Tran­script of Radio Show: 2020 to 2021 — A look back and a look ahead

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

I thought it would be help­ful as 2020 winds down, to con­sid­er the major Astro­log­i­cal themes of this year and what lies ahead for 2021. There are always two major influ­ences to con­sid­er in Mun­dane or World­ly Astrol­o­gy, the gen­er­al effects that hold for one and all on Earth which are indi­cat­ed by the plan­e­tary align­ments with one anoth­er in the heav­ens, what we call tran­sits to tran­sits. And sec­ond­ly, we con­sid­er the plan­e­tary tran­sits to the plan­ets of a Natal chart that is of interest.

Tran­sit to Tran­sit 2020, Jupiter Con­junct Pluto
The most con­se­quen­tial Tran­sit to Tran­sit for 2020 was the align­ment (Con­junc­tion) of Jupiter with Plu­to in Capri­corn. Rough­ly every 12 years or so, Jupiter will “catch up” to the posi­tion of Plu­to and form what is like a New Moon in their cycle of rela­tion­ship. Jupiter holds the mean­ings and truths for us and indi­cates the poten­tial for growth and expan­sion. Plu­to, being the plan­et of Will and Sacred Space, holds for me as the Avatar of the fun­da­men­tal dri­ving force for Cre­ation, Alche­my. Alche­my is the pow­er of com­bi­na­tions, whether atoms with atoms, mol­e­cules with mol­e­cules, organ­isms with organ­isms, stars with stars. It is from these com­bi­na­tions, trans­for­ma­tion, deaths, and rebirths, of evo­lu­tions and muta­tions, it is by this that the whole of Cre­ation and every­thing and every­one in it becomes the many who form the One. At the high­est, I con­sid­er Plu­to to be the Avatar of the Will of God.

The meet­ing of Jupiter with Plu­to indi­cat­ed that this year would sig­nal an end­ing (and a begin­ning) for us in the meanings/truths/science/beliefs about how we grow, how we die, and how we are to be reborn. Cer­tain­ly, from the most basic con­di­tions of our phys­i­cal lives, of how we live for our­selves and with one anoth­er, 2020 was cer­tain­ly a trans­for­ma­tion­al year. I think we can all agree that there is no going back to our old lives and ways of liv­ing, and we are all try­ing to fig­ure out what will be our “new normal”.

Tran­sit to Tran­sit 2021, Sat­urn Square Uranus
For 2021, the most sig­nif­i­cant tran­sit to tran­sit aspect will be Sat­urn Squar­ing Uranus. Their cycle of rela­tion­ship, from Con­junc­tion to Con­junc­tion is 45 years, and in 2021 we are at their Wan­ing Square. There are four crit­i­cal moments in any plan­e­tary cycle pair­ing: Con­junc­tion, Wax­ing Square, Oppo­si­tion, and Wan­ing Square and then back to their next Conjunction.

The cur­rent cycle of Saturn/Uranus began in 1988; they reached their wax­ing square in 1999–2000, and their oppo­si­tion in 2008 to 2010, and now for 2021 their wan­ing square. It is quite strik­ing to me, that their pre­vi­ous wan­ing squares, (as well as oth­er crit­i­cal cycle turn­ings), came dur­ing crit­i­cal shifts for the world and the USA. Those pre­vi­ous moments like our own moment of the wan­ing square were 1975–77 and 1930–31. Also, of note are the pre­vi­ous con­junc­tions or seed-moments which were, in addi­tion to ours of 1988, those of 1942 and 1897. We would want to pay spe­cial atten­tion to their peri­ods of cli­max or rev­e­la­tion (by oppo­si­tion) which were in 1918–20, 1965–67, and for our peri­od 2008-10. What we need to under­stand or ask our­selves is this, “what is the mes­sage or mean­ing of their cycle of rela­tion­ship, and what does this mean for us in 2021?”

