The Stair­way to Heaven

It is in Scor­pio that you face the heart of Truth, the burn­ing bright seed which is the Foun­tain Source of all the Truths. In the Alchem­i­cal Space that dri­ves the becom­ing of Spir­it, in the beat­ing Heart of Spir­it where the many ones com­bine to form ever greater ones, it is here at the cen­ter of Cre­ation that you expe­ri­ence the Joy and the Pain, your Ecsta­sy and your Agony, of being an Immor­tal mov­ing through mor­tal realms, which is the Jour­ney of Spir­it we know as Birth, Death and Re-Birth.

But while in that realm of sac­ri­fice and self-tran­scen­dence, you found your­self in a space beyond com­pre­hen­sion, beyond your present-day words and under­stand­ing. So, you had to wait, you had to let go of your cer­tain­ty and expe­ri­ence what is beyond your­self; you had to accept with humil­i­ty, grace and rev­er­ence what lies beyond. And with this gift of spir­it, you moved along the path of awak­en­ing into what is always before you, you went across the thresh­old to a Greater Understanding.

At this time of year, and for­ev­er some­where in your very own chart too, we cel­e­brate the realm that holds our Tem­ples of Truth, today we begin the month of Sagit­tar­ius. Whether by Reli­gion, Sci­ence, Phi­los­o­phy or Art, in realms of ordi­nary but nec­es­sary prac­ti­cal knowl­edge or in the most sub­lime heights of Divine Truth, all that you may under­stand is pos­si­ble because you are made of these very same Truths too. What is you, well that also sur­rounds, holds, and embraces you too; for what is above is also below, and from the most infin­i­tes­i­mal to the great­est, all of Cre­ation is the Spir­it-Life-Con­scious­ness of the One. You can see the Light Divine because it is you and all around you too. That is why the youngest and old­est of us can see it too, that every­thing and every­one is “shin­ing”.

You stand upon the shoul­ders of great souls who came this way before. And by their efforts and through their love they left for you the pre­cious trea­sures of wis­dom and truth to help you walk the path of Awak­en­ing. The great­est of these that are known to us we hon­or as our wise ones, Con­fu­cius, Bud­dha, Lao Tzu, Zoroast­er, and Pythago­ras, and so many more whose names remain unknown but who lift­ed the veil for one and for all.

For this is how we made our­selves “human”; we told our sto­ries to one anoth­er and lift­ed a lit­tle more the veil of Isis to reveal the won­der of Cre­ation. Whether by pic­tographs on cave walls, in songs and by dance, or in poet­ry and prose, formed into sculp­tures, paint­ings, and held by sci­ence and phi­los­o­phy, by what­ev­er medi­um and by what­ev­er means we tell one anoth­er our sto­ries; we add to the sto­ry that is Cre­ation which is our sto­ry too.

That is why it is so impor­tant for us to share our expe­ri­ences, to com­pare our find­ings, sto­ries, truths, and beliefs. We seek to under­stand the world with­in and around us, and we can only do this if we approach one anoth­er with open­ness and love. We can only dis­cern what is truer from the less true by shar­ing with one anoth­er, by com­par­ing, con­trast­ing, cor­rect­ing, and affirm­ing what is clos­er to the light of the Divine.

So, at this time of Thanks­giv­ing, let us gath­er togeth­er and share with one anoth­er our expe­ri­ences and our dis­cov­er­ies, let us restore our hope and lift one anoth­er out of fear. Let us be a light for one anoth­er as we push beyond the shad­ows to reveal the light that is shin­ing through one and all. Let us tell one anoth­er our sto­ries, and may we laugh and cry and move into our greater understanding.

Let us walk the stair­way to the stars.

Let us shine with our love for one another.

And may Light and Love and Truth be our gift to one anoth­er now and for­ev­er more.

