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

In my pre­vi­ous show on Octo­ber 2^nd, I had hoped to talk about both the Plu­to return to its Natal posi­tion in the USA chart and Neptune’s oppo­si­tion to its Natal posi­tion too. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there was not enough time to do both, so we should con­sid­er today’s show as part two of that pre­vi­ous show.

But we will need to keep in mind, that in order to dis­cuss and under­stand any one of what I call the Tri­ad of Spir­it, “The Three in One” of Plu­to, Nep­tune, or Uranus, that we will only under­stand any one of them when we also see that each one is nec­es­sary to the oth­er two, as they are prin­ci­pal Avatars of the Inte­gral nature of Spir­it in our system.

Tri­ad of Spir­it – Plu­to — Nep­tune — Uranus
I like to think of these three in this man­ner. Plu­to is the hold­er of the Will and shapes and molds every Ener­gy-Form into a def­i­nite or defined Con­tain­er of Spir­it, (whether that be a mon­ad, atom, cell, organ­ism, plan­et, or star). Nep­tune is the hold­er of the Uni­ver­sal Ener­gy-Form of Uncon­di­tion­al Love, which is the Ener­gy-Sub­stance at the root of all or the One. This Love of the One is the root source of the Spir­it-Life-Con­scious­ness for every par­ti­cle of Cre­ation. And Uranus, is the hold­er of the Quin­tes­sence of Spir­it, because each and every par­ti­cle of Cre­ation is also an Indi­vid­ual. By this we also know that all of Cre­ation is formed by the innu­mer­able indi­vid­ual sparks of the Divine, every one of which is fol­low­ing their Swab­hā­va to be and become a unique instance or expres­sion of the One Divine Light.

What we have been dis­cussing (for quite some time) is that two of these Avatars of Spir­it have made crit­i­cal align­ments in the USA chart. Plu­to has reached the end of its first cycle of 245 years around the Solar Sys­tem and has returned to Pluto’s Natal posi­tion in 2022. The USA is expe­ri­enc­ing its first ever Plu­to return, and this is most impor­tant as we dis­cussed last time. Mean­while, Nep­tune is oppo­site to its natal posi­tion, as it was only once before from 1858–1859. The com­bi­na­tion of these two align­ments, (along with the influ­ences ema­nat­ing through Uranus), can illu­mi­nate and guide us through the moment we are in now.

For today, let us look at the impor­tance of Nep­tune in the USA chart, and the cycle of its mes­sag­ing for the past, and how that may guide us here today. What we need to appre­ci­ate is that Nep­tune has one of the most sig­nif­i­cant place­ments in the chart of the USA, being close to the mid­heav­en (the realm of des­tiny) and locat­ed in the 9^th house of Law, Truth, and Belief, what I like to under­stand as the house of Storytelling.

Nep­tune
Nep­tune is the avatar of the ulti­mate and uni­ver­sal ener­gy-form, which is Spir­it-Life-Con­scious­ness, and it is this which forms the most infin­i­tes­i­mal of par­ti­cles on up to the heav­en­ly hosts, and that is why we should under­stand and expe­ri­ence the Cre­ation as quite lit­er­al­ly the Body of the One. There is but One Spir­it, there is but One Life, and there is but One Mind, and it holds the whole of Cre­ation as one, (all the innu­mer­able ones held as One), and every one of us is made of this Ener­gy-form that you know and feel as Divine, Uncon­di­tion­al Love. It is by this Ener­gy-Form that the bound­aries between the hier­ar­chies and ranges of enti­ties becomes translu­cent, tran­scend­ed, and ulti­mate­ly dis­solved. By Nep­tune you come to your spir­i­tu­al heart, as you walk the path of awak­en­ing to expe­ri­ence the bless­ings of cos­mic con­scious­ness, which is made man­i­fest as love, com­pas­sion, and empa­thy between one anoth­er and real­ly between all life-forms in the cosmos.