Sat­urn and Uranus
Sat­urn is the Avatar of Real­i­ty, of Insti­tu­tions and Tra­di­tions; it rules the sta­tus quo, the “tried and true”, what has been relied upon and proven to be nec­es­sary or use­ful. Uranus is the Avatar of Inven­tion, it rules New Ideas and Inde­pen­dence; it works by stim­u­lat­ing Orig­i­nal­i­ty and Con­trari­ness, by chal­leng­ing the old with some new con­cep­tu­al frame­work, idea, or tech­nique. In a way, their cycle of rela­tion­ship can be under­stood as the dynam­ic inter­play of Order and Free­dom, of Tra­di­tion ver­sus Inno­va­tion, and when pushed to extremes, of being Reac­tionary ver­sus Rev­o­lu­tion­ary. They are and should be under­stood like most plan­e­tary pairs as nec­es­sary to one anoth­er, for they each hold an aspect of truth that only becomes pos­si­ble and ful­filled by com­bi­na­tion with the other.

From Saturn’s “point of view”, what has worked is what one should hold to, it has proven to be the best or the only way to func­tion in the real world. The coun­ter­point would be, just because it has worked, that does not mean it will con­tin­ue to work, or that it could not be improved. Uranus would add, and you must remem­ber this, what­ev­er old tech­nique, prac­tice or tra­di­tion you fol­low, at some point it was an inno­va­tion, it was a dis­cov­ery or real­iza­tion that became after­wards a part of the tradition.

But equal­ly, for Uranus’ part, just because you have found some new inno­v­a­tive way of being, or way of accom­plish­ing some task or meet­ing your needs, that does not mean it is bet­ter than the old way. Many times, we will attempt a new approach or tech­nique and lat­er find the wis­dom of the old way is, well, sim­ply better.
What we must do, what we are doing con­stant­ly, is to hold the old and the new togeth­er, the tra­di­tion with the inno­va­tion, to inte­grate Sat­urn and Uranus; we must see the wis­dom of hold­ing and work­ing them togeth­er always. What hap­pens at these crit­i­cal moments in their cycle is that this cre­ative ten­sion between the old way and the new way reach­es a turn­ing point for us.

2021, The Wan­ing Square
2021 should hold some of the same core mean­ings as the pre­vi­ous wan­ing squares, which were 1975–77 and 1930–31. But we need to under­stand the dif­fer­ence between wax­ing and wan­ing squares. Dur­ing the wax­ing square, which in our cycle was 1999–2000, we are in a time where we make a defin­i­tive, con­crete choice between one way or anoth­er, we are faced with the chal­lenge to cleave to one way and cut away the oth­er, and by this we build upon the new begin­ning (which was in 1988 for this cycle). Now at the wan­ing square, we are being asked to “let go and grow”, to real­ize that giv­en the result of 2008–2010 when we were at the oppo­si­tion, we must now see the whole cycle from the seed of 1988, to the square 1999–20 to that cli­max or out­come in 2008-10 and face the truth now about what we have learned.

What is pos­si­ble (but by no means guar­an­teed) is that at the wan­ing square we need to find a way to tran­scend the old polar­i­ties, to let go of the old fram­ing of the chal­lenges we face and the solu­tions we wield. Cer­tain­ly, if we look to a pre­vi­ous wan­ing square of 1930–31, we can see that the cri­sis of the Great Depres­sion led to the attempts to fix a bro­ken eco­nom­ic order by mas­sive gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tion and guid­ance, it seemed we rose to the challenge.

But In 1975–77 at the next wan­ing square, when we were faced with the after­ef­fects of the Viet­nam War, and the unfund­ed man­dates of the Great Soci­ety, the result­ing stag­na­tion of growth and infla­tion of prices, (called at the time Stagfla­tion), com­bined with the scan­dals of Water­gate, well it would seem as if we did not rise to the chal­lenge as well then. Yes, there were some major reforms imple­ment­ed with regards to cam­paign financ­ing and gov­ern­ment account­abil­i­ty. But the eco­nom­ic reforms need­ed to cor­rect the grow­ing imbal­ances from the 1960’s and ear­ly 1970’s were not imple­ment­ed. I would argue that the cri­sis of the 30’s was bet­ter met than the cri­sis of the 70’s.

