­ac. Those 40 con­junc­tions x 20 years adds up to 800 years. What we observe, is that for rough­ly 200 years their align­ments will occur in the same ele­ment (Fire, Earth, Air or Water), and we call these series of con­junc­tions in the same ele­ment the Less­er Muta­tions. But every 200 years or so their con­junc­tion will move into the next ele­ment for the next 200 years, and Astrologers call that a Great Muta­tion. That is what is hap­pen­ing this Decem­ber 2020.

The last time Jupiter and Sat­urn shift­ed like this was 1840, when they moved from the ele­ment of Fire to Earth. This time they will begin their 200-year cycle in Air start­ing with Aquar­ius. (There are those who say that this is one more indi­ca­tor that we are mov­ing into the oft men­tioned “Age of Aquar­ius”, and there are oth­er cycles and signs that point to this too).

Look­ing to the USA, we can observe the his­to­ry of their Earth Con­junc­tions since 1840, and it can help us under­stand and delin­eate the char­ac­ter and mean­ing of each 20-year peri­od. They reveal a pat­tern of unfold­ing ener­gy-forms that bring us to the great turn­ing point we are now approach­ing. We would expect that through­out this 200-year Earthy peri­od the root char­ac­ter of these Jupiter-Sat­urn seeds would be dom­i­nat­ed by con­sid­er­a­tions of the phys­i­cal world, on mat­ters of wealth and pro­duc­tion, and social­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly on ques­tions of how mate­r­i­al val­ues are under­stood and manifested.

Jupiter/Saturn Con­junc­tions and the USA
If we divide these peri­ods accord­ing to the US Pres­i­dents pre­sid­ing at the start of each peri­od, we will find the following:

1840–1860 (Har­ri­son) This was a peri­od of great expan­sion for the USA, prin­ci­pal­ly accom­plished by the seizure from Mex­i­co of much of the west­ern parts of the Unit­ed States in the Mex­i­can War, which added Texas, New Mex­i­co, Ari­zona, and Cal­i­for­nia. Spir­i­tu­al­ly and Mate­ri­al­ly, it was also the peri­od lead­ing up to the most con­se­quen­tial cri­sis for the Unit­ed States, the Civ­il War, as this peri­od was char­ac­ter­ized by the ris­ing exis­ten­tial strug­gle over the ques­tion of whether new states would enter as Free or Slave, with the slave-hold­ing states dom­i­nat­ing the Fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and the Supreme court.

1860–1880 (Lin­coln) Begins with the Civ­il War which leads to the defeat of the Con­fed­er­ate South, the elim­i­na­tion of Slav­ery and an end to the polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic dom­i­nance of the South­ern states. But the attempt at Recon­struc­tion in the South “fails”, and the true eman­ci­pa­tion, and polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic equal­i­ty of the for­mer slaves was denied for the next 100 years.

1880–1900 (Garfield) Wit­nessed the “end of the fron­tier”, as the repeat­ed series of seizures of land, bro­ken treaties, and removal of native peo­ples for many hun­dreds of years was fin­ished at the Wound­ed Knee Mas­sacre in 1890. This peri­od also saw the rise of Indus­tri­al Cap­i­tal­ism and of great Monop­o­lies giv­ing this peri­od its title of “The Gild­ed Age” or the “Age of Rob­ber Barons”. It was also the begin­ning of the USA’s own colo­nial expan­sion by the seizure of Hawaii, and the Span­ish ter­ri­to­ries in the Caribbean and Philip­pines in the Span­ish-Amer­i­can War.

1900–1920 (McKin­ley) The USA emerged onto the world stage as a ris­ing pow­er eco­nom­i­cal­ly and polit­i­cal­ly, espe­cial­ly with its crit­i­cal entrance into WW I. But the unfet­tered cap­i­tal­ism of the Gild­ed Age had also led to the Pro­gres­sive Reform move­ment, with attempts to rein in the excess pow­er of the Monied class by reforms in the civ­il soci­ety and gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tions, lead­ing to a nation­al income tax and a more robust reg­u­la­to­ry structure.

