Jake Baddeley

The Sto­ry of Creation

Today you enter the realm of Sagit­tar­ius, and at this time of the year, and ever present some­where in your very own chart too, you seek to under­stand who we are and why we are here. You look with­in for answers, and out­ward­ly to the worlds around you, and most impor­tant­ly you share with one anoth­er too.

We do this because it is how we became human. We are made by our rela­tion­ships, we are formed by shared expe­ri­ences and real­i­ties, and we have told our sto­ries which shaped and formed what it means to be human con­tin­u­ous­ly. It is in Sagit­tar­ius that we hold our wealth of expe­ri­ences. Whether by pet­ro­glyphs, pot­tery, or paint­ings, or by song, opera, dance, or by fic­tions and non-fic­tions, or through spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, phi­los­o­phy, math, sci­ence, num­bers, in all these ways of weav­ing our sto­ry we have shared our knowl­edge and wis­dom. We are what we made of our­selves, and this is our human story.

You have just left the time and space of Scor­pio. It is there that you expe­ri­ence the forge of Spir­it, which is that all of Cre­ation is formed and dri­ven by the pow­er of Alche­my, which is the mys­tery and majesty of com­bi­na­tion. Yes, all that is, from the most infin­i­tes­i­mal to the most celes­tial, all of this is Spir­it arranged into the numer­ous hier­ar­chies of the man­i­fest, from the dens­est to the most ethe­re­al, and all of “that” is in a con­stant state of unfold­ing, com­bin­ing, and transforming.

What we expe­ri­ence for our­selves, and all that we per­ceive in the worlds around us, is what I like to call “the dance of spir­it” through the many forms of mat­ter. This is the fun­da­men­tal Sto­ry of Cre­ation, that from the One came each and every mon­ad of spir­it cease­less­ly mov­ing many forms or tem­ples of man­i­fes­ta­tion. And for each par­ti­cle of Spir­it, for every spark of the Divine, they must leave any mat­ter-form once it has out­lived and served its pur­pose. What we wit­ness in all the hier­ar­chies of Cre­ation is a series of forms and lives one after the oth­er, which we expe­ri­ence as the ever-unfold­ing path of birth, death, and rebirth for­ev­er and ever.

Yes, it is in Scor­pio that you “meet the truth”, that you are an Immor­tal in a mor­tal body. And that your life will be lived bound to this real­i­ty: if you have Joy, you will expe­ri­ence Pain, and if you have Love, you will expe­ri­ence Loss. This is the gift of becom­ing self-aware, so that in any moment when you find your­self with such a pain or loss, but also when you expe­ri­ence an unimag­in­able joy too, you are moved into an altered space, to a realm beyond words. You have to wait for your feel­ing to become an intu­ition, and that intu­ition to become a thought, and that thought to become part of your sto­ry, and then your sto­ry can become part of the knowl­edge and wis­dom of the world too.

Now you enter the realm of Sagit­tar­ius; here are found the Tem­ples of Truth. Because your jour­ney is part of the human jour­ney, and many, many souls have come this way before. Yes, the truth of much has been dis­cov­ered (and redis­cov­ered) and is held in the great teach­ings of the ages. The great­est sages that we know such as Con­fu­cius, Bud­dha, Lao Tzu, Zoroast­er, Pythago­ras and so many oth­ers known (and so many more who are not), held high the lamp of truth for us to find our way.

But what these known and unknown “keep­ers of the flame” found is what you will find too, that Truth is omnipresent and ever­last­ing. Why, because it forms the very sub­stance and mean­ing of the Uni­verse. The truth is out there, and it is with­in you too, as it forms the warp and weft of the entire uni­verse. That is why you can per­ceive it, that is why you can know the truth. Because what you see out there in the stars above is the same truth that shines in your very own heart too.

