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

Today we will con­tin­ue our overview of 2023 by turn­ing to the most impor­tant shift for the year ahead (and for many years into the future), which is the entrance of Plu­to into the sign of Aquar­ius. As you know, I find it quite impos­si­ble to con­sid­er one plan­et mov­ing through one sign to be suf­fi­cient to under­stand any peri­od in his­to­ry, or cer­tain­ly give us clar­i­ty for our cur­rent events. Just like in a dance per­for­mance, for instance like a bal­let, where you may at times focus upon one or anoth­er dancer, and then upon a cou­ple danc­ing, you real­ly can­not appre­ci­ate the choreographer’s mean­ing and mes­sage with­out pulling back, and look­ing at the whole bal­let, with all the dancers mov­ing in shift­ing pat­terns of rela­tion­ships and mean­ings with one anoth­er. (That is one rea­son I like to call our plan­e­tary com­pan­ions’ move­ments around the solar sys­tem, a “Dance of the Planets”).

I think it is most impor­tant to our under­stand­ing as to “the why and the what” that we are expe­ri­enc­ing here on Earth, is for us to exam­ine the cycle of rela­tion­ship of the three out­er plan­ets which form the long-term his­tor­i­cal dri­vers of spir­i­tu­al ener­gy in our sys­tem. Their move­ments with one anoth­er form­ing what we call a syn­od­ic cycle, (from a con­junc­tion to an oppo­si­tion with one anoth­er, and then back to the next con­junc­tion), form the inte­gral or essen­tial heart­beat of our spir­i­tu­al jour­ney through the stars.

Tri­ad of Spir­it, Pluto-Neptune-Uranus
What we need to remem­ber is what each plan­et holds as an Avatar, and then to con­sid­er what the com­bi­na­tion of one with anoth­er would cre­ate. I like to describe the three out­er plan­ets as form­ing the Tri­ad of Spir­it, and that by Plu­to we strive towards Self-Mas­tery from a “Cen­tered Will”; by Nep­tune we are sup­port­ed to hold real­i­ty and one anoth­er in “Uncon­di­tion­al Love”; and by Uranus we are helped to become a unique Spark of the Divine by mov­ing into ever “Freer Minds”. On the Uni­ver­sal lev­el, Plu­to as the Avatar of Divine Will cre­ates and forms the Spaces or Con­tain­ers for any being or group of beings, and Nep­tune as the Avatar of Uncon­di­tion­al Love holds the expe­ri­ence and root ener­gy-form of each mon­ad as part of the One Life of the Spir­it, as part of the One host or Com­mu­ni­ty of Light and Love, and Uranus as the Avatar of Freer Mind shapes the aware­ness of any being or group towards every greater Indi­vid­u­al­i­ty, to the real­iza­tion that each and every instance of the One is spe­cial and unique.

Plu­to
For our pur­pos­es today, let us con­sid­er the roles of Plu­to and Nep­tune as they work togeth­er. Plu­to is the Shaper of Forms; Nep­tune the Ener­gy-Sub­stance of those forms. Our Uni­verse which is the sto­ry of the One, is formed and pow­ered by what we know as Chem­istry (phys­i­cal­ly) or Alche­my (spir­i­tu­al­ly), and this Foun­tain Source or Pri­mal Ener­gy for Cre­ation cease­less­ly unfolds as the prime mover or the Self-Becom­ing ener­gy that forges the innu­mer­able com­bi­na­tions and trans­for­ma­tions of the hier­ar­chy of Ener­gy-Forms of the One Spirit.

From the One came all the many ones, who then began to forge unions to cre­ate every greater ones, and it is these ones who fill and form the spaces of space which form and are the body of the One. To do this, the Alchem­i­cal nature of Spir­it forges the con­tain­ers of spir­it, with­in which each one is bound­ed and held sep­a­rate from oth­er ones. Then, through the Alchem­i­cal mys­tery of com­bi­na­tion, by the Spir­i­tu­al Will as chemistry/alchemy, atoms com­bine with atoms to form larg­er atoms, mol­e­cules with greater mol­e­cules, organ­isms with larg­er organ­isms, on up to the plan­ets, stars, and galax­ies. What dri­ves Cre­ation is the Pro­tean Pow­er that is Alche­my, which is the mag­ic and the mys­tery of com­bi­na­tion. This secret to Cre­ation, the majesties, and the mys­ter­ies that we call Birth, Death, and Rebirth, is held by the Sign of Scor­pio, and also for us in our Solar Sys­tem by the Plan­et Pluto.

