Astro­log­i­cal Mus­ings — Mid-Year Review: Plu­to, Nep­tune, and Uranus (June 18, 2023)

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

As we approach the mid­dle of our civ­il cal­en­dar year in July, (but for us who fol­low “the stars” we mark this moment as hav­ing reached only one quar­ter of our Astro­log­i­cal year), I thought it would be help­ful to refresh our under­stand­ing of the var­i­ous plan­e­tary influ­ences and their mes­sages for us this year. As I have not­ed, the orbits of the plan­ets around our star, what I like to call “the dance of the plan­ets”, with their hier­ar­chi­cal and unfold­ing pat­terns, and their inter­sec­tions with one anoth­er, what we Astrologers call “aspects”, pro­vide us with a very rich source for the mean­ings and con­texts of what shapes our lives, and they can shine a light of some greater of less­er illu­mi­na­tion upon the unfold­ment or tim­ing of the sig­nif­i­cant phas­es in our human jour­ney here upon the Earth.

I will always stress that the plan­e­tary place­ments and motions do not “make” any par­tic­u­lar event or cir­cum­stance “hap­pen”. Sim­i­lar align­ments and pat­terns were tak­ing place thou­sands, tens of thou­sands and cer­tain­ly mil­lions of years ago. It is not pos­si­ble for us to under­stand what that might have meant to the var­i­ous life-forms liv­ing on the Earth long, long ago. All we can do is bring to bear our human con­scious­ness, our type of aware­ness and under­stand­ing of our­selves and the worlds around us; and, as we observe this dance of the plan­ets, as we have for many, many thou­sands of years mar­veled at the beau­ty of the stars above, we are able to see if what occurs “above” forms a cor­re­spon­dence with what hap­pens “below”. By this aware­ness of our rela­tion­ship with our fel­low celes­tial com­pan­ions, we may hope­ful­ly gain a greater under­stand­ing and per­haps even some wis­dom that comes from this inspi­ra­tion by these greater beings with whom we trav­el around our star, and to rec­og­nize and find sig­nif­i­cance, mean­ing and guid­ance for our human lives, as we cre­ate our sto­ry and dance with one anoth­er here on Earth.

So, as we have done before, let us begin with the out­er­most and most sig­nif­i­cant influ­encers (and I would argue these influ­encers as being much more impor­tant than those fea­tured on YouTube, Insta­gram or Tik­Tok!), let us con­sid­er these great com­pan­ions in our human jour­ney through the stars, and by that I mean let us review the mes­sages and mean­ings being impart­ed to us by the plan­ets Plu­to, Nep­tune, and Uranus.

Though we can and do look at each of these three as hav­ing their own spe­cif­ic role or place in the hier­ar­chy of Astro­log­i­cal influ­ences, I find it quite impos­si­ble, as you know, I find it impos­si­ble to tru­ly under­stand any one of them with­out also con­sid­er­ing the oth­er two as well. For they form what we might call a “Trip­tych of mean­ing”, as at the deep­est lev­el for me they are the Avatars of the Tri­ad of Spir­it, so that Plu­to, Nep­tune, and Uranus are the Will, Love, and Mind of the One. Their jour­ney through the Signs, and their series of aspects that they form with one anoth­er, cre­ate this most fun­da­men­tal Song of Spir­it for our solar sys­tem, and so equal­ly for us humans here upon the Earth.

Plu­to
For our pur­pos­es today, let us begin with Plu­to and its cycle of mean­ing for us now. Dur­ing 2023 Plu­to is begin­ning to move from Capri­corn into Aquar­ius, herald­ing a new peri­od of Pluto’s influ­ence for our world. Dur­ing Pluto’s time in Capri­corn since 2008 (and that con­tin­ues through parts of this year too), we have wit­nessed the break­ing down of the insti­tu­tion­al order that was found­ed in the lat­ter part of the 1700’s and first half of the 1800’s (that is, when Plu­to moved through Aquar­ius from 1778 to 1798, then Pisces from 1798 to 1853, and then final­ly into Aries from 1823 to 1853).

