Nep­tune in the USA Chart, the tran­sit of Nep­tune and the shap­ing of Pol­i­tics and Par­ty Evo­lu­tion in the USA 

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

In my fifth show of 2024, I want to return to anoth­er theme I have addressed over the past many years which is the impor­tance of Nep­tune in the chart of the USA, and how Neptune’s tran­sits to the USA chart dis­tin­guish, define, and con­nect the shifts in pol­i­tics and polit­i­cal par­ties in the USA.

Of course, the real devel­op­ment and evo­lu­tion of polit­i­cal par­ties is forged by humans, by our shift­ing life­ways, cul­tures, and eco­nom­ic lives. But just as we are guid­ed and shaped indi­vid­u­al­ly by the “dance of the plan­ets”, these “time­keep­ers” of our solar sys­tem can pro­vide insights as to the nature and tim­ing of the shifts in our polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions too.

First­ly, we must remem­ber that Neptune’s influ­ence is very impor­tant in the USA chart. The place­ment of Nep­tune in the chart of the USA is quite promi­nent as it is at the very high­est point, at the top of the chart, in the 9th house of Under­stand­ing. Nep­tune in a Mun­dane chart is the ves­sel for the dreams of a nation. A prin­ci­pal found­ing myth of the Unit­ed States is the sense of being a quin­tes­sen­tial­ly excep­tion­al nation, a “first of its kind”. The nation­al seal of the USA declares that it is a Novus ordo seclo­rum (a “New order of the ages”).

Unlike pre­vi­ous nation states, the USA came into being as a covenant nation, with the goal of unit­ing and hold­ing togeth­er dis­parate peo­ples from around the world, and that which would bind us togeth­er was not our race, or cul­ture or creed; no, we would pledge our alle­giance to an idea, to an Ide­al. That for the first time we would be a nation where the Law itself would be King, and we would cre­ate a social order for those who are seek­ing to live a freer life, and that we would be a shin­ing exam­ple of Free­dom and Tol­er­ance, in a com­mu­ni­ty of Fel­low­ship. The USA would be a new soci­ety, formed by a belief in one another’s self-ful­fill­ment as being made pos­si­ble through one anoth­er, and by our self-gov­ern­ment, where­in we would care for one anoth­er; and we affirmed in our Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence, that “We Mutu­al­ly Pledge To Each Oth­er Our Lives, Our For­tunes, And Our Sacred Hon­or”, and that we would strive to cre­ate a space of free­dom and jus­tice for one and for all.

The record of the polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions or par­ties in the USA has been defined by his­to­ri­ans into (so far) sev­en dis­tinct peri­ods: The First Par­ty Sys­tem from 1792 to 1824, Sec­ond Par­ty Sys­tem from 1828 to 1854, Third Par­ty Sys­tem from 1854 to 1896, Fourth Par­ty Sys­tem from 1896 to 1932, Fifth Par­ty Sys­tem from 1932 to 1980, Sixth Par­ty Sys­tem from 1980 to 2016, and the Sev­enth Par­ty Sys­tem from 2016 to (who knows).

A polit­i­cal order will be informed and shaped by the dreams of a peo­ple, and these dreams and their evo­lu­tion can be seen to be held and shaped by Neptune’s orbit. What we will find is that as Nep­tune cir­cles around the solar sys­tem every 160 years or so, it will make sig­nif­i­cant align­ments with ele­ments in the USA chart that cor­re­spond to these shifts in the polit­i­cal cul­ture and shape the polit­i­cal par­ty struc­ture of the USA. The shifts in polit­i­cal align­ments can be under­stood and timed by the divi­sions of this cycle, whether a com­plete cycle of about 160 years, or of about 80 years or about 40 years. In an ear­li­er show in 2021, I also not­ed how the two pre­em­i­nent par­ties that emerged in the USA, the Demo­c­rat and Repub­li­can Par­ties, have sig­nif­i­cant Nep­tune place­ments too, and we saw that their evo­lu­tion is deeply affect­ed by Neptune’s orbit as well.