We should expect our chal­lenge and cri­sis, for all squares present as some form of cri­sis, to be a moment of dan­ger but equal­ly of oppor­tu­ni­ty. The dan­ger usu­al­ly comes from fail­ing to rise to the chal­lenge that we face, and to hold to fear and retreat into the old ways and prac­tices. If we instead see this as an oppor­tu­ni­ty, and that by refram­ing our ques­tions we may find bet­ter solu­tions. Then we can rise above our cul­tur­al, polit­i­cal, and eco­nom­ic divi­sions and find our turn­ing point to be more like the New Deal of the 1930’s and 1940’s.

Tran­sit to USA 2020, Plu­to Oppo­site Mercury
The major tran­sit in the chart of the USA for 2020 was Plu­to oppo­site Mer­cury, and I have writ­ten and spo­ken exten­sive­ly about this. Here is some of what I said and wrote about this year:

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 had led to the Great Depression.

Now we are here in 2020, 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 way 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, 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.

Now of course all that remains true to this day (and for all our days to come), but what you want to know is what is ahead for 2021.

Tran­sit to USA 2021, Nep­tune Oppo­site Nep­tune, Nep­tune Square Mars
In some way, what is com­ing into focus in 2021 in the USA chart has been build­ing up ever since Nep­tune entered its own sign of Pisces in 2010. One of the most dis­tinc­tive fea­tures in the chart of the USA is Nep­tune placed high in the 9^th house with the plan­et Mars 90 degrees away, squar­ing it from the 7^th house. What does this indicate?

The plan­et Nep­tune rules the dreams and visions of an enti­ty; Mars rules its desires and actions. The USA car­ries an ener­gy-form that is char­ac­ter­ized by hold­ing to a belief or faith (Nep­tune) that it is on a spe­cial mis­sion, formed into a dream of a more per­fect order (Nep­tune in Vir­go), that is guid­ed by high­er truths (Nep­tune in the 9^th house). This influ­ence shapes the USA’s desires/actions (Mars) as being guid­ed by this vision, that what is “right action” for Amer­i­ca is right Universally.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this belief in our excep­tion­al nature has led us to impose our truths (or half-truths) around the world, with the most recent dis­as­trous results revealed in the dis­as­trous inter­ven­tions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and oth­er nations by our “war against ter­ror”. We can and should lead by exam­ple, but we lose and destroy our very mes­sage, of “free self-deter­mi­na­tion” as a fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple, when we seek to impose it by force of arms. This is a les­son we still face and have yet to mas­ter. The USA must learn to lead with deep­er wis­dom and greater humility.

In 2021, Nep­tune is align­ing with our Nep­tune and Mars once again. If we look at the his­tor­i­cal record of pre­vi­ous align­ments, we can gain some insight into our own moment now.

Neptune’s Turn­ing Points
Neptune’s orbit is about 163 years, and it will align with the USA Nep­tune and Mars every 40 years or so. The dates are: 1816–17, 1857–58, 1897–98, 1938–39, 1980–81, and now 2021–22. What we need to con­sid­er is the type of aspect being formed by Nep­tune to Nep­tune, and Nep­tune to Mars. The most sig­nif­i­cant align­ments would be the oppo­si­tion of Nep­tune to itself, and its return to its natal posi­tion. The first and only return to its natal posi­tion was 1938–39; and the two oppo­si­tions in USA his­to­ry were 1857–58 and the upcom­ing oppo­si­tion of 2021–22.

Astrologers con­sid­er any plan­e­tary return like a “New Moon”, a seed­ing of a new vari­a­tion of the ener­gy-form that Nep­tune holds in this case. That would mean that a new seed was plant­ed dur­ing the pres­i­den­cy of FDR, with his efforts to restore the USA econ­o­my after the Great Depres­sion, while he equal­ly led the USA to pre­pare for the exis­ten­tial con­fronta­tion with the rise of Fas­cism in Europe and Asia in World War II.

Oppo­si­tion of 1857–1858
The oppo­si­tion should be under­stood as the rev­e­la­tion and out­come of that vari­a­tion of expres­sion from the first or natal imprint­ing and then any suc­ceed­ing returns. The seed plant­ed in 1776 of Neptune’s “Dream of Amer­i­ca” became ful­ly revealed in the first oppo­si­tion (like a Full Moon) of 1857–58. I have writ­ten and spo­ken about this his­toric peri­od sev­er­al times, with ref­er­ence to this Nep­tune align­ment in the USA chart.