Nep­tune
Nep­tune is the avatar of the Uni­ver­sal ener­gy-form that holds the entire­ty of cre­ation as it is. There is but One Life, there is but One Spir­it, and there is but One Mind, and it holds the whole of Cre­ation as ONE, (the many ones held as One). This Uni­ver­sal and Omnipresent Ener­gy-form is the Love of the One which we know as Uncon­di­tion­al or Uni­ver­sal Divine Love. Through this Ener­gy-Form, all the Spaces of Space are filled, as the Uni­verse is a Plero­ma, a full­ness not an empti­ness, so that ulti­mate­ly the bound­aries between the hier­ar­chies and ranges of all ener­gy-forms are tran­scend­ed and held togeth­er as one, and it is this expe­ri­ence which is the true seed for your expe­ri­ence of com­pas­sion and empa­thy between one anoth­er and real­ly between all life-forms, and tru­ly for the whole of Creation.

So, we could say that Neptune’s mes­sage is almost the “oppo­site” or coun­ter­point to that of Plu­to as the Lord of Will and Bound­aries. Or per­haps it is bet­ter to say that this reminds us of the para­dox­i­cal nature of a true spir­i­tu­al under­stand­ing of and liv­ing a life guid­ed by spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. While it is cer­tain that we must be respect­ful­ly “sep­a­rate from one anoth­er”, we must at the same time see through all our var­i­ous sep­a­ra­tions, bound­aries, and bor­ders between one anoth­er and know that they are nec­es­sary, but they are also at the root an Illu­sion, for every­thing and every­one is con­nect­ed, inter­pen­e­trat­ed by, and shaped by all oth­ers. There is but One Spir­it, and Nep­tune is the Avatar of exact­ly this, the Holy Spir­it. We must there­fore also live with this wis­dom and act towards one anoth­er by hold­ing to this com­ple­men­tary spir­i­tu­al truth, that we are all in essence one with one anoth­er. A great and Ancient Teach­ing that should guide is that “We are all relat­ed”, so that if we bring harm to any­one at all, we will cause equal harm to our own true self too.

What we need to do, at least for our pur­pos­es today, is to not only con­sid­er what this move­ment of Plu­to into Aquar­ius means, but to also con­sid­er what stage or cycle moment Plu­to is going through in its most sig­nif­i­cant cycle of rela­tion­ship, which is with Nep­tune. As I have not­ed before, their rough­ly 490-year cycle is quite inter­est­ing, as Plu­to will go around the Solar Sys­tem in about 248 years and Nep­tune in about 165 years, mean­ing that from one of their con­junc­tions to the next, Plu­to will go around the Zodi­ac twice and Nep­tune three times.

Neptune/Pluto Con­junc­tions as a Series
As they dance with one anoth­er, we have found that their series of con­junc­tions, which are like New Moons where a new spir­i­tu­al seed is plant­ed, is that these seedings/plantings will move for­ward through the zodi­ac by about 6 degrees each time they meet up rough­ly every 500 years. For the last two con­junc­tions, they have met in Gem­i­ni, both in 1398 and for our cur­rent cycle in 1891, and they will do so again in 2384, and twice more after that. Pri­or to this, Plu­to and Nep­tune aligned with one anoth­er in the sign of Tau­rus. That shift to Tau­rus con­junc­tions start­ed in 1071 BCE, which was a very sig­nif­i­cant shift in human his­to­ry, as is our cur­rent series of Gem­i­ni seed­ings that began in 1398. What this also means more broad­ly is that every 2500 years we humans expe­ri­ence a series of seed­ings of Nep­tune and Plu­to in one Sign before mov­ing onto the next, form­ing a com­plete cycle in about 30,000 years!