1920–1940 (Hard­ing) The end of World War I, Suf­frage with the vote for Women and then Pro­hi­bi­tion, were the final acts of the reform era, which led to the Roar­ing Twen­ties and a bub­ble of wild spec­u­la­tion that end­ed with the Great Depres­sion start­ing in 1929. Roo­sevelt attempt­ed with the New Deal to build a more sus­tain­able econ­o­my, and the USA began to move towards a more equi­table dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth. But many agree it is WW II that restores the eco­nom­ic indus­tri­al engine of the Unit­ed States, which becomes the “Arse­nal of Democ­ra­cy” lead­ing the Allies against the Axis powers.

1940–1960 (Roo­sevelt) The Bat­tles of WW II and its con­clu­sion leads to the Mar­shall Plan for re-build­ing Europe and the emer­gence of the Cold War, with the divide between the East and the West, between Cap­i­tal­ist ver­sus Com­mu­nist coun­tries. The USA is the dom­i­nant world pow­er lead­ing the West against the USSR.

1960–1980 (Kennedy) The Cold War reach­es its cli­max in the Nuclear Arms race, and the Unit­ed States enters the dis­as­trous Viet­nam War. Mean­while domes­ti­cal­ly, the Civ­il Rights move­ment leads to a back­lash and the Demo­c­ra­t­ic South turns Repub­li­can. The Eco­nom­ic imbal­ances gen­er­at­ed by the Viet­nam War and Johnson’s Great Soci­ety leads in the late 1970’s to what becomes known as Stagfla­tion and grind­ing eco­nom­ic malaise.

1980–2000 (Rea­gan) The Rea­gan Rev­o­lu­tion takes on the growth of the so-called “wel­fare state” by slash­ing tax­es and pro­grams, a rever­sal of Roosevelt’s New Deal and Johnson’s Great Soci­ety. The more or less equi­table dis­tri­b­u­tion in the growth of wealth in the USA from 1940 is halt­ed, and so once again the rise of the great inequal­i­ty between the haves and have nots begins. Rea­gan claimed that “Gov­ern­ment is the Prob­lem” and the Repub­li­can par­ty and neo-lib­er­al move­ment push­es an agen­da of cut­ting tax­es while promis­ing more rev­enue, (from what they claimed would be a robust growth in the econ­o­my), but the elder George Bush calls the move “Voodoo Eco­nom­ics”. Lat­er, Clin­ton as a cen­trist demo­c­ra­t­ic moves the coun­try fur­ther down this path of grow­ing inequal­i­ty, which was masked for a time by a gen­er­al rise in eco­nom­ic growth brought about by the end of the “Cold War”. The rise in wealth is increas­ing­ly dis­trib­uted to the top 10%.

2000–2020 (Bush) The Bush pres­i­den­cy is shocked by 9/11, as the forces unleashed by the end of the Cold War and Russia’s War in Afghanistan comes home to the Unit­ed States. The War against Ter­ror begins, (and has not end­ed), as the Fed­er­al Reserve keeps inter­est rates low to sup­port the increas­ing­ly unequal growth of wealth in the econ­o­my. This arti­fi­cial­ly low inter­est rate struc­ture sows the seeds for the Mort­gage cri­sis in 2006 and 2007 lead­ing to the Sec­ond Great Depres­sion start­ing in 2008. Oba­ma sta­bi­lizes the econ­o­my, but the eco­nom­ic imbal­ances remain and lead to a fur­ther splin­ter­ing of the coun­try between the haves and the have nots. With nei­ther Democ­rats nor Repub­li­cans address­ing the unsus­tain­able imbal­ance of wealth in the coun­try, Trump is elect­ed as a pop­ulist, with promis­es to fight as an out­sider and icon­o­clast. But he enacts anoth­er typ­i­cal tax cut that rewards the wealthy, while fur­ther erod­ing the social safe­ty net. The abysmal state of that safe­ty net is ful­ly revealed by the dis­as­trous response to the Pan­dem­ic of 2020.

The Future
2020–2040 (Biden)

We do not know what lies ahead of us now, but we do know there is a new era emerg­ing. With the Decem­ber Jupiter/Saturn Great Muta­tion Con­junc­tion ush­er­ing in a 200-year peri­od, and the Ener­gy-Form that will be at the root of this new era will be guid­ed by Air not Earth. What might this mean?