At the root of it all, is the Divine Light of the One, the same light that is your high­er self, and who for­ev­er guides your jour­ney of awak­en­ing. From life to life, the path you fol­low is forged by you as you lis­ten to the Eter­nal Light with­in your­self as you see it equal­ly shin­ing all around you too…yes, the whole of the Uni­verse is “shin­ing” with the Light of the One.

It is by reach­ing with­in, and equal­ly by reach­ing out to one anoth­er, it is by this weav­ing of your sto­ry and by all these sto­ries of Cre­ation, it is by this that you will slow­ly but sure­ly move for­ward with Love and Humil­i­ty to Wis­dom and Peace.

This is the gift of Sagittarius.

This is the Sto­ry of Creation.

Astro­log­i­cal Mus­ings — The Pulse of Life and the Astro­log­i­cal Cycles of Order and Dis­or­der (Octo­ber 29, 2023)

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

I thought it would be help­ful after my last show to pull back once again and take in a larg­er per­spec­tive so that we might see how the plan­ets are shap­ing and inform­ing the cir­cum­stances of our past, present, and future. As you know by now, I find that what is most sig­nif­i­cant for our under­stand­ing of these influ­ences is formed by two fac­tors, the zodi­a­cal posi­tions of the major out­er plan­ets, com­bined with their inter­sect­ing series of align­ments or aspects, and it this sign/aspect com­bi­na­tion which shapes and forms the ener­gies and influ­ences in any par­tic­u­lar period.

The dance of the plan­ets, what we might also call the Pulse of Life, is formed on the deep­est lev­els by Plu­to, Nep­tune, and Uranus because they, both indi­vid­u­al­ly and through their com­bi­na­tions with one anoth­er, cre­ate the long wave influ­ences that inform and shape the rise and fall of peo­ples, cul­tures, and civ­i­liza­tions through­out his­to­ry. I will review where we are now as under­stood by this pat­tern­mak­ing today, but I also want to speak about anoth­er indi­ca­tor that some mun­dane astrologers use to under­stand the tides of his­to­ry over the cen­turies. I believe you may find the Cyclic Index intu­itive­ly instruc­tive and help­ful in under­stand­ing where we have come from and what may lie ahead for us all.

Plu­to
We begin, as usu­al, with the Long-Wave plan­ets Plu­to, Nep­tune, and Uranus, by look­ing at both their indi­vid­ual posi­tions and by their cycles of rela­tion­ship with one anoth­er. Plu­to has begun the tran­si­tion from the sign of Capri­corn, (where it has been since 2008), into the sign of Aquar­ius where it will remain from 2024 to 2044. If we look at its pre­vi­ous pas­sage in Aquar­ius from 1778–1798, we can cer­tain­ly note that it was a very event­ful time in the world indeed, encom­pass­ing in the West­ern hemi­sphere both the Amer­i­can and French Rev­o­lu­tions which led to the con­ti­nen­tal wide wars of Napoleon Bonaparte.

When we look at the past his­tor­i­cal peri­ods of Plu­to in Capri­corn, it con­sis­tent­ly her­alds the time when a par­tic­u­lar insti­tu­tion­al order for soci­ety, (the insti­tu­tions of fam­i­ly, com­mu­ni­ty, eco­nom­ic, and polit­i­cal), begin to fun­da­men­tal­ly break down. Why is that? It is because these struc­tures formed to meet human needs were estab­lished in the late 1700’s and 1800’s. This insti­tu­tion­al order was made to fit and to meet the needs of that time. But now we and the world have changed so very much that these sys­tems and struc­tures can no longer meet our needs, they are inad­e­quate. Some­times it is they, and their prod­ucts or ser­vices, that have become the very source of some of our prob­lems today.

With the advent of Plu­to in Aquar­ius, we might hope and believe that our world would move away from the tur­bu­lence of recent mem­o­ry and back to a more inte­gra­tive and peace­ful time. But if his­to­ry is any guide, we are prob­a­bly going to be faced with some very great chal­lenges indeed, just as our ances­tors did in the late 1700’s and ear­ly 1800’s. We do not mere­ly emerge from a bro­ken sys­tem into a ful­ly func­tion­al par­a­digm of mean­ing and order.