Tau­rus Series of Conjunctions
The series of con­junc­tions from 1071 BCE to 1398 CE were focused through the mean­ing and mes­sage of Tau­rus, which con­cerns the nature of our human expe­ri­ence of Val­ue, of what is wor­thy, of what is beau­ti­ful, of what makes for and what cre­ates val­ue for us. Great civ­i­liza­tions were formed dur­ing this peri­od, rang­ing from Per­sia, to Baby­lon, to Greece and Rome, and the Han in Chi­na, and the Mayan and Olmec in the West­ern hemisphere.

Gem­i­ni Series of Conjunctions
The series in Gem­i­ni that began in 1398, and that was reini­tial­ized for us in 1891, holds as a focus what has been a spir­i­tu­al quick­en­ing for humans, trans­form­ing our minds and our intel­lect, pow­er­ful­ly shap­ing our intel­li­gence and means of net­work­ing and communications.

We can see that what began at the first Gem­i­ni phase of 1398 with­in 500 years led to a world­wide spread of cul­tures, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and inter­con­nec­tiv­i­ty that spanned (for the first time as far as we know) all around the Earth by the late 1800’s. The sec­ond impulse of 1891 has unfold­ed until the present day with a ver­i­ta­ble explo­sion of sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, and com­mu­ni­ca­tions that in no small degree has shaped how we humans think and relate to one anoth­er. This trans­for­ma­tion has changed and con­tin­ues to change our very under­stand­ing of what it means to be human, and it has most cer­tain­ly trans­formed and dis­rupt­ed the expe­ri­ences of most oth­er life-forms on the Earth.

Sex­tile Phase for Neptune/Pluto
What we also need to under­stand is that as Nep­tune and Plu­to con­tin­ue on their 490-year cycle, they will come to sig­nif­i­cant moments in their cycle of rela­tion­ship, which are formed by their angu­lar sep­a­ra­tions from one anoth­er, what we Astrologers call aspects. Anoth­er way to under­stand where we are now, and how what hap­pened in the past may inform our under­stand­ing as to what is before us now, is that for quite some time now, begin­ning in the 1950’s, and con­tin­u­ing off and on through our very own peri­od now, is that Nep­tune and Plu­to have been form­ing a 60-degree sep­a­ra­tion or Sex­tile aspect. That aspect is a time of con­cretiza­tion and con­sol­i­da­tion, of mate­ri­al­iz­ing or quick­en­ing of what­ev­er began at the con­junc­tion, which in our peri­od was 1891.

Let us com­pare our moment now to what was hap­pen­ing dur­ing the pre­vi­ous Sex­tile for the 1398 con­junc­tion. Just like in our peri­od, and this is due to the unusu­al nature of the orbit of Plu­to, that it is very ellip­ti­cal and goes through some signs more quick­ly or slow­ly than oth­ers, (three times longer in Tau­rus than in the oppo­site Sign of Scor­pio, 36 years ver­sus 12 years), there was a rather long wax­ing Sex­tile phase dur­ing this ear­li­er peri­od too.

Sex­tile from 1461 to 1540
This extend­ed sex­tile for this Neptune/Pluto cycle came in two phas­es, from 1461 to 1480, where Plu­to was in Leo and Nep­tune in Libra and lat­er when they were in Sagit­tar­ius and Libra. And then anoth­er phase from 1536 to 1540 with Nep­tune in Aries and Plu­to in Aquar­ius. So, all in all there was a Sex­tile aspect for about 80 years. This was what has been termed in Europe as the peri­od of the High Renais­sance lead­ing to, (as we would expect of Plu­to as the hold­er of the Pow­er of Alche­my), the Death and Rebirth of the Euro­pean order which cul­mi­nat­ed in the Ref­or­ma­tion. Dur­ing this peri­od, just like our own, there was a ver­i­ta­ble rush of ideas, a quick­en­ing of cre­ativ­i­ty and intel­lect, and social and eco­nom­ic change.