An inter­est­ing side note to all of this is the fact that the founders believed (and desired) that the USA would not have par­ty or par­ti­san pol­i­tics at all. But as we can cer­tain­ly see in our his­to­ry, and most cer­tain­ly in our present-day divi­sions, oh my good­ness, were they mistaken!!

The ear­ly par­ty devel­op­ments in the USA were shaped by a divide and dis­agree­ments over the bal­ance between a stronger or weak­er Fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, framed as Fed­er­al­ism ver­sus State Rights, and this theme has cer­tain­ly been dif­fer­en­tial­ly expe­ri­enced in some form as a con­stant dynam­ic through­out the par­ty sys­tems in the USA. Let’s begin after the ini­tial par­ty sys­tem and with the sec­ond par­ty order of the 1820’s.

1820’s to 1850’s, Sec­ond Par­ty System
By the 1820’s and last­ing into the 1850’s the pri­ma­ry par­ty divi­sion was in the USA was between the ear­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty and the Whig Par­ty. The Democ­rats stood for indi­vid­ual rights and state rights and the pri­ma­cy of the Pres­i­den­cy (exec­u­tive branch) over the oth­er branch­es of gov­ern­ment and were against the bank­ing indus­try and specif­i­cal­ly opposed to a cen­tral bank US bank, high tar­iffs, and also opposed to pro­grams that favored indus­try at the expense of farm­ers. They were the par­ty of the so-called com­mon man.

The Whigs stood for the suprema­cy of Con­gress over the Exec­u­tive branch, and they sup­port­ed poli­cies of mod­ern­iza­tion and eco­nom­ic pro­tec­tion­ism for devel­op­ing Amer­i­can indus­tries by tar­iffs and oth­er mea­sures. They were the par­ty of indus­try, busi­ness and banking.

Over time the grow­ing dis­par­i­ty of an indus­tri­al­iz­ing North cen­tered upon “Free Labor”, and the slave-hold­ing econ­o­my con­trolled by large plan­ta­tion own­ers in the South became more and more dif­fi­cult to rec­on­cile. The USA was being shaped by two mod­els of cre­at­ing val­ue, two visions of Amer­i­ca and those divi­sions became more and more of an exis­ten­tial threat to the nation­al union itself. In fact, the Whig party’s attempt to deal with the issue led to its demise and the rise of a new par­ty, the Repub­li­can Par­ty in 1854.

1854 to 1890, Third Par­ty System
For our pur­pos­es, what we need to exam­ine is what was hap­pen­ing at this time with Nep­tune in the USA chart? You may remem­ber my numer­ous obser­va­tions for the past many years of Nep­tune being in the same sign now, from 2011 to 2026, as it was from 1848 to 1862, each peri­od being a time when Nep­tune was, and is now once again in its own sign of Pisces.

In fact, it was exact­ly from 1851 to 1854 that Nep­tune squared the USA Uranus, and then squared the USA ascen­dant. And when did that hap­pen in our own time? The exact same Nep­tune square to Uranus and the ascen­dant occurred from 2015 to 2018, and just as the ear­ly peri­od brought a new Par­ty Sys­tem, our peri­od is the begin­ning of what some his­to­ri­ans are now call­ing the Sev­enth Par­ty System.

Remem­ber, it is one of the pur­pos­es of Nep­tune to dis­solve the bound­aries between real­i­ty forms so that they may com­bine, trans­form and become some­thing else. With the ascen­dant rul­ing Iden­ti­ty or Pres­ence, and Uranus rul­ing Indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and Free­dom, the USA was expe­ri­enc­ing a most sig­nif­i­cant shift in its very pres­ence or iden­ti­ty, and of its expe­ri­ence of free­dom in the 1850’s. The dream of Free­dom, that not some but all men should be free, and that any human could not be some­one else’s prop­er­ty, well that was the point of the Civ­il War exactly.

Now in our time today, some­thing like that, hold­ing themes of that ear­li­er peri­od, has been hap­pen­ing once more between 2015 and 2018. And just as in the 1800’s, the ves­sels of hold­ing the dreams and aspi­ra­tions of the peo­ple of the USA, the polit­i­cal instru­ments which wield the pow­er to affirm or deny those dreams were changed then as they are chang­ing now. It is like an echo of what came before, but the under­ly­ing truth is there for all to see.