Why? Because while it is cer­tain­ly hard to main­tain an order­ly life as an insti­tu­tion­al order unrav­els, and it is painful and hard to let go of what you knew and count­ed on…yes, it is hard to say good­bye. But if you think that the pass­ing of an age takes for­ti­tude and strength, I think we will find that a greater courage and vision will be need­ed to build our New World as Plu­to moves into Aquar­ius. It is always hard­er to build than to destroy. But at least we can take com­fort from the truth that we will be mov­ing for­ward with the hope for a bet­ter tomor­row, and not liv­ing with regret for what is lost or escap­ing into delu­sions of a world that nev­er was.

Nep­tune
Mean­while, Nep­tune is fin­ish­ing its jour­ney through Pisces, which is from 2011 to 2025–26, (with its pre­vi­ous pas­sages being from 1848–1862 and 1685–1698, and the one I believe that is very much like our own, because it was also a time with Plu­to in Capri­corn, and that was 1521–1535). With Nep­tune in Pisces, the veil between our worlds and between one anoth­er has become so very per­me­able that we find our­selves in a ver­i­ta­ble sea of illu­mi­na­tions and illu­sions, with visions of the greater com­mu­ni­ty of spir­it col­lid­ing with divi­sions formed by fears found­ed in half-truths and lies. What we will find is that as Nep­tune moves into Aries from 2026 to 2039, we will see a new vision of the world and of our­selves begin to unfold, as we move away from doubts into cer­tain­ties, from a sea of con­fu­sion into a call to take up our mis­sion to build the “new world”. And this will bring a wel­come relief to many, but it is cer­tain­ly not an indi­ca­tor of “peace in our time”. No, the fight over the future will cer­tain­ly break the old order and realign peo­ples and nations as it has done before, in fact as it did so in the pre­vi­ous peri­ods of 1862–1875, dur­ing and after our Civ­il War, and from 1698–1712, which wit­nessed a Euro­pean Wide War over the Span­ish Suc­ces­sion, and from 1535–1548, with an exis­ten­tial strug­gle between the Catholic and Protes­tant orders in Europe, and again it is this peri­od is the one most like our time when Plu­to was in Aquar­ius as it will be now.

Uranus
And third­ly, we have Uranus mov­ing through the sign of Tau­rus now from 2018 to 2026, (with pre­vi­ous pas­sages being 1935–1942 and 1851–1859), and it is his­tor­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant that each of these Uran­ian pas­sages, mod­u­lat­ed through Tau­rus which is the sign of Val­ue, accom­pa­nied major dis­lo­ca­tions, dis­rup­tions, and upheavals for the expe­ri­ence of val­ue in each of those peri­ods (and I would cer­tain­ly think we would all agree in our time too).

Cycles of Relationship
What is also very instruc­tive and spe­cial about our time, and also sig­nif­i­cant in form­ing the Cyclic Index Indi­ca­tor that we are going to exam­ine next, is that we have had all three out­er plan­ets form their con­junc­tions with one anoth­er over the past cen­tu­ry. That is all of them began a new cycle of rela­tion­ship in the last 130 years or so.

Neptune/Pluto
The most impor­tant mark­er of peri­ods rough­ly every 500 years is the Neptune/Pluto cycle. Their last con­junc­tion took place in 1891–92 in Gem­i­ni, and it real­ly is a bet­ter moment to mark the begin­ning of the so-called mil­len­ni­um than the year 2000. The pre­vi­ous con­junc­tions were 1398, which also her­ald­ed the start of Neptune/Pluto series of con­junc­tions in Gem­i­ni, where­as the pre­vi­ous con­junc­tions were in Tau­rus in 905, 411, then 84 BCE, and the “great one” of 578 BCE, which is when all three out­er plan­ets formed a grand triple con­junc­tion in Tau­rus, and as I have not­ed before cor­re­spond­ed to the time of Con­fu­cius, Bud­dha, Lao Tzu, Zoroast­er and Pythago­ras and many oth­ers who “sowed the seeds” for the quick­en­ing of our civilization.

