Transcript of Radio Show: The Destiny of the USA, Character and Karma and Neptune in the USA chart
(If you wish to listen to the show instead, here is the link on BlogTalk or Apple Podcasts)
Next weekend we will celebrate the USA’s birthday, so I thought it would be timely to revisit the very great challenges the USA faces today. The Astrological alignments of this moment have been noted by me and many others, but we must remember that the timing of the events we are experiencing does not determine the actual character of the crises we face now. Those real opportunities and dangers were formed by the choices our ancestors made, as well as by the choices and actions we take in the present.
For today I would like to consider the chart of the USA with regards to the historical significance of the moment we find ourselves at this time. As I have mentioned many times, the major planetary orbits, or cycles with regards to the chart of any entity provide us with the context and meaning for the phenomena we experience here on Earth. Moreover, we can look to and compare these patterns to similar times in the past with our own, and by this we can further elucidate and illuminate the present circumstances we find in our world today.
I want to talk mainly about the role of Neptune in the chart of the USA generally, and what we can learn from its previous alignments to the USA chart and what guidance that provides us for what we are going through now. But we cannot consider just Neptune, as the integral roles of Pluto and Uranus must be included as part of our true understanding of this critical juncture in our history.
Neptune and Astrological Chart of the USA
I have noted before that the placement of Neptune in the chart of the USA is tremendously important. It is at the top of the chart, at what is called the Midheaven, along with planet Saturn and it is in the 9th house of Understanding, Truth and Belief. Neptune, in Mundane or Worldly Astrology, is the holder of the dream of any nation, it is the Avatar for the stories and myths that explain the character of that political-cultural order.
One of the distinguishing features for the founding myth of the United States is the belief that it is special or exceptional. In the National Seal for the US, we find what our founders declared to the world, that the USA was to be a “New Order for the Ages”. Unlike many other nations, we promised that we would be a land for people from around the world, that we were here to form a new human covenant, and that by bringing together all the peoples of the world, we would form a special land where anyone seeking a better life, a freer life, would be welcome.
This Idea or Ideal of the USA as special is due to its being founded upon Universal Principles, and not on more parochial or limited determinations of one particular people, or of one heritage or ethnicity. Instead, the USA was held up as a shining example of Freedom, Tolerance and Community for all peoples, a coming together in a new community formed by the many creeds, and many cultures of humanity.
Central to this founding of a new society for the ages was the principle of a covenant community. The USA would be founded upon the truth that any individual’s self-fulfillment is dependent upon and made possible by being a member of the community, and that by our self-government we would uphold the principle of freedom for each person by balancing it with our mutual well-being and care for one another as a community of self-governing individuals. 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, the Law would be our King.
In our first founding document, The Declaration of Independence we stated that we, “Mutually Pledge To Each Other Our Lives, Our Fortunes, And Our Sacred Honor”. By this our founders understood that to create a space of individual freedom would require that the members of this special and sacred community would have to abide within a system of mutual consent, so that we could create a space of freedom and justice for every individual, but that we would equally need to balance our individual liberties with communal responsibilities. Our freedoms would be protected, but we agreed to circumscribe our individual freedom to preserve our communities too.
The foundational myth is the Dream held by Neptune because Neptune is the Keeper of Collective, Communal and Enfolding Energy-Forms of any entity. But we need to consider all three of the outer planets, for they operate or hold the integral, three-fold principal energy-forms of Spirit, so that in their combination they are the heartbeat of Creation, which is the Involution and Evolution of Spirit in our system.
I like to think of these three in this manner: that it is Pluto, as the holder of the Will, that molds every Energy-Form into a definite or defined Container of Spirit, (whether that be an atom, cell, organism, planet or star); and Neptune, as the holder of the Universal Energy-Form of Unconditional Love, which is the Energy-Substance that is the One, and that Love of the One is the root source for every particle of Creation; and Uranus, as the holder of the Quintessence of Spirit, because each and every particle of Creation is also an Individual, so that all the life-forms that are Creation are unique instances or expressions of the One Divine Light.
For the USA two of these Avatars of Spirit are reaching critical alignments in the USA chart. Pluto is in the last year of its cycle of roughly 245 years before returning to its position in 2022. The USA is experiencing its first ever Pluto return, and this is most important. Meanwhile, Neptune is opposite its natal position, as it was only once before in 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.