Again, the ques­tion the USA faces is this: are all humans equal, deserv­ing of equal appre­ci­a­tion and oppor­tu­ni­ty, or will we break apart into our blood and soil tribes, and see some humans as less than us? Let us come back to our tran­si­tion lat­er and con­sid­er the oth­er shifts of the polit­i­cal par­ty sys­tem first.

So, begin­ning in 1854 and last­ing until the next shift in the 1890’s, the Repub­li­can par­ty became and remained the dom­i­nant par­ty of the USA, and was, as it named itself, “the Grand Old Par­ty”. It was formed as a coali­tion of busi­ness­men, shop own­ers, skilled crafts­men, clerks, and pro­fes­sion­als, com­ing as it did out of the Old Whig par­ty and adding to that coali­tion many new­ly enfran­chised African Amer­i­cans. It was the vehi­cle for a restate­ment of the USA, the instru­ment for Lincoln’s restora­tion and renew­al of the dream of America.

The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty became a minor­i­ty and oppo­si­tion­al par­ty. It was a most­ly con­ser­v­a­tive and agrar­i­an coali­tion, with south­ern democ­rats estab­lish­ing a sys­tem of repres­sion in the Jim Crow south to deny black self-deter­mi­na­tion. The Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty con­tin­ued to be fun­da­men­tal­ly a State’s Rights coali­tion but based upon the oppo­si­tion to enlarge­ment of civ­il rights. In addi­tion, west­ern farm­ers and con­ser­v­a­tive ele­ments in the north­ern states helped to broad­en the Democ­rats abil­i­ty to at times hold the Sen­ate or House.

But dur­ing the 1870’s and 1880’s, the nation was rapid­ly becom­ing an indus­tri­al pow­er, and dreams and the chal­lenges of the peo­ple were chang­ing too. In the 1890’s this change in the char­ac­ter of the USA led to a shift in the polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions and solu­tions to meet the dreams of the nation, and it was this evo­lu­tion of the socio-polit­i­cal order that brought about the Fourth Par­ty Sys­tem, from 1896 to 1932.

1896 to 1932, Fourth Par­ty System
But where was Nep­tune dur­ing this shift from the Third to the Fourth Par­ty Sys­tem dur­ing 1893 to 1896, and what did that sig­ni­fy? Nep­tune in this peri­od was mov­ing into the 7^th house of the USA chart and it was mak­ing a square to itself too. Inter­est­ing­ly, we will find the exact same con­di­tion, but reversed, with Nep­tune enter­ing the 1^st house and squar­ing itself was in place dur­ing the shift from the Fifth to the Sixth Par­ty sys­tem from 1976 to 1980. In both peri­ods, with Nep­tune squar­ing itself, it was a time for peo­ple of the USA to ques­tion the nature of their dreams, because their cir­cum­stances had changed.

What was the shift in the late 1890’s? The GOP con­sol­i­dat­ed its hold over the polit­i­cal sys­tem, effec­tive­ly main­tain­ing pre­em­i­nence almost with­out inter­rup­tion until FDR’s elec­tion in 1932. The social and polit­i­cal issues were dri­ven by the con­se­quences of indus­tri­al­iza­tion and finan­cial accu­mu­la­tion lead­ing to pro­grams and laws to reform the polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic sys­tems, hence the term for this peri­od, cer­tain­ly in the late 1800’s and ear­ly 1900’s as “the pro­gres­sive era”, with reforms of the labor sys­tem, a Fed­er­al Income Tax, the direct elec­tion of sen­a­tors and even­tu­al­ly suf­frage for women.

But with Nep­tune mov­ing into the 7^th house, which rules inter­na­tion­al rela­tion­ships in a Nation’s chart, it also marked the peri­od of the USA’s delu­sion that it could and should spread and share its vision of democ­ra­cy by impos­ing it, by becom­ing an expan­sion­ary colo­nial pow­er, and it seized the Span­ish hold­ings in the Span­ish Amer­i­ca War, includ­ing Cuba, Puer­to Rico and the Philip­pines, claim­ing to be bring­ing “democ­ra­cy” to these oth­er lands.