The Break­ing of the Euro­pean Catholic Order between the Sacred Realms and the Sec­u­lar Order led to many wars on that con­ti­nent and also to con­quests and col­o­niza­tion around the world. The most con­se­quen­tial and destruc­tive for our part of the world was the Span­ish destruc­tion of the Aztec, and the Mayan and Incan civ­i­liza­tions from the 1520s-30s. We can see how this sex­tile brought relent­less change and devel­op­ment in tech­nol­o­gy, ideas, and beliefs, but also very great suf­fer­ing for mil­lions of souls as well.

Sex­tile from 1950 to 2032
We have been expe­ri­enc­ing this same or sim­i­lar influ­ence in our mod­ern era after the 1891 Con­junc­tion of Nep­tune with Plu­to. For us, the quickening/manifesting stage of the Sex­tile has been in effect from 1950 to 1956, with Nep­tune in Libra and Plu­to in Leo, just as in the pre­vi­ous cycle, and then again from 1976 to 1986, as before with Nep­tune in Sagit­tar­ius and Plu­to in Libra, and then Nep­tune in Capri­corn and Plu­to in Scor­pio. And we will expe­ri­ence it exact­ly one more time from 2026 to 2032, and again like in the 1500’s with Nep­tune in Aries and Plu­to in Aquar­ius (which Plu­to will begin to enter this year). That means we will have had this very con­se­quen­tial align­ment of Nep­tune and Plu­to for over 82 years, just like in the 14 and 1500’s.

I have for many years been stat­ing that what we have been expe­ri­enc­ing with Plu­to in Capri­corn from 2008 to 2023 makes our peri­od like that of the 1500’s, in that it rep­re­sents the “end of an age”, and that in some form we are hav­ing our own expe­ri­ence that is much like our ances­tors, which was of the old order framed by the Pope and the King, between realms Sec­tar­i­an and Sec­u­lar, of gov­ern­ments and economies and cul­tures, of a type of human and what it means to be human, trans­form­ing into what we under­stand now as our mod­ern-age of nation states, with a pro­lif­er­a­tion of tech­nol­o­gy and inten­si­fi­ca­tion of net­work­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and tru­ly mak­ing us just as it did them into a dif­fer­ent kind of human.

But for us today, what our ances­tors forged as an Insti­tu­tion­al Order, and Econ­o­my, and Gov­ern­ment and a Way of Life in order to meet their chal­lenges and secure their needs, the very solu­tions that they cre­at­ed and invent­ed to solve their prob­lems and ful­fil their dreams, those very solu­tions have end­ed up in many ways being the source of the very chal­lenges we face today. Just as the pas­sage of Plu­to through Capri­corn was to be a time for the Death of many Insti­tu­tions of the world, it has also been, in fact it must be, the begin­ning of the birth of new means of meet­ing our needs, of new cre­ations, but also for pre­serv­ing and sup­port­ing a rich and diverse hier­ar­chy of earth ecosys­tems; we need a new Order and/or rebirth in our Insti­tu­tions and our way of life, of how we live with our world in order to pre­serve and pro­tect all life on this Earth. Many of us look around and see a world in per­il, of life leav­ing the plan­et, of our world becom­ing less vibrant and dimin­ished, and of our own lives and our dreams for the future being cir­cum­scribed and bound by appre­hen­sions and fears.

The Sec­ond Age of Gemini
We are mov­ing through the quick­en­ing of the sec­ond age of Gem­i­ni. In the first age and into this sec­ond age of Gem­i­ni, what many call the Indus­tri­al and Post-Indus­tri­al Ages, humans wield­ed their sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge and tech­ni­cal means to bend and shape the Earth and her life-forms to meet our needs, which result­ed in a mas­sive Growth in Mate­r­i­al Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty for human Goods and Ser­vices and cre­at­ed for a type of rel­a­tive Plen­ty for many. But it equal­ly set in motion fun­da­men­tal changes in the bal­ance of ener­gy and life-forms on this plan­et which has brought us today to a ver­i­ta­ble globe cir­cling war of destruc­tion and dev­as­ta­tion for most oth­er life-forms on this plan­et. Here in this Sec­ond Age of Gem­i­ni, we are moved into a time that will require max­i­mum adapt­abil­i­ty to the glob­al changes that our pre­vi­ous way of life has forged, and that chal­lenge cer­tain­ly seems to be grow­ing expo­nen­tial­ly, and it seems to be over­whelm­ing for many of us.