That means what we are expe­ri­enc­ing from 2023 to 2044, is that it should car­ry or have some of the same mean­ing­ful­ness, hold some of the same mes­sages and offer some of the same oppor­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges as our ances­tors faced from 1778 to 1798, which is when Plu­to then as now focused its alchem­i­cal influ­ence through the lens of the mean­ings held by the Sign of Aquar­ius. What might that be?

The heart of Aquar­ius con­cerns the very nature of our hopes and dreams, which are forged and formed by the quin­tes­sen­tial qual­i­ty of our very nature in being human. That we are made human by the nature, qual­i­ty and type of our fam­i­lies, our fel­low­ships, and our com­mu­ni­ties, by the type of social con­structs we form to meet our needs for our­selves and for one anoth­er, and that we are the very means for our indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive self-ful­fill­ment. What is at the heart of Aquar­ius is the future of who and what we will be, what kind of future are we mak­ing, what will our children’s, children’s lives be like, what kind of world will they have because of what we did and how we did it.

Since 2008, the insti­tu­tion­al struc­tures of the world have been warped and bent by their own inter­nal con­tra­dic­tions as well as by the exter­nal pres­sures brought about through his­tor­i­cal changes. Many insti­tu­tions met this moment and were found to be defi­cient or failed, some were test­ed and held to their intent and pur­pose, but they were changed (and are still chang­ing). But around the world humans have won­dered why, why now does it seem like the world, my world, is “falling apart”?

The answer quite sim­ply put is this, we are expe­ri­enc­ing this because it “is time”, as it also was in the 1700’s and the 1500’s, (and times before and times to come). That is because no struc­ture or sys­tem can remain for all time when the whole pur­pose behind cre­ation, embed­ded in the very nature of Spir­it, that all of life is dri­ven by the fun­da­men­tal imper­a­tive which is “to be and to become”, to move from one form of real­iza­tion and then into another.

The insti­tu­tions forged in the late 1700’s and 1800’s, these forms of meet­ing our needs were made to meet the needs of human­i­ty at that time. But we have changed, our dreams have changed, and the sys­tems we have to meet our needs must change too.

What Plu­to in Aquar­ius will show us is that it is not just the form that was wrong. It was not mere­ly a prob­lem with the sys­tems or struc­tures, because they did in fact “solve” the chal­lenges at their found­ing. But this is also true, those very solu­tions equal­ly cre­at­ed the very prob­lems and crises we now face. The real ques­tion we need to face now is what is the dream of human­i­ty, what will be at the heart of our dream for “a good life”?

What will form those dreams of that future “good life” is most cer­tain­ly being shaped by our new­ly “redis­cov­ered” under­stand­ing that all of life, that all of cre­ation here on Earth is inter­de­pen­dent and pre­cious, that the great­est rich­ness of this plan­et is life itself, and we should be “all for one and one for all”, yes humans, but for all of life as well.

What became the mantra for our so-called mod­ern world was the pur­pose of life was hav­ing “more of more”, lead­ing to end­less con­sump­tion as an eco­nom­ic way of being, and that has led to the wide­spread destruc­tion of the hier­ar­chies of life to meet our wants. This path of wan­ton destruc­tion has final­ly been met with the incon­tro­vert­ible Truth, which is that we can now see that there is a finite nature of what the Earth and all her life forms can sus­tain­ably con­tin­ue to sup­port so that we all may thrive. We need less quan­ti­ties in our life and more mean­ing­ful qual­i­ties of liv­ing with all of life.