Pluto
The USA is a very “Plutonian Nation”. Pluto is the Rising Planet in the USA chart and is placed in the Second House, the house of Value. The Energy-Substance that is the One is the Root Source of all Value, and we know this Root Value as the Unconditional Love of the One that is behind all that is Creation. That Primal Energy is shaped and formed into definite, discrete vehicles of manifestation, that are circumscribed and delimited from other substance forms by the Will that is within each instance of self-realization, and that Will of the One is ultimately held by Pluto for our Solar System. As I have previously indicated, the Power of the Will is the Creator at work through all beings including us, and that singular spiritual power manifests in what we call the Power of Alchemy.
The Entirety of Creation is formed as the one Substance-Energy of Love. It is the Involution of Spirit into Matter Forms, and equally the Evolution of Spirit through Matter Forms by innumerable combinations and transformations, of births, deaths, and rebirths that I call the dance of Spirit through Matter Forms. Whether it is by atoms combining with atoms to form larger atoms, molecules with molecules, organisms with organisms, (like we do), on up to the planets, stars, and galaxies, what we see as the Dance of Spirit through Forms of realization is that the whole of Creation is made by the Protean Power of Alchemy, which is the magisterial mystery of Spirit moving through innumerable combinations and transformations of Spirit-Matter Forms.
For us humans, and for the USA, we form our compacts, partnerships, joint ventures, enterprises, communities and companies, ethnicities and creeds, cultures, and nations. For the USA, as a covenant creation, we agreed to form a union so that we would support one another to be and become through joining together in self-determined combinations; we would be freer to be ourselves by supporting one another, and we each could become more than we ever would be by our union.
Thou Shall Not Trespass
But, as oftentimes repeated throughout human history, we did not do this great work without falling into great error and harm, as we can see even at the very inception of our union, in our moment of creation. As I have often stated, the Second House in a chart is the holder of value, and the greatest value for any human endeavor, for any country or nation, is not the land, water, trees, or minerals of that land. No, the greatest value is we humans. But when we came to this land, we created our compact and forged our growth by seizing the land of Native Americans and making into property the slaves we seized and brought from Africa.
This is what we should call America’s Original Sin. The Will is our greatest Spiritual Power and should be exercised as the righteous instrument of self-control and it is the seat of our self-determination. Once we are centered and secured by the love that is within us, our will can be rightly allied with other centered, willing persons in our joint ventures and combinations. But when we use our will to violate, subjugate and enslave others, then we take the path of darkness and fall into the Sin of Trespassing. The USA is very much still reaping the karma of 600 years of genocide and 400 years of slavery to this day.
This was not virgin land for the taking; there were vibrant peoples and cultures throughout this land who were eliminated by deliberate acts of genocide. The people who were ripped from their homes and loved ones and brought by terror and violence to this land were not free (nor would they ever be free if the slaveholding Senators and Representatives of the South had prevailed). It is a fact, that more than half of the signatories to the Declaration of Independence had their principal wealth in the form of other humans.
Yes, those immortal words hold us to our sacred oath, that, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”. At the very outset of our New Order for the Centuries we failed the native peoples and the enslaved peoples, and we are still failing them to this very day.
Until each and every person in this country is treated as “human”, as what they are, as a sacred spark of the divine, until we fulfill our promise to make it possible for each and every person to reach their fullest measure of self-realization which is the true source of “Happiness”, until that is made by us, we will not be what we promised to be for one another.
Neptune & Uranus
As I noted in my earlier shows, Neptune, the holder of dreams and myths, of illuminations and delusions, has returned now 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 we were to be Slave or Free, at the threshold of our Civil War. The question then and seemingly now is, “will the fundamental spiritual truth, that all humans are created equal, be made our reality or not”?
But the communalizing Energy-Form of Unconditional Love held for us by Neptune is inseparably bound to the Energy-Form of Individualization held by Uranus. Neptune rules “Communality”, and it is the Avatar of Spirit for the Energy-Form that holds all of Creation as One by Unconditional Love. Uranus rules Individuality, and it is the Avatar of Spirit for the Energy-Form that equally holds that every single mote and speck of Creation is a unique spark of the Divine, a monad of Spirit with its very own special Quintessence or what is known as Swabhāva, which means “the Self that is Becoming”. The whole of Creation is formed by these two truths, the one and the many, the individual and the community.