From Neptune’s embod­i­ment of the dream of Amer­i­ca in 1776, “That all men are cre­at­ed equal…”, a polit­i­cal-eco­nom­ic order was estab­lished by a very small num­ber of white, prop­er­ty-own­ing men. For many of those men, they had secured their wealth through own­ing oth­er humans as prop­er­ty. This polit­i­cal-eco­nom­ic order evolved into two ways of life, divid­ing into two very dif­fer­ent soci­eties and cul­tures which came to a cli­mat­ic con­fronta­tion dur­ing the 1850’s over this ques­tion: Would the USA become a ful­ly “free labor coun­try” or a ful­ly “slave labor country”?

1857–1858
The years pri­or to 1857–58 wit­nessed the grow­ing pow­er of the slave­hold­ing states in the Con­gress and over the courts. The cli­max of their pow­er was enshrined dur­ing 1857 by the Dred Scott deci­sion in the Supreme Court, in which it deter­mined that the law of the land would be that, “slaves and descen­dants of slaves were nev­er nor would they ever be cit­i­zens, and that they would remain the per­ma­nent prop­er­ty of their mas­ters”. The con­flict was best sum­ma­rized in 1858 in the famous Lincoln/Douglas debates. Lin­coln spoke of this divi­sion of humans from one anoth­er in the coun­try, between the slave states and the free states, in which he declared, “that a house divid­ed from itself can­not stand”. He pro­posed that this divi­sion would be resolved one way or anoth­er, and that the US would either become a nation where in every state all humans would be free and equal or in every state there would be slav­ery and inequality.

Nep­tune Return 1938–1939, the Dream restated
In 2021 with the oppo­si­tion of Nep­tune, just like it was in 1857–58 when the nation faced the final irrec­on­cil­able divi­sions and con­flicts before the Civ­il War, we are expe­ri­enc­ing the end result from the restate­ment of the Dream of Amer­i­ca by FDR in the 1930’s. His New Deal was sup­posed to be a Fair Deal for all Amer­i­cans, and equal­ly his dec­la­ra­tion for all humankind of the Four Free­doms for the world.

Yes, it was after FDR and for many years there­after, that the gen­er­al growth in the pros­per­i­ty of the Unit­ed States was more fair­ly shared by the entire pop­u­la­tion, from the 1940’s into the 1970’s. It cer­tain­ly was not per­fect for all, but there was a gen­er­al feel­ing that there was more equi­ty, more bal­ance and fair­ness in how we share in the val­ues we cre­ate; and, because of this most par­ents were sure that their chil­dren would have a bet­ter life than they had had. The Amer­i­can Dream of self-deter­mi­na­tion and self-ful­fill­ment was made pos­si­ble and became more real for many.

But then it went all wrong, why? What changed? What hap­pened to the Dream of America?

2021, Our Division
Though it would seem to many that we are divid­ed by space, between the coasts and the heart­land, between the urban and rur­al pop­u­la­tions, I do not believe this fair­ly or accu­rate­ly cap­tures what is at the root of our divi­sions between one anoth­er. Just as our found­ing dichoto­my of Slave and Free states led to the Civ­il War, our divide is between two dif­fer­ing ver­sions of how we under­stand our val­ue to one anoth­er, and how we share in our wealth. Today, we have a coun­try that is divid­ed into the very wealthy few, and then a shrink­ing upper and mid­dle class, and final­ly the rest who are just strug­gling to survive.

Nep­tune Square, 1980–1981
It is impor­tant to note when the USA changed. I would point to the wax­ing square of Nep­tune, the turn­ing point between 1938 and 2021, which was in 1980–81. And that is exact­ly when the growth of wealth for the peo­ple of the USA became divid­ed and unfair. The dis­tri­b­u­tion of the growth of wealth from 1940 to 1980 is stark­ly dif­fer­ent than that from 1980 to 2020; real­ly, it is of two quite dif­fer­ent coun­tries. The rea­son is that choic­es were made to turn away from fair­ness for the many, and to pro­mote ram­pant self-inter­est­ed beliefs and actions that led to self­ish­ness, greed, and great wealth for the few.