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

In my pre­vi­ous show on Octo­ber 2^nd, I had hoped to talk about both the Plu­to return to its Natal posi­tion in the USA chart and Neptune’s oppo­si­tion to its Natal posi­tion too. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there was not enough time to do both, so we should con­sid­er today’s show as part two of that pre­vi­ous show.

But we will need to keep in mind, that in order to dis­cuss and under­stand any one of what I call the Tri­ad of Spir­it, “The Three in One” of Plu­to, Nep­tune, or Uranus, that we will only under­stand any one of them when we also see that each one is nec­es­sary to the oth­er two, as they are prin­ci­pal Avatars of the Inte­gral nature of Spir­it in our system.

Tri­ad of Spir­it – Plu­to — Nep­tune — Uranus
I like to think of these three in this man­ner. Plu­to is the hold­er of the Will and shapes and molds every Ener­gy-Form into a def­i­nite or defined Con­tain­er of Spir­it, (whether that be a mon­ad, atom, cell, organ­ism, plan­et, or star). Nep­tune is the hold­er of the Uni­ver­sal Ener­gy-Form of Uncon­di­tion­al Love, which is the Ener­gy-Sub­stance at the root of all or the One. This Love of the One is the root source of the Spir­it-Life-Con­scious­ness for every par­ti­cle of Cre­ation. And Uranus, is the hold­er of the Quin­tes­sence of Spir­it, because each and every par­ti­cle of Cre­ation is also an Indi­vid­ual. By this we also know that all of Cre­ation is formed by the innu­mer­able indi­vid­ual sparks of the Divine, every one of which is fol­low­ing their Swab­hā­va to be and become a unique instance or expres­sion of the One Divine Light.

What we have been dis­cussing (for quite some time) is that two of these Avatars of Spir­it have made crit­i­cal align­ments in the USA chart. Plu­to has reached the end of its first cycle of 245 years around the Solar Sys­tem and has returned to Pluto’s Natal posi­tion in 2022. The USA is expe­ri­enc­ing its first ever Plu­to return, and this is most impor­tant as we dis­cussed last time. Mean­while, Nep­tune is oppo­site to its natal posi­tion, as it was only once before from 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.

For today, let us look at the impor­tance of Nep­tune in the USA chart, and the cycle of its mes­sag­ing for the past, and how that may guide us here today. What we need to appre­ci­ate is that Nep­tune has one of the most sig­nif­i­cant place­ments in the chart of the USA, being close to the mid­heav­en (the realm of des­tiny) and locat­ed in the 9^th house of Law, Truth, and Belief, what I like to under­stand as the house of Storytelling.

Nep­tune
Nep­tune is the avatar of the ulti­mate and uni­ver­sal ener­gy-form, which is Spir­it-Life-Con­scious­ness, and it is this which forms the most infin­i­tes­i­mal of par­ti­cles on up to the heav­en­ly hosts, and that is why we should under­stand and expe­ri­ence the Cre­ation as quite lit­er­al­ly the Body of the One. There is but One Spir­it, there is but One Life, and there is but One Mind, and it holds the whole of Cre­ation as one, (all the innu­mer­able ones held as One), and every one of us is made of this Ener­gy-form that you know and feel as Divine, Uncon­di­tion­al Love. It is by this Ener­gy-Form that the bound­aries between the hier­ar­chies and ranges of enti­ties becomes translu­cent, tran­scend­ed, and ulti­mate­ly dis­solved. By Nep­tune you come to your spir­i­tu­al heart, as you walk the path of awak­en­ing to expe­ri­ence the bless­ings of cos­mic con­scious­ness, which is made man­i­fest as love, com­pas­sion, and empa­thy between one anoth­er and real­ly between all life-forms in the cosmos.