But just as we have seen that the Will of Plu­to can be mis­ap­plied and lead to the vio­la­tion of sacred spaces, lead­ing to the sin of tres­pass­ing and great harm done to oth­er souls, Nep­tun­ian ener­gies may trig­ger and form, (by the mis­un­der­stand­ing or mis­ap­pli­ca­tion of this dissolving/transcending ener­gy-form), a cacoph­o­ny of fan­tasies, illu­sions, delu­sions, and decep­tions. We have had his­tor­i­cal peri­ods of a greater shared under­stand­ing, where what I call our “Bub­bles of Belief” align and agree with one anoth­er. And we have expe­ri­enced times of con­fu­sion, doubt, and greater mis­un­der­stand­ings too.

But the divi­sions we are expe­ri­enc­ing in the present day, the break­down of com­mon under­stand­ings and the grow­ing divide between var­i­ous peo­ples with­in com­mu­ni­ties, between regions and coun­tries, has cast a shad­ow of fear, doubt, and con­fu­sion upon our world. We have reached a yawn­ing abyss where we can­not seem to agree on what is fic­tion and what is fact, of what is “real­ly real”. What we are expe­ri­enc­ing is not a local but world-wide break­down, and this does hap­pen peri­od­i­cal­ly, espe­cial­ly when­ev­er Nep­tune moves through the sign of Pisces like now.

And though this might seem whol­ly neg­a­tive, again there lies part of our delu­sion and con­fu­sion. There is a very spir­i­tu­al pur­pose that dri­ves this moment in Neptune’s cycle, and it is this: we are being inspired to move into a more inclu­sive form of con­scious­ness. But the path to this greater under­stand­ing requires that we have to go through a peri­od where we are con­fused, because it is only then that we will let go of our lim­it­ed under­stand­ings, so that we might per­ceive beyond the dark clouds of fear, and so be able to see revealed a new and high­er and more inclu­sive and lov­ing way to under­stand our­selves and our world.

Nep­tune in Mun­dane Astrology
For our pur­pos­es today, we need to con­sid­er Neptune’s role for Mun­dane or World­ly Astrol­o­gy, which is that Nep­tune is the chal­ice or ves­sel for the dream of any nation, it is the Avatar for the sto­ries and myths that inform and explain the char­ac­ter of that polit­i­cal-cul­tur­al order. For the USA, one of the most dis­tin­guish­ing fea­tures of its found­ing myth is the claim that it is spe­cial or excep­tion­al. In the Nation­al Seal for the USA, we can see that the founders believed that they were engaged in an enter­prise that was unique­ly dif­fer­ent, and they declared to the world that the USA was to be a “New Order for the Cen­turies”. Unlike oth­er nations, the USA would be a land for peo­ple from around the world, and that it would be found­ed upon a new type of polit­i­cal order­ing, it would be a “covenant nation”.

The Nep­tun­ian ide­al for the USA was estab­lished upon Uni­ver­sal Prin­ci­ples, in that it would be unique and not like any oth­er nation. His­tor­i­cal­ly, nations were found­ed upon parochial or lim­it­ed deter­mi­na­tions, whether of being made of one par­tic­u­lar peo­ple, or by one her­itage or eth­nic­i­ty, or by one faith. The USA claimed that it would be a land where Free­dom, Tol­er­ance and Com­mu­ni­ty would be pro­claimed and pro­tect­ed for all peo­ples; it would be a new type of nation formed by the many creeds and by the many cul­tures of humanity.

USA – A Covenant Nation
The heart of this cre­ation of a new type of nation was the prin­ci­ple of a covenant com­mu­ni­ty. The USA would be found­ed upon the truth that each individual’s self-ful­fill­ment is depen­dent upon, and real­ly is only made pos­si­ble by being a mem­ber of the com­mu­ni­ty. This prin­ci­ple was stat­ed in our first doc­u­ment, The Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence, which says that we, “Mutu­al­ly Pledge To Each Oth­er Our Lives, Our For­tunes, And Our Sacred Honor”.