1932 to 1976, Fifth Par­ty System
The next major shift in the Polit­i­cal Par­ty Sys­tem, the Fifth Par­ty Sys­tem, emerged out of the wreck­age caused by the fail­ure of unrestrained/unregulated cap­i­tal­ism in the 1920’s, which brought about the dis­as­ter of the Great Depres­sion, and what emerged from this was a fun­da­men­tal reset of the polit­i­cal order and the par­ty system.

This would prove to be one of the major realign­ments of the par­ty sys­tem, as big as the 1850’s had been, and as we will see, as con­se­quen­tial as our own time too. The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty became the par­ty of so-called “big gov­ern­ment”, based on the belief and prac­tice that the gov­ern­ment of the peo­ple should work to bring about change in coop­er­a­tion with the pri­vate sec­tor, forg­ing an alliance between work­ers, cor­po­ra­tions and the gov­ern­ment in order to restore eco­nom­ic growth and to pro­mote the gen­er­al wel­fare of the peo­ple. The com­po­si­tion of the par­ties was trans­formed, with black vot­ers mov­ing into the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty, and white, south­ern and con­ser­v­a­tive vot­ers mov­ing into the Repub­li­can par­ty, espe­cial­ly after the push for broad­er civ­il rights in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Both par­ties had more lib­er­al and more con­ser­v­a­tive mem­bers, and as a result there were peri­ods of agree­ment by mod­er­ates in each par­ty which per­mit­ted the pas­sage of very sig­nif­i­cant laws and changes to the polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic order dur­ing this period.

But as a reac­tion to the eco­nom­ic malaise brought on by the unfund­ed Viet­nam War, and the tur­moil and social changes that fol­lowed upon civ­il rights and women’s move­ments, the par­ties became more and more polar­ized over the vision for the future of the USA.

But again, what we need to know is what was Nep­tune doing to inau­gu­rate this Firth Par­ty Sys­tem in the 1930’s, and then see what sig­naled its end. Nep­tune in the 1930’s was halfway between where it was in the 1850’s to where it would return in 2015 to 2017, it was in the sign of Vir­go (not Pisces) but squar­ing Uranus and squar­ing the ascen­dant once again. Yes, it seems to me from these three exam­ples, the 1850’s, the 1930’s and the present day, that the larg­er, more con­se­quen­tial shifts of the polit­i­cal order and of the par­ty sys­tem seem tied to or influ­enced by Nep­tune in this align­ment with the USA chart, when Nep­tune is either in Vir­go or Pisces, and squar­ing the plan­et Uranus in the 7^th house. Why might this be so?

I would argue that the prin­ci­pal rea­son could be from Nep­tune form­ing this square to Uranus. Why would that mat­ter? Well, for one, Uranus is the ruler of the USA Moon in Aquar­ius, and the Moon in a nation’s chart rules “the peo­ple,” the ordi­nary cit­i­zens who make up what we call the com­mon peo­ple. And with Nep­tune bring­ing its dis­solv­ing, trans­form­ing, illu­mi­nat­ing and delu­sion­al influ­ence to bear on the very plan­et of Indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and Free­dom, well it would cer­tain­ly cre­ate a time when those notions and real­i­ties of what it means to be free, what it means to be an indi­vid­ual in the USA cultural/political order would be trans­formed and made into some­thing else dur­ing each such pas­sage of Nep­tune to Uranus.