But just as we have seen that the Will of Plu­to can be mis­ap­plied and lead to the vio­la­tion of sacred spaces, lead­ing to the sin of tres­pass­ing and great harm done to oth­er souls, Nep­tun­ian ener­gies may trig­ger and form, (by the mis­un­der­stand­ing or mis­ap­pli­ca­tion of this dissolving/transcending ener­gy-form), a cacoph­o­ny of fan­tasies, illu­sions, delu­sions, and decep­tions. We have had his­tor­i­cal peri­ods of a greater shared under­stand­ing, where what I call our “Bub­bles of Belief” align and agree with one anoth­er. And we have expe­ri­enced times of con­fu­sion, doubt, and greater mis­un­der­stand­ings too.

But the divi­sions we are expe­ri­enc­ing in the present day, the break­down of com­mon under­stand­ings and the grow­ing divide between var­i­ous peo­ples with­in com­mu­ni­ties, between regions and coun­tries, has cast a shad­ow of fear, doubt, and con­fu­sion upon our world. We have reached a yawn­ing abyss where we can­not seem to agree on what is fic­tion and what is fact, of what is “real­ly real”. What we are expe­ri­enc­ing is not a local but world-wide break­down, and this does hap­pen peri­od­i­cal­ly, espe­cial­ly when­ev­er Nep­tune moves through the sign of Pisces like now.

And though this might seem whol­ly neg­a­tive, again there lies part of our delu­sion and con­fu­sion. There is a very spir­i­tu­al pur­pose that dri­ves this moment in Neptune’s cycle, and it is this: we are being inspired to move into a more inclu­sive form of con­scious­ness. But the path to this greater under­stand­ing requires that we have to go through a peri­od where we are con­fused, because it is only then that we will let go of our lim­it­ed under­stand­ings, so that we might per­ceive beyond the dark clouds of fear, and so be able to see revealed a new and high­er and more inclu­sive and lov­ing way to under­stand our­selves and our world.

Nep­tune in Mun­dane Astrology
For our pur­pos­es today, we need to con­sid­er Neptune’s role for Mun­dane or World­ly Astrol­o­gy, which is that Nep­tune is the chal­ice or ves­sel for the dream of any nation, it is the Avatar for the sto­ries and myths that inform and explain the char­ac­ter of that polit­i­cal-cul­tur­al order. For the USA, one of the most dis­tin­guish­ing fea­tures of its found­ing myth is the claim that it is spe­cial or excep­tion­al. In the Nation­al Seal for the USA, we can see that the founders believed that they were engaged in an enter­prise that was unique­ly dif­fer­ent, and they declared to the world that the USA was to be a “New Order for the Cen­turies”. Unlike oth­er nations, the USA would be a land for peo­ple from around the world, and that it would be found­ed upon a new type of polit­i­cal order­ing, it would be a “covenant nation”.

The Nep­tun­ian ide­al for the USA was estab­lished upon Uni­ver­sal Prin­ci­ples, in that it would be unique and not like any oth­er nation. His­tor­i­cal­ly, nations were found­ed upon parochial or lim­it­ed deter­mi­na­tions, whether of being made of one par­tic­u­lar peo­ple, or by one her­itage or eth­nic­i­ty, or by one faith. The USA claimed that it would be a land where Free­dom, Tol­er­ance and Com­mu­ni­ty would be pro­claimed and pro­tect­ed for all peo­ples; it would be a new type of nation formed by the many creeds and by the many cul­tures of humanity.

USA – A Covenant Nation
The heart of this cre­ation of a new type of nation was the prin­ci­ple of a covenant com­mu­ni­ty. The USA would be found­ed upon the truth that each individual’s self-ful­fill­ment is depen­dent upon, and real­ly is only made pos­si­ble by being a mem­ber of the com­mu­ni­ty. This prin­ci­ple was stat­ed in our first doc­u­ment, The Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence, which says that we, “Mutu­al­ly Pledge To Each Oth­er Our Lives, Our For­tunes, And Our Sacred Honor”.