The approach­es and solu­tions of the first wave of the Gem­i­ni con­junc­tions of Plu­to and Nep­tune led to what became the first tru­ly glob­al or Mod­ern World. This sec­ond Gem­i­ni seed­ing wave begin­ning in 1898 is now mov­ing towards the last crit­i­cal series of Neptune/Pluto sex­tiles. Begin­ning this year with the start of Pluto’s jour­ney through Aquar­ius and becom­ing ever more pow­er­ful as Nep­tune moves into Aries in 2026 and into the 2030’s, we will meet the heart of what will forge our futures, our des­tiny and lega­cy to those who will fol­low us.

Plu­to in Capri­corn ver­sus Plu­to in Aquarius
The pas­sage of Plu­to through Capri­corn her­ald­ed the end of an Insti­tu­tion­al Age. What is the mes­sage of Plu­to in Aquar­ius, what does it offer and what are we enter­ing into now from 2024 to 2044? For Mun­dane or World­ly Astrol­o­gy, Aquar­ius rules “Fel­low­ship” or “Com­mu­ni­ty”, the nature and sub­stance of what are known as our so-called vol­un­tary asso­ci­a­tions with one anoth­er, what you and I would expe­ri­ence as the world beyond our fam­i­lies, that larg­er human social expe­ri­ence that we know as Friendship.

As you know, I like to say we are made of one anoth­er, and that all with whom we jour­ney have in some way become part of us and we have become part of them. We share our dreams and doubts, our hopes, and our fears, and we gath­er togeth­er to help one anoth­er, to be and become for one anoth­er our dreams come true.

Rebirth of Dreams
Aquar­ius is our Dream; of the world we wish to pre­serve and the world we hope to cre­ate. Plu­to mov­ing through Aquar­ius will her­ald the break­ing down of our old dreams for our futures and the birth and remak­ing of a New World Dream. As much as Plu­to in Capri­corn was the break­ing down of the Insti­tu­tion­al Order that was cre­at­ed to pre­serve and sup­port our dreams, Plu­to in Aquar­ius will bring us to the neces­si­ty to change the very con­tent or Sub­stance of our Dreams themselves.

The dream that drove the first Age of Gem­i­ni was that through our inge­nu­ity and crafti­ness, through our sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, we would bend and form the rest of this Earth to meet our ever-expand­ing need for things, for the basics of food, cloth­ing, shel­ter, and for an ever-increas­ing range of desires. But unfor­tu­nate­ly, this ever-increas­ing growth of wants and desires was met with­out con­sid­er­a­tion for the effects and con­se­quences that our means of secur­ing those wants cre­at­ed. We were very smart, we were very crafty, but we cer­tain­ly lacked Wis­dom and Humil­i­ty. But forces greater than ours are remind­ing us that we are not the mas­ters of the Earth.

Now we must con­sid­er what should be at the heart of our dreams for this Age. Is it to be more of more; are we so enam­ored of hav­ing more, of con­sum­ing more, that we are held cap­tive by this val­ue of quan­ti­ty only, of this mate­r­i­al mea­sure of the good life, so that to have more of more is what it means to be human. Or will we dream of a dif­fer­ent pur­pose and mean­ing for our lives?

I do not think we will, ulti­mate­ly, have a choice. We will have to humbly and wise­ly and grace­ful­ly accept our need to turn are dreams from the Illu­sion­ary Right to do what we wish with the Earth and forge a Way of Life built upon our Respon­si­bil­i­ties to one anoth­er and to all life-forms with whom we share this world. We must cen­ter our dreams upon heal­ing, pre­serv­ing, and pro­tect­ing all the life and lives on this plan­et, on our home, on our moth­er, on this beau­ti­ful Earth with whom we trav­el through the stars.