But even more for the USA, the plan­et Uranus is in the 7^th house, the house of rela­tion­ships or the realm which prin­ci­pal­ly rules the rela­tion­ships that the USA has with the rest of the world. But the 7^th house is also an indi­ca­tor of the “peo­ple as a whole”, or the social con­scious­ness of the peo­ple. With Uranus here, one of the abid­ing fac­tors shap­ing the social con­scious­ness for the USA is our myth and expe­ri­ence of indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and free­dom. So, when we have the plan­et of “Com­mu­nal­i­ty” or the sim­ple truth that we are all made and held by our com­mu­ni­ties, and fol­low­ing from that is the neces­si­ty to sac­ri­fice some of our inde­pen­dence and free­dom to one anoth­er, well that would mean when Nep­tune is squar­ing the plan­et of Indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and Inde­pen­dence, that this can lead to some won­der­ful dis­cov­er­ies and epipha­nies about these two truths, about Indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and Com­mu­nal­i­ty, of how they tru­ly are inte­gral to one anoth­er, and can only exist in a bal­anced and mutu­al inter­de­pen­dence upon one anoth­er.  But we have also seen how they can become twist­ed or bro­ken from one anoth­er so that Neptune’s influ­ence may lead to mis­guid­ed or delu­sion­al expe­ri­ences of being sub­merged into a herd iden­ti­ty, or into the oppo­site extreme of the so-called “lone wolf” or excep­tion­al indi­vid­ual claim­ing to be above the ordi­nary, and above the law, the very law we agreed to shape and guide our lives, and so pro­tect the indi­vid­ual and the com­mu­ni­ty too.

1980 to 2016, Sixth Par­ty System
The end of the New Deal Fifth Par­ty Sys­tem order and the move­ment into an increas­ing­ly more acri­mo­nious and polar­ized form of pol­i­tics was firm­ly real­ized by 1980. Where was Nep­tune then? Not sur­pris­ing­ly, it was exact­ly posi­tioned oppo­site to where it had been in the late 1890’s, in the USA 1^st house instead of the 7^th house, and once again squar­ing its own posi­tion in the USA chart.

What had hap­pened in the USA that brought about this shift in the par­ty sys­tem? Through­out the USA a large nation­wide major­i­ty of rur­al and work­ing-class whites became the base of the Repub­li­can Par­ty, while the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty was increas­ing­ly made up of a coali­tion of black Amer­i­cans, Lati­nos, and most­ly white urban pro­gres­sives. Where pre­vi­ous­ly, the col­lege-edu­cat­ed vot­ers had been drawn to the Repub­li­can par­ty, hav­ing a high­er edu­ca­tion­al attain­ment was increas­ing­ly a defin­ing fea­ture of Demo­c­ra­t­ic sup­port. These shifts, tak­en togeth­er formed the Sixth Par­ty Sys­tem that began with Regan’s Pres­i­den­cy of the 1980’s.

Astro­log­i­cal­ly, with Nep­tune in the 1^st house, the dissolving/transforming effects were to be seen in the very “Pres­ence” of the USA, of how it would see itself and project itself into the world. The dream of Amer­i­ca and the nation­al myth of Amer­i­ca, like Reagan’s theme of “Morn­ing in Amer­i­ca”, became the basis for a resur­gence of a par­tic­u­lar mus­cu­lar and inter­ven­tion­ist role the world. Domes­ti­cal­ly, the Repub­li­can gospel, now firm­ly steeped in the rise of the neo-lib­er­al agen­da, began a many decades long project to dis­able and dis­man­tle the pro­grams and insti­tu­tions of the New Deal order, to attempt to return the USA to the ear­ly 1900’s, of mak­ing the busi­ness of Amer­i­ca to be just about mak­ing more mon­ey, as in “Greed is Good”, which required the con­stant chip­ping away or removal of reg­u­la­tions that had forged bal­ance growth, and had pro­duced the tremen­dous rise of the gen­er­al wel­fare of the peo­ple from the late 1930’s until the 1970’s.

But dur­ing this peri­od the focus of the Repub­li­can par­ty shift­ed, and there was ever more empha­sis on cul­tur­al con­ser­vatism, with oppo­si­tion to abor­tion, and gay mar­riage and trans­gen­der rights. Instead of being for free trade the par­ty became more and more opposed to eco­nom­ic glob­al­iza­tion and also to immi­gra­tion from non-Euro­pean coun­tries. Dis­agree­ments over posi­tions and poli­cies with the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty became more and more polar­ized, and the need to pre­serve or cre­ate real pro­grams and solu­tions to the prob­lems of the peo­ple were stymied and denied.