This dec­la­ra­tion was a forg­ing of a new covenant. The prin­ci­ple enshrined by the Dec­la­ra­tion, and lat­er by the Con­sti­tu­tion, is that in order to cre­ate this new space of indi­vid­ual free­dom and self-ful­fill­ment would require that the mem­bers of this sacred com­mu­ni­ty would have to agree to work with­in a social-polit­i­cal sys­tem of mutu­al con­sent. This would cre­ate a space of free­dom and jus­tice for every indi­vid­ual, but to do this we would need to forge an inte­gral bal­ance between our indi­vid­ual lib­er­ties with our com­mu­nal respon­si­bil­i­ties. Our free­doms would be pro­tect­ed, but we agreed to cir­cum­scribe our indi­vid­ual free­dom to pre­serve our com­mu­ni­ties too. In the USA, all pre­vi­ous priv­i­leges would be removed, so that 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, only the Law would be our King, and all would be equal before the law.

The Promise Broken
But of course, what was held up as the found­ing ide­al of the USA was nev­er made real at that time, or even now some 250 years lat­er. From the moment of “first con­tact” by Christo­pher Colum­bus in 1492, to the final mas­sacre of native peo­ple at Wound­ed Knee in 1890, the near extinc­tion of the native peo­ples was one part of the bro­ken promise of equal­i­ty and jus­tice for all. The oth­er orig­i­nal sin for the USA was the enslave­ment of African peo­ple until 1865, and their denial of full cit­i­zen­ship by one means or anoth­er even down to the present day. The Karmic Ques­tion the USA faces today is quite sim­ply this, “How do we make right over 500 years of Geno­cide; how to we make right over 400 years of Racism?”

Yes, we are at a turn­ing, and Nep­tune, the hold­er of dreams and myths, of illu­mi­na­tions and delu­sions, has returned 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 to be Slave or Free, in the Civ­il War. The ques­tion was then and quite remark­ably but not sur­pris­ing­ly is also the same now, “will the fun­da­men­tal spir­i­tu­al truth, that all humans are cre­at­ed equal, and should be treat­ed as equal with love and com­pas­sion be made our real­i­ty or not”?

Neptune’s Turn­ing Points

In order to frame our under­stand­ing of what we are faced with today, we need to exam­ine our his­to­ry, and the oth­er turn­ing points in Neptune’s cycle through the chart of the USA. Neptune’s orbit is about 163 years, and it will align with the USA Nep­tune every 40 years or so for the more sig­nif­i­cant or so-called “hard” aspects, the dates for which are: 1816–17, 1857–58, 1897–98, 1938–39, 1980–81, and now 2021–22. Most impor­tant, are the Oppo­si­tions and Returns to the natal place­ment. The first and only return of Nep­tune to its natal posi­tion was 1938–39; and the two oppo­si­tions in USA his­to­ry were 1857–58 and the oppo­si­tion we are expe­ri­enc­ing in 2021–22.

Oppo­si­tion of Nep­tune to Neptune
The oppo­si­tion should be under­stood as the rev­e­la­tion and out­come of that vari­a­tion of expres­sion from the first or natal imprint­ing and then any suc­ceed­ing returns. The seed plant­ed in 1776 of Neptune’s “Dream of Amer­i­ca” became ful­ly revealed in the first oppo­si­tion (like a Full Moon) of 1857–58. From Neptune’s embod­i­ment of the dream of Amer­i­ca in 1776, “That all men are cre­at­ed equal…”, a polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic sys­tem formed in which a very small num­ber of white, prop­er­ty-own­ing men would hold and wield pow­er. And it would turn out that a great many of them had secured and main­tained their wealth and pow­er through own­ing oth­er humans as prop­er­ty. But an ever-grow­ing divide of the ways of eco­nom­ic life, and in cul­ture and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, between the planter soci­ety and the rest of the USA forged an exis­ten­tial cri­sis in the USA, as two very dif­fer­ent Nep­tun­ian dreams of Amer­i­ca came to a cli­mat­ic con­fronta­tion dur­ing the 1850’s over a fun­da­men­tal ques­tion: Would the USA con­tin­ue as and for­ev­er be a “slave labor coun­try” or not?