This is the fun­da­men­tal cyclic rela­tion­ship gov­ern­ing our his­to­ry, the root cycle formed by the rela­tion­ship between Spir­i­tu­al Will (Plu­to) and Uncon­di­tion­al Love (Nep­tune), or how the uni­ver­sal sub­stance-ener­gy which is the Divine Light or Love is shaped by the many hosts of will­ing beings in our solar sys­tem, and for us by we humans. Plu­to brings about trans­for­ma­tions for the very struc­tur­ing of soci­eties and cul­tures, and Nep­tune pro­vides the dreams, visions and inspi­ra­tions that are inform­ing these trans­for­ma­tions of the con­tain­ers of real­i­ty shaped by Pluto.

Their cycle, like any cycle, will go through var­i­ous stages from con­junc­tion to the next con­junc­tion, formed by the wax­ing semi-square, to the sex­tile (where we have been since the 1950’s) to the square, to the trine and final­ly to the oppo­si­tion and then back again to the next con­junc­tion. Per­haps in a lat­er show, we can exam­ine this series of aspects for the pre­vi­ous cycle from 1398 to 1891, and then com­pare it to our own so far, and also fold in the rel­e­vant cycle rela­tion­ships of the next two pairs.

Uranus/Neptune
The sec­ond of the big three cycles begins at the con­junc­tion of Uranus with Nep­tune, and their cycle is about 170 years. Their last con­junc­tion was in 1993 in the sign of Capri­corn. The pre­vi­ous con­junc­tions were 1821 also in Capri­corn, 1650 in Sagit­tar­ius and 1478 in Scor­pio. This is the cycle of rela­tion­ship formed by the rela­tion­ship between Freer Mind (Uranus) and Uncon­di­tion­al Love (Nep­tune), man­i­fest­ing cul­tur­al­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly as the inter­weav­ing bal­ance between Indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and Com­mu­nal­i­ty. The com­bi­na­tion of Uranus and Nep­tune reveals the ongo­ing dynam­ic rela­tion­ship between Rea­son and Faith, Sci­ence and Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, and one could see their dynam­ic dance as form­ing what we might call the world­view or par­a­digm (or par­a­digms) of an age. A new par­a­digm of mean­ing was formed and guid­ed the world start­ing in 1821; that one has end­ed now and a new one is unfold­ing, and it is slow­ly reveal­ing itself and becom­ing more evi­dent now that we are 30 years from their last con­junc­tion in 1993.

Uranus/Pluto
And then we have the third major cycle which begins at a Uranus/Pluto con­junc­tion, and their cycle of rela­tion­ship is on aver­age about 125 years. Their most recent con­junc­tion was in 1965–66 in Vir­go. The pre­vi­ous con­junc­tions were 1850 in Aries, 1710 in Leo and 1598 in Aries. Their com­bi­na­tion forms the rela­tion­ship cycle between the Spir­i­tu­al Will and Freer Mind, and we can see that in his­to­ry it forms an indi­ca­tor of a rad­i­cal change, at times rev­o­lu­tion­ary or some­times reac­tionary, and often both! Where­as the Neptune/Pluto com­bi­na­tion pro­vides the over­all struc­tur­ing and restruc­tur­ing of a 500-year peri­od, the Uranus/Pluto com­bi­na­tion cre­ates more bursts or breaks in the ener­gy and form of a peo­ple or cul­ture, whether that is being made by a new idea forc­ing its way into an old struc­ture to break it apart, or by a reac­tion to new ideas that meets with the Will of the old regime as a coun­ter­rev­o­lu­tion with con­ser­vatism fight­ing to restore or main­tain an old order.