This dec­la­ra­tion was a forg­ing of a new covenant. The prin­ci­ple enshrined by the Dec­la­ra­tion, and lat­er by the Con­sti­tu­tion, is that in order to cre­ate this new space of indi­vid­ual free­dom and self-ful­fill­ment would require that the mem­bers of this sacred com­mu­ni­ty would have to agree to work with­in a social-polit­i­cal sys­tem of mutu­al con­sent. This would cre­ate a space of free­dom and jus­tice for every indi­vid­ual, but to do this we would need to forge an inte­gral bal­ance between our indi­vid­ual lib­er­ties with our com­mu­nal respon­si­bil­i­ties. Our free­doms would be pro­tect­ed, but we agreed to cir­cum­scribe our indi­vid­ual free­dom to pre­serve our com­mu­ni­ties too. In the USA, all pre­vi­ous priv­i­leges would be removed, so that we were not behold­en to any lord, king, or mas­ter; we were cre­at­ing a freely formed, self-deter­mined soci­ety based on equal­i­ty of all before the law. In the USA, only the Law would be our King, and all would be equal before the law.

The Promise Broken
But of course, what was held up as the found­ing ide­al of the USA was nev­er made real at that time, or even now some 250 years lat­er. From the moment of “first con­tact” by Christo­pher Colum­bus in 1492, to the final mas­sacre of native peo­ple at Wound­ed Knee in 1890, the near extinc­tion of the native peo­ples was one part of the bro­ken promise of equal­i­ty and jus­tice for all. The oth­er orig­i­nal sin for the USA was the enslave­ment of African peo­ple until 1865, and their denial of full cit­i­zen­ship by one means or anoth­er even down to the present day. The Karmic Ques­tion the USA faces today is quite sim­ply this, “How do we make right over 500 years of Geno­cide; how to we make right over 400 years of Racism?”

Yes, we are at a turn­ing, and Nep­tune, the hold­er of dreams and myths, of illu­mi­na­tions and delu­sions, has returned to the posi­tion it held as the Unit­ed States faced its great­est exis­ten­tial and spir­i­tu­al cri­sis formed by the divi­sion into two visions or myths of Amer­i­ca, whether to be Slave or Free, in the Civ­il War. The ques­tion was then and quite remark­ably but not sur­pris­ing­ly is also the same now, “will the fun­da­men­tal spir­i­tu­al truth, that all humans are cre­at­ed equal, and should be treat­ed as equal with love and com­pas­sion be made our real­i­ty or not”?

Neptune’s Turn­ing Points

In order to frame our under­stand­ing of what we are faced with today, we need to exam­ine our his­to­ry, and the oth­er turn­ing points in Neptune’s cycle through the chart of the USA. Neptune’s orbit is about 163 years, and it will align with the USA Nep­tune every 40 years or so for the more sig­nif­i­cant or so-called “hard” aspects, the dates for which are: 1816–17, 1857–58, 1897–98, 1938–39, 1980–81, and now 2021–22. Most impor­tant, are the Oppo­si­tions and Returns to the natal place­ment. The first and only return of Nep­tune to its natal posi­tion was 1938–39; and the two oppo­si­tions in USA his­to­ry were 1857–58 and the oppo­si­tion we are expe­ri­enc­ing in 2021–22.

Oppo­si­tion of Nep­tune to Neptune
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. From Neptune’s embod­i­ment of the dream of Amer­i­ca in 1776, “That all men are cre­at­ed equal…”, a polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic sys­tem formed in which a very small num­ber of white, prop­er­ty-own­ing men would hold and wield pow­er. And it would turn out that a great many of them had secured and main­tained their wealth and pow­er through own­ing oth­er humans as prop­er­ty. But an ever-grow­ing divide of the ways of eco­nom­ic life, and in cul­ture and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, between the planter soci­ety and the rest of the USA forged an exis­ten­tial cri­sis in the USA, as two very dif­fer­ent Nep­tun­ian dreams of Amer­i­ca came to a cli­mat­ic con­fronta­tion dur­ing the 1850’s over a fun­da­men­tal ques­tion: Would the USA con­tin­ue as and for­ev­er be a “slave labor coun­try” or not?