The Oppo­si­tion of 1857–1858
The Nep­tune Oppo­si­tion of 1857–58 laid bare the ever-advanc­ing pow­er of the slave­hold­ing states in the Con­gress and over the Supreme Court. This was most clear­ly revealed in 1857 by the Dred Scott deci­sion of the Supreme Court. This deci­sion deter­mined that for­ev­er more the USA would be a slave coun­try, because a white man’s prop­er­ty was more impor­tant than human lives, and so the law of the land would be that “slaves and descen­dants of slaves were nev­er, nor would they ever be cit­i­zens, and that they would remain the per­ma­nent prop­er­ty of their mas­ters”. Slav­ery would be forever…

As a con­se­quence of this clear divi­sion of the two America’s laid bare by the Supreme court’s deci­sion, and by the Leg­isla­tive pow­er of the slave­hold­ing states, Lin­coln spoke of this divi­sion with­in the coun­try, between the slave states and the free states, when he declared, “that a house divid­ed from itself can­not stand”. He pro­posed that this divi­sion would be solved one way or anoth­er, and that the US would either become a nation where in every state all humans would be free and equal, or that in every state there would be slav­ery and inequal­i­ty forever.

Of course, what hap­pened was the Civ­il War, and the abo­li­tion of slav­ery and amend­ments to the con­sti­tu­tion to estab­lish a more just and equal soci­ety. But the peri­od known after the Civ­il War wit­nessed the ever-increas­ing ero­sion of that more just order, until by local laws and com­mon prac­tice the dream of a more just Amer­i­ca was denied again.

Neptune’s Return 1938–39
Astrologers con­sid­er any plan­e­tary return like a “New Moon”, a seed­ing of a new vari­a­tion of the ener­gy-form that for that plan­et, Nep­tune for us now. This would mean that a new begin­ning was formed dur­ing the pres­i­den­cy of FDR, with his efforts to restore the USA econ­o­my after the Great Depres­sion, while he equal­ly led the USA to pre­pare for the exis­ten­tial con­fronta­tion with the rise of Fas­cism in Europe and Asia in World War II.

What is quite remark­able about this moment, as it will be in the next two Nep­tun­ian align­ments, was it was at this time accom­pa­nied by the Plu­to oppo­si­tion to Plu­to; the remark­able syn­chronic­i­ty and mes­sag­ing for the USA at this time led to a restate­ment and rebirth for the promise of the USA, so that a renewed effort and strug­gle was begun to extend equal­i­ty before the law and have a more or less equal oppor­tu­ni­ty for self-fulfillment.

Dream Renewed – The New Deal
Roosevelt’s New Deal was sup­posed to be a Fair Deal for all Amer­i­cans, but of course this was not at all true for the South, and for many com­mu­ni­ties through­out the coun­try, where local laws and cus­toms con­tin­ued to dis­en­fran­chise a great many peo­ple. But it was true that dur­ing FDR’s term, and for many years there­after, the gen­er­al growth of pros­per­i­ty in the Unit­ed States was more or less fair­ly shared by the entire pop­u­la­tion. The com­mit­ment to a Lib­er­al State form of gov­er­nance, from the 1940’s into the 1970’s, cre­at­ed a lift­ing tide of eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty, where that ris­ing tide was seen as, “lift­ing all boats”. It cer­tain­ly was not per­fect, but there was a gen­er­al feel­ing that there was more equi­ty, bal­ance, and fair­ness in how we cre­at­ed and shared our well-being with one another.

But some­thing began to change in the 1970’s and then most cer­tain­ly in the 1980’s. You might won­der, what changed? What hap­pened to the New Deal and the Dream of America?