But the removal of the eco­nom­ic and finan­cial safe­guards put into place after the Great Depres­sion of the 1930’s inevitably led to the con­spic­u­ous decou­pling of eco­nom­ic real­i­ty and finan­cial con­duct, and so in 2008, the USA plunged itself, and the rest of the world, into what we real­ly should call the Sec­ond Great Depression.

The strug­gle to recov­er from that self-made dis­as­ter shat­tered what­ev­er had remained of the coop­er­a­tive neces­si­ty incum­bent on both par­ties, both Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can, and with­out good faith in one anoth­er and with their vot­ing mem­bers, the belief in the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the USA gov­ern­ment work­ing con­sis­tent­ly and togeth­er for the com­mon good became more and more a fan­ta­sy. Pol­i­tics became a cold war, then a hot­ter war, with char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tions and gotchas, and moral cow­ardice wrapped in the man­tle of moral con­vic­tion defin­ing the polit­i­cal and even cul­tur­al order.

The loss of faith in one anoth­er, and in the insti­tu­tions of the Amer­i­can life, the rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent beliefs about what the USA stood for cer­tain­ly seemed to echo a sim­i­lar time in the USA when two very dif­fer­ent Ideals of human­i­ty faced off before. Just as in the 1850’s, and now again in 2015 to 2017, Nep­tune was once again form­ing a square to the USA ascen­dant, while also squar­ing Uranus in the 7^th house.

Back in the 1850’s, the Repub­li­can Par­ty was the vehi­cle for the elim­i­na­tion of the insti­tu­tion of slav­ery, and that noble cause became their sig­na­ture achieve­ment. But now in the 2000 teens, we are wit­ness­ing a very dif­fer­ent Repub­li­can Par­ty indeed.

2016 to when, “Sev­enth Par­ty System”
We are today in a more sur­re­al con­di­tion per­haps than any oth­er time in our his­to­ry. His­to­ri­ans do not yet agree if there is indeed a Sev­enth Par­ty Sys­tem in place. Prin­ci­pal­ly that is because what we have in the Repub­li­can Par­ty is not like any­thing we might rec­og­nize as a par­ty at all. As I stat­ed ear­li­er, the ques­tion the USA faces today is again the same as in the 1850’s, which is are all humans equal, deserv­ing of equal appre­ci­a­tion and oppor­tu­ni­ty, or will we break apart as we have been doing for some time now, into trib­al group­ings based on creed or race or per­son­al­i­ties, where we look not to the law but to some strong leader to defend us against whomev­er is “the oth­er”, and to see some humans as less than us?

No par­ty has ever been nor will ever be per­fect, for we are all, indi­vid­u­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly, “works in progress”. But nev­er in our his­to­ry has a par­ty turned away from the “rule of law”, threat­en­ing to use the law to favor some and per­se­cute others.

I per­son­al­ly do not think we have begun a Sev­enth Par­ty Sys­tem, and that we are in this strange, one would say very Nep­tun­ian and tran­si­tion­al space where the future hangs in the bal­ance. One par­ty has aban­doned the very sub­stance of what it means to be a par­ty, which is to have a plat­form, to have posi­tions, and poli­cies and plans that will meet the hopes and dreams of the Amer­i­can peo­ple as a whole.

Instead, there is an orga­ni­za­tion where mem­ber­ship means that one must bend the knee to the will of one man and his needs, to assuage his fears and per­se­cute his so-called ene­mies, a non-demo­c­ra­t­ic author­i­tar­i­an vehi­cle for end­ing the rule of law and sub­sti­tut­ing the will and whim of their leader.

I do not believe that it is mere­ly a sim­ple major­i­ty, but rather a vast major­i­ty of the peo­ple of the USA do not want to live under this form of mis­rule. The plan­ets can­not tell us what we are to do, nor can they force us to choose. What they can do, and what we must do, is to look at our­selves and our com­mu­ni­ties, and our gov­ern­ment and ask our­selves, what is the dream for the USA now, and how might we be able to get there together.

The ques­tion before us now is this, will we remain a peo­ple who bow to no king or strong­man but con­tin­ue to pre­serve and live under this gift of self-gov­ern­ment, to the rule of law that pro­tects us from tyran­ny, and to live in a repub­lic that was made by the love and sac­ri­fice of those who came before us.