The Oppo­si­tion of 1857–1858
The Nep­tune Oppo­si­tion of 1857–58 laid bare the ever-advanc­ing pow­er of the slave­hold­ing states in the Con­gress and over the Supreme Court. This was most clear­ly revealed in 1857 by the Dred Scott deci­sion of the Supreme Court. This deci­sion deter­mined that for­ev­er more the USA would be a slave coun­try, because a white man’s prop­er­ty was more impor­tant than human lives, and so 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”. Slav­ery would be forever…

As a con­se­quence of this clear divi­sion of the two America’s laid bare by the Supreme court’s deci­sion, and by the Leg­isla­tive pow­er of the slave­hold­ing states, Lin­coln spoke of this divi­sion with­in the coun­try, between the slave states and the free states, when he declared, “that a house divid­ed from itself can­not stand”. He pro­posed that this divi­sion would be solved 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 that in every state there would be slav­ery and inequal­i­ty forever.

Of course, what hap­pened was the Civ­il War, and the abo­li­tion of slav­ery and amend­ments to the con­sti­tu­tion to estab­lish a more just and equal soci­ety. But the peri­od known after the Civ­il War wit­nessed the ever-increas­ing ero­sion of that more just order, until by local laws and com­mon prac­tice the dream of a more just Amer­i­ca was denied again.

Neptune’s Return 1938–39
Astrologers con­sid­er any plan­e­tary return like a “New Moon”, a seed­ing of a new vari­a­tion of the ener­gy-form that for that plan­et, Nep­tune for us now. This would mean that a new begin­ning was formed 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.

What is quite remark­able about this moment, as it will be in the next two Nep­tun­ian align­ments, was it was at this time accom­pa­nied by the Plu­to oppo­si­tion to Plu­to; the remark­able syn­chronic­i­ty and mes­sag­ing for the USA at this time led to a restate­ment and rebirth for the promise of the USA, so that a renewed effort and strug­gle was begun to extend equal­i­ty before the law and have a more or less equal oppor­tu­ni­ty for self-fulfillment.

Dream Renewed – The New Deal
Roosevelt’s New Deal was sup­posed to be a Fair Deal for all Amer­i­cans, but of course this was not at all true for the South, and for many com­mu­ni­ties through­out the coun­try, where local laws and cus­toms con­tin­ued to dis­en­fran­chise a great many peo­ple. But it was true that dur­ing FDR’s term, and for many years there­after, the gen­er­al growth of pros­per­i­ty in the Unit­ed States was more or less fair­ly shared by the entire pop­u­la­tion. The com­mit­ment to a Lib­er­al State form of gov­er­nance, from the 1940’s into the 1970’s, cre­at­ed a lift­ing tide of eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty, where that ris­ing tide was seen as, “lift­ing all boats”. It cer­tain­ly was not per­fect, but there was a gen­er­al feel­ing that there was more equi­ty, bal­ance, and fair­ness in how we cre­at­ed and shared our well-being with one another.

But some­thing began to change in the 1970’s and then most cer­tain­ly in the 1980’s. You might won­der, what changed? What hap­pened to the New Deal and the Dream of America?

Nep­tune Square, 1980–1981
There had been a gen­er­al con­sen­sus in the 40’s and 50’s for both major polit­i­cal par­ties that the mod­ern lib­er­al order was the answer. But as the strug­gle for civ­il rights in the 1950’s and 1960’s led to the pas­sage of the Civ­il Rights act, which over­turned the local and state laws deny­ing full cit­i­zen­ship to many, there rose up a counter-rev­o­lu­tion to the lib­er­al con­sen­sus. It came under the guise of an eco­nom­ic the­o­ry, called neo-Lib­er­al­ism, and its main thrust was artic­u­lat­ed by the pres­i­dent-elect in 1980, Ronald Rea­gan, who ran on the slo­gan that the prob­lem with Amer­i­ca was the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment. Once again, Amer­i­ca was a at a turn­ing, and once again the plan­ets were at a turn­ing too.  If fact Nep­tune squared Nep­tune, and Plu­to squared Plu­to at this time. Remem­ber, a Square presents a choice; it holds both an oppor­tu­ni­ty and dan­ger. The oppor­tu­ni­ty is to rise to the chal­lenge with love and faith, or to react with fear and lit­er­al­ly fall backwards.