Nep­tune Square, 1980–1981
There had been a gen­er­al con­sen­sus in the 40’s and 50’s for both major polit­i­cal par­ties that the mod­ern lib­er­al order was the answer. But as the strug­gle for civ­il rights in the 1950’s and 1960’s led to the pas­sage of the Civ­il Rights act, which over­turned the local and state laws deny­ing full cit­i­zen­ship to many, there rose up a counter-rev­o­lu­tion to the lib­er­al con­sen­sus. It came under the guise of an eco­nom­ic the­o­ry, called neo-Lib­er­al­ism, and its main thrust was artic­u­lat­ed by the pres­i­dent-elect in 1980, Ronald Rea­gan, who ran on the slo­gan that the prob­lem with Amer­i­ca was the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment. Once again, Amer­i­ca was a at a turn­ing, and once again the plan­ets were at a turn­ing too.  If fact Nep­tune squared Nep­tune, and Plu­to squared Plu­to at this time. Remem­ber, a Square presents a choice; it holds both an oppor­tu­ni­ty and dan­ger. The oppor­tu­ni­ty is to rise to the chal­lenge with love and faith, or to react with fear and lit­er­al­ly fall backwards.

This Nep­tune-to-Nep­tune square of 1980–81 should be seen as the reac­tion or counter-rev­o­lu­tion to Roosevelt’s New Deal for Amer­i­cans. But what was the result of fol­low­ing the poli­cies of neo-lib­er­al­ism, of less gov­ern­ment? How can we see or mea­sure the ben­e­fit or the cost? The rise of neo-lib­er­al­ism led to a dra­mat­ic shift of income and wealth in the coun­try. The dis­tri­b­u­tion of the growth of wealth from 1940 to 1980 is stark­ly dif­fer­ent than that from 1980 to 2022. If you look at the eco­nom­ic pic­ture of these two peri­ods in USA his­to­ry, it is like you are view­ing two com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent coun­tries. The rea­son is that choic­es were made to turn away from fair­ness for the many, and to pro­mote ram­pant self-inter­est­ed beliefs and actions that led to self­ish­ness, greed, and great wealth for the few, and the result was the dec­i­ma­tion of the mid­dle class and the poor. Today, we have a coun­try that is divid­ed into the very wealthy few, a shrink­ing upper and mid­dle class, and final­ly the rest who are just strug­gling to survive.

2021–22 Nep­tune Oppo­si­tion (and Plu­to Return)
We find our­selves at the next great turn­ing of Nep­tune (and of Plu­to) here in 2021 and 2022. We are most cer­tain­ly expe­ri­enc­ing great divi­sions between var­i­ous mem­bers and sec­tors of our coun­try. It is quite remark­able that just like in the 1850’s, when Nep­tune was oppo­site to itself, and when Plu­to was squar­ing Plu­to, that we can see that the very same exis­ten­tial ques­tions are before us once more: Who is an Amer­i­can, who gets to decide, and are we equal to one another?

As I spoke of in my last show, we are at this moment in order to address the ques­tion of the Plu­to return, which is “what is the essen­tial val­ue of the USA”? I stat­ed then and would reit­er­ate here that the heart of val­ue for our nation (and real­ly any nation) is the people.

And we are also at a “Full Moon” for Nep­tune, just like in the peri­od of 1857–58. Nep­tune is pos­ing the ques­tion, “what is the Dream of Amer­i­ca”? With Nep­tune once again in Pisces, the spir­i­tu­al inspi­ra­tions of Uncon­di­tion­al love are resur­gent now, and many are work­ing to meet the chal­lenge of this moment by their com­mit­ment to increas­ing social jus­tice, of try­ing to build new bridges of under­stand­ing and care for one another.