Here is an inter­est­ing math­e­mat­i­cal sce­nario: if you were to equal­ly divide the USA nation­al income and wealth, each house­hold in the USA would earn about $140,000 a year and have a net worth of almost $1 mil­lion! Think about that; that is how unequal our sys­tem has become. And it is that gross imbal­ance which has formed and solid­i­fied our polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al divides.

We are con­front­ed with a coun­try that is deeply divid­ed once again, that is fun­da­men­tal­ly shaped by a vari­a­tion of the same ques­tions put before us in the 1850’s: Who is a cit­i­zen of this coun­try; are we tru­ly equal to one anoth­er; do we have an equal voice and oppor­tu­ni­ty to deter­mine our future in a ful­ly func­tion­ing democ­ra­cy or not?

Democ­ra­cy or not
The answer is of course is we do not have a tru­ly func­tion­ing democ­ra­cy. That is not pos­si­ble when the wealth and pow­er in the USA is in the hands of so few indi­vid­u­als and fam­i­lies. The USA is an Oli­garchy, where­in great wealth bestows polit­i­cal con­trol; it is a polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic sys­tem ruled by Plu­to­crats. From a small group of white men of prop­er­ty in 1776, the USA in over 200 years has arrived at a place where the rel­a­tive­ly few con­trol much of the wealth that all Amer­i­cans create.

We are divid­ed because the Amer­i­can Dream of self-deter­mi­na­tion and self-ful­fill­ment is increas­ing­ly unreach­able for more and more Amer­i­cans. Many par­ents today know that they have less than their par­ents, and they cer­tain­ly fear that their chil­dren will have even less.

Love, the Path to Healing
To tru­ly heal this divide in the USA, we must address the fun­da­men­tal divide between one anoth­er. At its root, just as it was in the begin­ning of the Dream of Amer­i­ca, we need to under­stand the essen­tial val­ue of one anoth­er in each oth­er, we need to under­stand how we real­ly cre­ate value.

The val­ue of any human enter­prise is made by the inher­ent val­ue of each human which is brought to life and made man­i­fest by our com­bi­na­tions with one anoth­er; it is by our col­lab­o­ra­tions and joint ven­tures, by our com­mu­ni­ties, fel­low­ships and friend­ships, that we real­ize our val­ue to one anoth­er and for another.

As I like to say, we would be noth­ing (for the most part) with­out one anoth­er. From Father/Mother, to Grandfather/Grandmother, to Sis­ters and Broth­ers, Friends, Col­leagues and Loved Ones, we are all made by one anoth­er and our true val­ue is com­plete­ly inter­twined, inter­de­pen­dent and bound to one another.

Our True Value
We owe our well-being, we have our val­ue, from what we have made with one anoth­er and shared with one anoth­er. We are, as in every­thing in this Uni­verse, made by and become what we are through the mys­tery of Alche­my; we are what we are through com­bin­ing with one anoth­er in our sacred spaces of Union. We are indi­vis­i­ble from one anoth­er, and we must treat one anoth­er with love, respect, and honor.

We do not have a prob­lem in cre­at­ing val­ue; we have a very real prob­lem in shar­ing with one another.

We need to acknowl­edge this basic spir­i­tu­al truth, that all our val­ues are made by each oth­er for one another.

If we are to meet our chal­lenges, if we are to rise above the exis­ten­tial threat of Cli­mate Change (which we cre­at­ed in our igno­rance), if we are to cre­ate a fair, just and sus­tain­able soci­ety, then we must make a sacred com­mit­ment to ensure that each and every per­son has an oppor­tu­ni­ty to ful­fill their potential.

We must turn to one anoth­er, as we did over 200 years ago, and agree that “we mutu­al­ly pledge to each oth­er our Lives, our For­tunes and our Sacred Honor”.

This is the promise we made; this is the promise we must fulfill.