Cyclic Indi­ca­tor Index
Now after this review of the three out­er plan­ets and where we are now, I want to include this oth­er tech­nique for eval­u­at­ing what we might call the bal­ance of ener­gies, of expan­sion and con­trac­tion, of greater inte­gra­tion or dis­in­te­gra­tion as shown by what is called the Cyclic Index Indicator.

What the Cyclic Indi­ca­tor reveals is a gen­er­al index of the state of plan­e­tary influ­ences, and it is cre­at­ed by adding up each planet’s posi­tion rel­a­tive to the oth­ers. What we do is add the degree sep­a­rat­ing each plan­et from anoth­er, 10 degrees, 90 degrees on up to 180 degrees, so that by this method we are get­ting a final sum­ma­tion num­ber that shows how spread apart or close togeth­er the plan­ets are from another.

For exam­ple, for the out­er­most plan­ets, we take Uranus and see how many degrees it is from Nep­tune and note that, and then how many degrees from Plu­to and then add that togeth­er to form one val­ue. Then we do the same for the sep­a­ra­tion of Nep­tune to Plu­to, and that becomes anoth­er num­ber. We add those all togeth­er to get the com­plete Long-Wave Num­ber for that moment.

Then we do the same for the three com­bi­na­tions of Sat­urn with Uranus, Nep­tune, and Plu­to. Final­ly, we add Jupiter to the mix by deter­min­ing how far it is from Sat­urn, Uranus, Nep­tune, and Plu­to. What we have cre­at­ed by all those addi­tions of the sep­a­ra­tions of plan­ets to each oth­er is what mun­dane astrologers call the Cyclic Index.

What we will find is that in peri­ods of time when the over­all spac­ing of the plan­ets is grow­ing, that they are each more spread apart from one anoth­er in the Zodi­ac, that those peri­ods coin­cide with his­tor­i­cal con­di­tions that are more pos­i­tive, more con­ducive to growth, more inte­grat­ed with one anoth­er. And when the spread between all the out­er plan­ets is declin­ing, we seem to move into his­tor­i­cal peri­ods of more dis­or­der, of greater dis­in­te­gra­tion and loss.

Intu­itive­ly it makes sense, that when there are more points of con­nec­tiv­i­ty that can inform and bal­ance out one anoth­er, a greater poten­tial for the inte­gra­tion of the whole is made pos­si­ble. And when the plan­ets “clump” togeth­er, there is a greater imbal­ance and low­er lev­el of inte­gra­tion and greater instability.

Let’s exam­ine then what it shows for recent his­tor­i­cal peri­ods (and here I will just note the most sig­nif­i­cant events in any peri­od), and then let us take a look at our own moment and what the Cyclic Index shows for our future. His­tor­i­cal­ly, the index can reach its low­est lev­els when the plan­ets are most con­cen­trat­ed or clos­er togeth­er (and there­fore poten­tial­ly more unsta­ble), and this will hap­pen when the three out­er plan­ets reach their con­junc­tions with one anoth­er. In fact, with two of those out­er con­junc­tions occur­ring in the 1960’s and the 1990’s for us, this alone can account for how chal­leng­ing our time has been. But the plan­ets can also be spaced apart for some time, and then the index moves less up or down, and then it will even­tu­al­ly return to a more chal­leng­ing peri­od when they move clos­er to one anoth­er pro­duc­ing sharp­er swings in the index.

Cyclic Index Periods
Look­ing at the 20^th cen­tu­ry, the Cyclic Index had been climb­ing since the 1880’s and 1890’s, but turns down­ward from 1901 to 1907, then it ris­es again and then plum­mets down­wards from 1913 to 1919, or the First World War.

It turns upwards until the late 1920’s, moves down into 1932 which saw the Great Depres­sion, moves up some­what until 1938–39, and then plum­mets down again, (and far worse than in 1913–1919), to reach a bot­tom point in 1944 where it begins to climb again. This is the peri­od of World War II.