This Nep­tune-to-Nep­tune square of 1980–81 should be seen as the reac­tion or counter-rev­o­lu­tion to Roosevelt’s New Deal for Amer­i­cans. But what was the result of fol­low­ing the poli­cies of neo-lib­er­al­ism, of less gov­ern­ment? How can we see or mea­sure the ben­e­fit or the cost? The rise of neo-lib­er­al­ism led to a dra­mat­ic shift of income and wealth in the coun­try. The dis­tri­b­u­tion of the growth of wealth from 1940 to 1980 is stark­ly dif­fer­ent than that from 1980 to 2022. If you look at the eco­nom­ic pic­ture of these two peri­ods in USA his­to­ry, it is like you are view­ing two com­plete­ly 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, and the result was the dec­i­ma­tion of the mid­dle class and the poor. Today, we have a coun­try that is divid­ed into the very wealthy few, a shrink­ing upper and mid­dle class, and final­ly the rest who are just strug­gling to survive.

2021–22 Nep­tune Oppo­si­tion (and Plu­to Return)
We find our­selves at the next great turn­ing of Nep­tune (and of Plu­to) here in 2021 and 2022. We are most cer­tain­ly expe­ri­enc­ing great divi­sions between var­i­ous mem­bers and sec­tors of our coun­try. It is quite remark­able that just like in the 1850’s, when Nep­tune was oppo­site to itself, and when Plu­to was squar­ing Plu­to, that we can see that the very same exis­ten­tial ques­tions are before us once more: Who is an Amer­i­can, who gets to decide, and are we equal to one another?

As I spoke of in my last show, we are at this moment in order to address the ques­tion of the Plu­to return, which is “what is the essen­tial val­ue of the USA”? I stat­ed then and would reit­er­ate here that the heart of val­ue for our nation (and real­ly any nation) is the people.

And we are also at a “Full Moon” for Nep­tune, just like in the peri­od of 1857–58. Nep­tune is pos­ing the ques­tion, “what is the Dream of Amer­i­ca”? With Nep­tune once again in Pisces, the spir­i­tu­al inspi­ra­tions of Uncon­di­tion­al love are resur­gent now, and many are work­ing to meet the chal­lenge of this moment by their com­mit­ment to increas­ing social jus­tice, of try­ing to build new bridges of under­stand­ing and care for one another.

But we are also, just like before, expe­ri­enc­ing the veil between realms becom­ing much thin­ner now because of Nep­tune in Pisces, and as much as we can hear the call­ing of our bet­ter angels when we turn to and are guid­ed by our gen­tle, lov­ing high­er self, we are also wit­ness­ing that for many the images and feel­ings that are being evoked, that they are found­ed not upon faith but in fear, and from these dark shad­ows we are con­front­ed with the mount­ing dan­gers of con­fu­sion, mis­un­der­stand­ings, delu­sions, and deceptions.

We are divid­ed in so many ways, but prin­ci­pal­ly it is because our Amer­i­can Dream of equal­i­ty and jus­tice, which is the foun­da­tion for self-deter­mi­na­tion and self-ful­fill­ment, has become increas­ing­ly unreach­able for more and more Amer­i­cans. We can­not live our Nep­tun­ian dream with­out a func­tion­ing democ­ra­cy. We do not have that, we can­not have that, when wealth and pow­er are con­cen­trat­ed in the hands of so very few indi­vid­u­als, fam­i­lies, and com­pa­nies. As many have not­ed, the USA is an Oli­garchy, a polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic sys­tem that is ruled by Plutocrats.

We are going through a spir­i­tu­al cri­sis, and the strug­gle by so many to try and under­stand, to try to do what is lov­ing and good, well that is what gives me hope. The chal­lenge is for each and every one of us to remem­ber where our true wealth lies, it is found­ed in our love for one anoth­er. If we can under­stand that the secret to our hap­pi­ness and well-being depends upon every­one being enabled to real­ize their fuller poten­tial, then we will rise togeth­er into a bet­ter world.

The ques­tion at the cusp of our Civ­il War is the same ques­tion we face today, “will the fun­da­men­tal spir­i­tu­al truth, that all humans are cre­at­ed equal, and should be treat­ed as equal with love and com­pas­sion, will that be made our real­i­ty or not”?

Let us face this moment as we must, with the faith, love, and wis­dom that is held by the eter­nal truths and light of the One, whose cen­ter is every­where and whose cir­cum­fer­ence holds us all as one.