Pre­vi­ous Age of Air
The pre­vi­ous Age of Air was from 1226 to 1425 and marked the tran­si­tion from the Mid­dle Ages to the Renais­sance in Europe. Among the sig­na­ture events: The trans­la­tion from Ara­bic ver­sions into Latin of Greek works of art and phi­los­o­phy, seed­ing a rebirth of clas­si­cal under­stand­ing and intel­lec­tu­al growth; new demo­c­ra­t­ic assem­blies form in Switzer­land and Eng­land; the advent of Human­ism with the study of clas­si­cal lit­er­a­ture as a liv­ing tra­di­tion; the inven­tion of mov­able type in Korea, and print­ing press­es in Europe among many oth­er dis­cov­er­ies and inven­tions. The move­ment towards rea­son and crit­i­cal think­ing estab­lished the foun­da­tion for the Renais­sance and the lat­er age of Enlightenment.

Par­a­digm for Past 200 Years
The last 200 years have been shaped as an Age of Earth con­junc­tions, and it cer­tain­ly has become appar­ent that over this peri­od the gov­ern­ing par­a­digm and goal was to have “More of More Things”. The accu­mu­la­tion of wealth and pos­ses­sions became the dri­ving pur­pose of life. The more things you had (and con­sumed), the hap­pi­er you would be. But it turns out that this is just not true, not at all.

The pre­sid­ing cul­tur­al ide­olo­gies and even vari­ants of many reli­gions of this peri­od have not been guid­ed by con­cerns for the high­est moral good or the well-being of oth­er humans (or oth­er life-forms, or for the plan­et in gen­er­al). Most of the thought-ener­gy-forms in our cul­tur­al, polit­i­cal, and spir­i­tu­al spheres have been shaped and bound to the only val­ue that has but one dimen­sion, the Val­ue of Quantity.

Over the arc of the past 200 years it would seem to an out­side observ­er that the only good was end­less, mate­ri­al­is­tic pro­duc­tion in ser­vice to an unquench­able con­sump­tion of things. More of more was sup­posed to make you hap­pi­er. But the more peo­ple had, the more they want­ed. Whole ecosys­tems and envi­ron­ments, and whole species were and have been sac­ri­ficed for the pur­suit of wealth and pow­er. It was not “Life” that mat­tered; what mat­tered was the so-called “good life” as humans pur­sued ever more mate­r­i­al pleasures.

The Price
What has been the price? We have end­ed with a neo-lib­er­al eco­nom­ic sys­tem, where­in the pur­pose of life is dri­ven by the free­dom to pur­sue this one-dimen­sion­al val­ue of quan­ti­ty at the expense of every­thing else, where only more of more mate­r­i­al things mat­tered. And the price of all these things? This amass­ing of quan­ti­ties has come at the cost of steal­ing from the future of our descen­dants. We have been thieves, and we are to this very day steal­ing their future still. With regards to those who come after us, we will have left them so much less than we had. We drank their water, we breathed their air, we ate their food, and we are leav­ing them a bro­ken world where they will strug­gle to sur­vive; it will be a world that be will unrec­og­niz­able to you or to me, and it will be a world that is more and more unliv­able for most of human­i­ty and many oth­er species.

I do not mean to say that this “Age of Earth” had to have turned out this way, that is not true at all. The Ener­gy-Forms pre­sid­ing in any peri­od may man­i­fest in a whole array of beliefs and actions, and that will lead to a range of pos­si­ble out­comes. There were many oth­er influ­encers in the arc of our jour­ney that led to this cri­sis; and innu­mer­able choic­es were made by humans in this peri­od, (and indeed in the pri­or peri­ods of Great Muta­tion Epochs, like the pro­ceed­ing peri­od of Fire from 1663 to 1842, and of Water from 1425 to 1663). All of these con­tributed to the shap­ing of human desires, capa­bil­i­ties and actions that pro­duced the exis­ten­tial threat of Cli­mate Change that we face now.

The good news is we cre­at­ed this; it was not because of an aster­oid strik­ing the Earth, it was not the result of world-wide vol­canic erup­tions. These past Extinc­tion Events came from so-called “nat­ur­al” or “exter­nal” caus­es. The good news is we made this cri­sis; the good news, now that we know, is that we can choose to change. We can still make a dif­fer­ent future if we act now.