It turns down again in 1951–52, reach­ing the bot­tom around 1956. This is the Kore­an War and oth­er Cold War clash­es. It then ris­es from the mid 1950’s until around 1964–65, when it turns down again until 1970–71. This was the Viet­nam War.

It ris­es up once more, then turns and plum­mets quite strong­ly from 1976 to 1983. This was the peri­od char­ac­ter­ized by both infla­tion and stag­na­tion in the US econ­o­my, termed Stagfla­tion, prin­ci­pal­ly cre­at­ed in the real world by the unfund­ed debts of the Viet­nam war and oth­er polit­i­cal-eco­nom­ic struggles.

Then the index rose from 1983 to 1990, then it turned down­ward until 1997. Though the USA and much of the world was ben­e­fit­ing in the 1990’s from the end of the Cold War due to the col­lapse of the Sovi­et Union, through­out the world regions were fac­ing dis­rup­tion and chaos in such events as the First Gulf War, the wars in the for­mer Yugoslavia, the Con­go Wars, and many others.

The index turned upward around 1997–98 and con­tin­ued to climb until 2003. This was the begin­ning of the War on Ter­ror, with the over­throw of the Tal­iban in Afghanistan and the begin­ning of the Iraq War.

The index turned down again in 2003 until 2010. This peri­od saw the Iraq war fuel a rise in Islam­ic ter­ror dri­ven by Sunni/Shite strug­gles for pow­er, (which would even­tu­al­ly lead to the rise of ISIS), and the mort­gage debt bub­ble burst­ing forc­ing the USA, (and the much of the world), into what many have called “the sec­ond great depression”.

The Index rose from 2010 through 2014, which saw the slow recov­ery of the USA econ­o­my but equal­ly the rise of the Tea Par­ty move­ment and a ris­ing bat­tle over the polit­i­cal struc­ture in the USA between majori­tar­i­an ver­sus minor­i­ty con­trol for the states and fed­er­al gov­ern­men­tal structures.

The Index has fall­en from 2014 to, well, to just now in 2023–24, as it has slow­ly begun to turn upwards at this point. As in the past, the turn­ing upward of the index does not appear to be evi­dent until a year or more after­wards, (just like when it turns down­wards, it takes time for that to be ful­ly appre­ci­at­ed as well).

The Index will con­tin­ue upward from 2024–25 until 2030–31. Does this mean we can expect that our gen­er­al con­di­tions will improve? Though the Index is one among many fac­tors to con­sid­er, we can at least hope that its gen­er­al indi­ca­tion for the tenor of the times may promise an improv­ing world con­di­tion over the next many years ahead.

More­over, where­as ear­li­er in the 1800’s and 1900’s there were larg­er swings in the index and deep­er dips, the index is now mov­ing into a more con­strained up and down pat­tern as we move through the rest of the 21^st cen­tu­ry. Per­haps this too promis­es a stronger like­li­hood of inte­gra­tion and bal­ance for the future.

But of course, these meth­ods of try­ing to under­stand our world, as revealed by the indi­vid­ual plan­ets, and by the plan­e­tary pair­ings, along with the Cyclic Index, do not and can­not reveal the con­tent of our lives and the real­i­ty we face. That con­tent, our lives, and our world is made by us, and what we cre­ate or destroy depends upon how we under­stand and respond to so many influ­ences and ener­gy-forms that we are expe­ri­enc­ing and that we are also cre­at­ing too.

If we choose the path of Light and Love, if we choose to under­stand, and for­give we can move for­ward, as we take and make the very best from these avatars of spir­it that hold the sto­ry of Cre­ation for us.

Let us live and learn to ded­i­cate our lives to do what we came here to do, which is quite sim­ply yet pro­found­ly to do one thing, we came to learn how to be a bet­ter human, and how to live on this plan­et with under­stand­ing and love.