This integral relationship of Uranus and Neptune holds the spiritual truth of the mystery of Creation’s constitution. All forms and beings in this Universe, every speck and mote of Creation, is a one or unique instance of Spirit. But every one of these ones is part of the One, and by this they are fundamentally indivisible from one another too, as they are part of the One Life and One Love of the One. Throughout all the worlds, kingdoms and galaxies of the Cosmos, the shifting balance between these Energy-Forms of Individuality and Communality play out as the dance of the One and the many.
At this moment in history, given the most recent conjunction of Uranus and Neptune in 1993 has reached the waxing semi-square of their cycle of relationship, we are at a critical moment in how we humans work with these two energy-forms that pull us together in greater communalism and/or pull us apart from one another into greater individualism.
Part of the challenge that we face in the USA today is a world-wide challenge, in that this tension between Individuality and Communality is sweeping through local communities, within nations and then across the world between various nation states. We are witnessing the resurgence of Authoritarianism and the struggle of Liberal Democracies, of divides between cultures, creeds and ethnicities that seemingly are spiraling out of control. As I mentioned in earlier talks, the Centripetal Force of Freedom has become severely untethered and out of balance in its integral relationship with the Centrifugal force of Love. Egoistic and Narcissistic energies, those dark and divisive psychological impulses, appear ascendant, and Love, sacrifice and the sacred community are in retreat.
As Freedom becomes separated from shared affections, it becomes selfish and nihilistic. Then, in a warped response to this, the principle of Love becomes shadowed by fears of the unfamiliar, so that affections are narrowed and turned backward and inward, leading to the poisoned wells of tribal attachments, and the self-absorbed masses become held by fears based on Race and Ethnicity, by Creed and Class.
Neptune
As this shifting balance between Uranus and Neptune plays out for one and all, in the USA we face our own special reckoning once again. Here in 2021, with Neptune at the exact same point in the Zodiac as it was in the late 1850’s, opposite to our Neptune and Squaring our Mars, we are at a moment that carries strikingly familiar echoes of what Lincoln warned of in June 1858 in his famous “house divided speech”, where he stated,
“…a house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the union to be dissolved, I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will either become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become lawful in all the states, old as well as new, North as well as South.”
Lincoln was speaking about the absolute incompatibility between two diametrically opposite conceptions of what it means to be human. Are we all equal, or are some less than equal? Then as now, we are faced with a choice as to what kind of country, what kind of people we want to be.
As Neptune aligns with the USA Neptune once again, we find ourselves at a critical juncture in our history. Given that Neptune is in its own sign of Pisces, the boundaries between the various hierarchies and orders of consciousness and reality are dissolving, and they are becoming more permeable and subject to greater fluctuations leading to much confusion and distortion in our realms of belief and understanding.
I see Neptune as holding all the possible forms of reality that will ultimately be understood or resolved into and experienced as The One. But this ultimate Reality Form of the One is beyond our comprehension, it is far too complex and vast, and much beyond our limited frameworks of ideas, laws, or concepts. If we could see the entirety of Creation as it is, it would appear to us in our present consciousness as pure Chaos; but for those who have reached a higher or cosmic consciousness it is Spiritually Sublime.
We exist in what I have called Bubbles of Belief that create our Circles of Reality. Over time as we move to higher levels of consciousness, we will move into ever more inclusive Belief Constructs, and this in turn will expand our comprehension of what I call the Greater Reality.
For the present, what is happening is that the prevailing Bubbles of Belief, which held us in commonly accepted and more or less mutually aligned and intersecting Bubbles of Belief, these Holograms of our individual and Collective Minds are shifting and warping to such an extent that we are in a Space-Time where our Circles of Reality have become untethered and divided between one another.
Spiritual Paradox
This seems somewhat paradoxical, as how is it that the very agency responsible for our awakening can also lead us down a path towards confusion and delusion. Neptune holds what we know as the power of Clear-Seeing or Clairvoyance, and Astrologers have often called Neptune the “Universal Solvent”. It dissolves the boundaries between things and realms, and by so doing it can open our hearts and minds to ever wider experiences of understanding and compassion.