Nep­tune
What Plu­to will bring every time to every realm is trans­for­ma­tion, as it holds the dri­ver of Cre­ation which is Alche­my, which we know and expe­ri­ence as the great cycling of Birth-Death-Rebirth. But Nep­tune is also part of the sto­ry, and it has been offer­ing anoth­er song in the cho­rus of spir­it to guide our steps in this time of change too. Since 2011 and con­tin­u­ing until 2026, we have been inspired and con­fused, we have expe­ri­enced illu­mi­na­tions as the veils between worlds thins, and equal­ly found our­selves stum­bling into shad­ows and fears, and all of this has been her­ald­ed by the pas­sage of Nep­tune through the Sign of Pisces. The bound­aries between the realms of Cre­ation, from the dens­est of phys­i­cal planes on up to the most ethe­re­al realms of con­scious­ness and spir­i­tu­al inspi­ra­tions have become more ten­u­ous, and great visions and trou­bling delu­sions have been thrown into our under­stand­ing of our world. We have watched and won­dered as our par­a­digms of belief have been warped and bro­ken, as our bound­aries between truth and fan­ta­sy, between what is fact and fic­tion have dis­solved and we have become unteth­ered from our for­mer cer­tain­ties in faith or sci­ence. We find our­selves in a time in which it seems that any­thing may be true, and yet noth­ing is what it seems. As Yeats famous­ly observed as world events seems to unrav­el and plunge us into ever greater clouds of despair and fears, we humans seem to divide between, “The best lack all con­vic­tion, while the worst / Are full of pas­sion­ate intensity”.

We can look to oth­er times when Nep­tune was in the sign of Pisces to gain some insight as to how we might under­stand the oppor­tu­ni­ties and dan­gers for us now. Two of Nep­tune pre­vi­ous pas­sages might pro­vide us with some insight. The time most like our own was from 1521 to 1535, as it was also a time with Plu­to in Capri­corn. I have described that peri­od as being much like ours, as an end of an age, where the Insti­tu­tion­al order was break­ing down and the Ide­o­log­i­cal realms were dis­solv­ing as well, where both the realms Sec­u­lar and Sec­tar­i­an were com­ing undone, where Civ­il Soci­ety and the Ideas that sup­port­ed it were rent asun­der, so that that the Civ­il and Reli­gious orders clashed over the realms of Church and State, and a strug­gle between col­lec­tive beliefs and indi­vid­ual con­science prevailed.

More recent­ly, Nep­tune was in Pisces from 1848 to 1862, and around the world in Europe and in Asia, and cer­tain­ly here in the USA, the under­stand­ing of what it means to be human, of how we should guide our rela­tion­ships with our fel­low humans, what­ev­er their ori­gins, what­ev­er their beliefs, to see one anoth­er as equal or unequal, led in the USA to the exis­ten­tial strug­gle over slav­ery in the Civ­il War. The clear­ly defined schism between one cul­ture and life­way and anoth­er was brought to a cli­max, and we thought the issue had been met and mas­tered, or at least that is what we told our­selves. Yes, Nep­tune is the Avatar that holds our beliefs, which we share in our sto­ries about one anoth­er. But the sto­ry of our strug­gle for jus­tice, equal­i­ty and equi­ty was not near­ly done, not at all.

In our cur­rent peri­od we have watched as the com­mon­ly held truths of soci­ety have again been erod­ed, ques­tioned and in some cas­es over­whelmed by a cacoph­o­ny of half-truths, con­spir­a­to­r­i­al imag­in­ings and delib­er­ate decep­tions that have spread through­out the minds of so very many by the pro­lif­er­a­tion of data streams with no appar­ent anchor­ing to some cen­tral beliefs root­ed in core val­ues and spir­i­tu­al truths. The very same ideals and half-truths have erupt­ed once more, for we real­ly did not over­come fears, and we find our­selves divid­ed once again.