Ener­gy-Forms and Power
What we must do is face real­i­ty, to see what we have made; we need to under­stand what we have done and decide what we need to do. Slow­ly at first, but increas­ing­ly from the 1840’s onwards, we made a world-wide civ­i­liza­tion that is built upon the pow­er of ener­gy-forms that had been locked away for mil­lions of years in coal, and oil and gas. We thought we were so clever, so intel­li­gent and crafty. We released stu­pen­dous amounts of ener­gy to amass wealth and pow­er; but we did not ful­ly account for the true costs for the life-forms on this planet.

Through a lack of under­stand­ing (and humil­i­ty) we changed the del­i­cate bal­ance of ener­gy-forms and life-forms on this plan­et. And we did this in what amounts to a geo­log­i­cal sec­ond. What might have changed over tens of thou­sands of years we did in mere decades. We are the cre­ators of this New Earth where whole species and ecosys­tems are van­ish­ing year after year; we have moved our world from a benign and liv­able plan­et to what many are call­ing a “hot-house” Earth. The increas­ing­ly dra­mat­ic Cli­mate Change effects (and make no mis­take the 2020 Pan­dem­ic is anoth­er unin­tend­ed but direct exam­ple of this), have been the result of our cre­at­ing mate­r­i­al wealth through the destruc­tion of the web of life on this plan­et. There is no way to bal­ance our gain with this ter­ri­ble loss; the spir­i­tu­al bal­ance sheet for human­i­ty is very much in the neg­a­tive at this point in history.

Will this be our lega­cy? Will we be the first ones who are not hon­ored but instead are cursed by our children’s chil­dren? Will we be remem­bered for our self­ish­ness and greed?

How
How did this hap­pen? Because we humans came to believe that we are sep­a­rate and apart from all oth­er life-forms on this plan­et; we made them into the “oth­er”, less than us, and so destroyed the bal­ance of life on this plan­et. And then, we also sep­a­rat­ed our­selves from one anoth­er, we divid­ed humans into “us and them” by race, eth­nic­i­ty, creed, and cul­ture; and so, we con­tin­ue to destroy one anoth­er too.

Why
Why did this hap­pen? Because we for­got the first Truth: You are here to love one anoth­er; and so, you are equal­ly here to love life and pro­tect this pre­cious plan­et and the many lives that depend upon it now and for the gen­er­a­tions to come. For it is cer­tain­ly true that your lives depend upon one anoth­er and on these oth­er life-forms too. We are sup­posed to take care of one anoth­er and this plan­et; to love and pre­serve lives, not to destroy them.

What I hope for, what I believe, is that this Age of Air, (along with oth­er plan­e­tary shifts), will bring us into a “Great Awak­en­ing”, (in fact, I believe that is what we are expe­ri­enc­ing now). I believe we will turn from destruc­tion to preser­va­tion; we will turn from self­ish­ness to self­less­ness; we will turn from tak­ing to giv­ing; we will turn from greed to love. I believe we will because we must.

Sac­ri­fice
We must hon­or those and love those who will come after us by choos­ing to sac­ri­fice for one anoth­er and for all life on this plan­et now. This Age of Air can and hope­ful­ly will ush­er in a new glob­al con­scious­ness found­ed upon a New Prin­ci­ple: that the first Fun­da­men­tal and Pre­sid­ing Val­ue of Spir­it is Love and the most impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tion for all our actions shall be to take care of one anoth­er and to pre­serve and pro­tect All Life on this plan­et, our Earth, our Beau­ti­ful Home.

We are here to walk in beau­ty; we are here to be sur­round­ed by beau­ty; we are here to love and be loved. Let us live as we were meant to live, sur­round­ed by beau­ty, and liv­ing by love.

It is not too late; but there is no time to wait.

We will be the ones remem­bered for their sac­ri­fice; we will be the ones who faced with the self­ish option to live for now and for our­selves, that we chose instead to pre­serve, to pro­tect and make pos­si­ble a bet­ter world for those who come after us.

Let this be our moment; let this be our sacred covenant with one anoth­er and our descendants.

Let us be the ones they remem­ber for our sac­ri­fice, courage, and love,

Let it be so; let us make it so.