Yet, in that very experience of dissolving we are forced to “let go” of what was some greater or lesser portion of our reality, some belief or structure that created our sense of order and place in the world, and by so doing it frees us from our more limited awareness. But therein lies the danger, in that by being now untethered to what was real for us, an individual or group or even an entire nation, may become enamored and entranced by energy-forms that are unfamiliar but enticing. These may seem quite wonderful and full of light and truth, but it is equally possible that those light-filled visions are refracted shadows, formed by illusion-filled notions formed from fear and not by love.
Conspiracy theories and manias take hold in vulnerable individuals and groups who have become separated from those who have remained more centered. They are often ensnared by obsessive mindsets so that they become less tethered to their higher spiritual and intuitive self. By becoming unmoored from their higher self, they lose their reason and sympathy that is anchored in love.
Remember, it is only when we walk the path of Love and Light that we can stay upon the middle, Royal Road of Illumination, which holds us inwardly to a self-critical, self-awareness while we equally look outwardly with an empathetic, humble, and open consideration for any-thing or being before us.
In many ways, what we are experiencing now is the end of our collective Neptunian Paradigm that began when Neptune was in Aries from 1862–1875. This was when, at the end of the Civil War, the attempts to rebuild the sacred community in both the South and the North failed. And that tragic failure, to address the grievous inequalities and injustices that remained in both the South and in the North, has brought us to our reckoning in our Spiritual Crises of today.
It is no surprise that the rising tide of calls for Social Justice and Equal Rights have surged once again in this current period of Neptune in Pisces. Yet, because the boundaries between the various Bubbles of Reality formation are so porous and shifting, we find ourselves in a time when a commonly held Circle of Reality by a significant majority has been broken and shattered into ever more disconnected Bubbles of Belief.
As I wrote last year about Neptune’s influence, we humans have stumbled into what I would call another “Tower of Babel”. We speak words that carry vastly different meanings for one bubble versus another; we argue over what is a “fact” versus an “opinion”. We are held by incompatible Reality-Bubbles that divide us one from another. We are segmented into various parts or subsections within our country. Whether one looks at the divides between North and South, or Rural and Urban, or Coastal and Heartland, between ethnicities and sub-cultures, it has become exceedingly hard to find a common understanding or sense of purpose for these United States of America.
So, you what might wonder given all of this, what can any of us do, what can you do?
The way of Truth has always been the Path of Love. For all those who follow the path of the Ancient Wisdom, and equally the many who understand and follow the great teachers whose messages are the “Heart Doctrine” of all religious traditions, we must begin and remain upon the Shining Path of Unconditional Love.
This will often be exceedingly difficult, seemingly impossible, when we encounter the cold meanness, and the dark hatred that seems to splash across our computer screens or onto our streets every day. But we must remain centered and true to the one path of the Masters. No matter who is before you, no matter how much what they do or say is disturbing or even repugnant to you, you must remember this and hold yourself to the path of Spirit and the clear Light of Truth. Whatever you do, and whomever you encounter, you must follow your Higher Self and:
“Love One Another”
Love is the way; it is the only way. It is the Way of Peace and Understanding. This is the Truth of Neptune, for Neptune is the Way of Unconditional Love. It is the Light at the Core of you and of all Creation.
The One is the source of all, and Unconditional Love is the foundation of the Universe. It is the Universal Power that holds every particle of Creation by, for, and in Love. When you hold yourself by this Love and act from this center, you will dispel the shadows and fears in yourself and in others too,
It is often hard, and you and I will stumble and fall short, probably every single day. But you will try again, and you will hear that quiet, gentle voice that is your Higher Self. You will find your strength through love. You will know your strength is Love.
Remember you are here, “an immortal in a mortal frame”, and your only purpose is to become a complete human, a self-aware, self-determined and unconditionally loving being. Do not give way to your lower self. It is easy to just react, as it requires no effort, but it is both mindless and heartless. The wiser way is to know that you have a choice, and that you have within you the power to turn what came to you as negative into something truly positive.
You are here to be an instrument of the One, a being who is a Creator and Transformer of Energy. This is why you are asked to show who you are, to reveal and be your strength, wisdom, and love by “turning the other cheek”. You are not being weak or cowardly at all by acting in this manner. You are making a choice to turn negative energy into positive action. This is true Courage, because it comes from the One, it comes from your heart, which does not act from fear. This is the Strength that is Love, and it is by this that you will renew the Spirit that is America.
Be mindful, be gentle, be loving, and you will be on the path.
This is the Message of Neptune.
This is the Way of Unconditional Love.
It is quite simply The Way.