Uranus
What Plu­to holds is the spir­i­tu­al truth of the unfold­ment of Cre­ation as the Alchem­i­cal Trans­for­ma­tion of Union and Rebirth; what Nep­tune holds is the spir­i­tu­al truth of the Com­mu­ni­ty of belief, of our sto­ry about our­selves and our world, (where we should ulti­mate­ly know that there is but One Spir­it), and we are here for one pur­pose only, which is to “love one anoth­er”. But the third Avatar of the Tri­ad of Spir­it, Uranus, holds for us the equal­ly insis­tent spir­i­tu­al dri­ve which is for Indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and Free­dom. The way I like to under­stand these three Avatars of Spir­it is that we are all upon the path of awak­en­ing in which we are learn­ing to live with­in our Cen­tered Wills, formed by our Uncon­di­tion­al Love and guid­ed by our ever-Freer Minds.

From 2018 to 2026, Uranus for us now is mov­ing through the Sign of Tau­rus, which we under­stand as the ves­sel of Val­ue, the hold­er of why, what, and how we form our world of val­ues. We can again have some per­spec­tive or under­stand­ing of what our peri­od asks of us by look­ing at the pre­vi­ous times of Uranus in Tau­rus, 1768 to 1775, 1851 to 1859 and 1935 to 1942.

The pas­sage in the 1700’s man­i­fest­ed in a mount­ing clash of ideas over the val­ue of authoritarian/monarchial rule ver­sus the cause of lib­er­ty and self-rep­re­sen­ta­tion lead­ing up to the begin­ning of our Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War in 1775. The peri­od of the 1850’s marked the time of our great strug­gle over the val­ue of our con­cep­tion of whether humans are equal or not, as the slave­hold­ing states strug­gled with the non-slave states as to whether future states would be admit­ted as “slave” or “free”, with that ques­tion being “answered” by our Civ­il War. The mid-1930’s to ear­ly 1940’s saw the strug­gle over whether, after the fail­ure of unregulated/unrestrained cap­i­tal­ism in the Great Depres­sion, how much of a role the gov­ern­ment should play in pro­vid­ing for the com­mon wel­fare, of our com­mon val­ues, as the USA found a mid­dle path between the ide­olo­gies of Fas­cism and Communism.

In the present Uranus pas­sage in Tau­rus, our the strug­gle over val­ues con­tin­ues as we find that the end of the strug­gle between Cap­i­tal­ism and Com­mu­nism, between the East and the West, that the West sup­pos­ed­ly won, has led to a world where the pro­lif­er­a­tion of more wants and the pro­duc­tion of more goods, and more wants and more goods, has led to the world-wide destruc­tion of life-forms and ecosys­tems on the plan­et. We have made a world where the val­ue that has only quan­ti­ty as a qual­i­ty, is destroy­ing all the oth­er val­ues of life on the plan­et and we find a lack of mean­ing­ful­ness in our lives.

Uranus-Nep­tune-Plu­to
So, it would seem that we are from Uranus hav­ing to reassess our val­ues once more, and from Nep­tune to recon­sid­er our rela­tion­ship to our fel­low humans and to all life-forms as being part of the greater com­mu­ni­ty of Spir­it, while Plu­to in com­bi­na­tion with these oth­er two of the Tri­ad of Spir­it will once again bring about a strug­gle over what our Hopes and Dreams will be now for the future world we are cre­at­ing for our descen­dants. Will they hon­or us, or will they not?

Though we may at times feel that these chal­lenges and ques­tions posed to us, the very exis­ten­tial strug­gles we find our­selves trou­bled by are over­whelm­ing and unsolv­able, we must remem­ber that the way the world is today, that is of our own mak­ing. Our ances­tors long ago, and we in this present day, have made and our mak­ing choic­es that have cre­at­ed these chal­lenges, and there­in lies our hope.

We can change; we must be the change.

The future for our­selves and for all life-forms on this plan­et depends upon us.

Let us meet this moment we made with courage, with love and with the faith that comes from under­stand­ing that we have with­in us the means to make a bet­ter world for one and for all.