But we are also, just like before, expe­ri­enc­ing the veil between realms becom­ing much thin­ner now because of Nep­tune in Pisces, and as much as we can hear the call­ing of our bet­ter angels when we turn to and are guid­ed by our gen­tle, lov­ing high­er self, we are also wit­ness­ing that for many the images and feel­ings that are being evoked, that they are found­ed not upon faith but in fear, and from these dark shad­ows we are con­front­ed with the mount­ing dan­gers of con­fu­sion, mis­un­der­stand­ings, delu­sions, and deceptions.

We are divid­ed in so many ways, but prin­ci­pal­ly it is because our Amer­i­can Dream of equal­i­ty and jus­tice, which is the foun­da­tion for self-deter­mi­na­tion and self-ful­fill­ment, has become increas­ing­ly unreach­able for more and more Amer­i­cans. We can­not live our Nep­tun­ian dream with­out a func­tion­ing democ­ra­cy. We do not have that, we can­not have that, when wealth and pow­er are con­cen­trat­ed in the hands of so very few indi­vid­u­als, fam­i­lies, and com­pa­nies. As many have not­ed, the USA is an Oli­garchy, a polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic sys­tem that is ruled by Plutocrats.

We are going through a spir­i­tu­al cri­sis, and the strug­gle by so many to try and under­stand, to try to do what is lov­ing and good, well that is what gives me hope. The chal­lenge is for each and every one of us to remem­ber where our true wealth lies, it is found­ed in our love for one anoth­er. If we can under­stand that the secret to our hap­pi­ness and well-being depends upon every­one being enabled to real­ize their fuller poten­tial, then we will rise togeth­er into a bet­ter world.

The ques­tion at the cusp of our Civ­il War is the same ques­tion we face today, “will the fun­da­men­tal spir­i­tu­al truth, that all humans are cre­at­ed equal, and should be treat­ed as equal with love and com­pas­sion, will that be made our real­i­ty or not”?

Let us face this moment as we must, with the faith, love, and wis­dom that is held by the eter­nal truths and light of the One, whose cen­ter is every­where and whose cir­cum­fer­ence holds us all as one.

Immortals in Mortal Frames

The Uni­verse is formed by a hier­ar­chy of Ener­gy-Forms, rang­ing from the most infin­i­tes­i­mal of par­ti­cles, through the atoms, mol­e­cules, organ­isms, plan­ets, stars, and galax­ies. From the low­est to the high­est, each of these “fields of the lord” are formed and shaped from below and from above by one anoth­er. Every speck of Cre­ation is formed by mon­ads upon mon­ads that are the hosts of Spir­it-Life-Con­scious­ness, which is their total­i­ty are the ONE, whose cen­ter is every­where (in each and every mon­ad), and whose cir­cum­fer­ence is nowhere in the myr­i­ad spaces of space, and the many dimen­sions of spirit-matter.

The Zodi­ac is the Design-Body of Cre­ation, an elec­tro-mag­net­ic field of Ener­gy-Mat­ter, which holds the Twelve-dimen­sion­al Hier­ar­chies of form and space. The Zodi­ac is omnipresent as the form-builder for all of Cre­ation for every mon­ad, whether it is an atom, mol­e­cule, being or star. That is why we need to open our minds and release our­selves from a fix­a­tion on Sub­stance and Mat­ter; we need to expe­ri­ence the world before us at it is, fields of ener­gy-forms, each par­ti­cle or being hav­ing their own Zodi­a­cal field, which is aligned with the next high­er being or realm, and so on. As the say­ing goes, real­i­ty or the uni­verse can be seen as wheels with­in wheels, a vor­tex or spi­ral of ener­gy-forms, each aligned to one anoth­er and final­ly to the One.

Because of this, each Sign of the Zodi­ac is inti­mate­ly relat­ed to, formed through, and sup­port­ed by the oth­ers. Each holds a range of expe­ri­ences and truths about our Uni­verse and about me and you. In truth, it is quite impos­si­ble to real­ly under­stand any one of them with­out hold­ing them togeth­er because of their inte­gral exis­tence as the noume­nal avatars behind the phe­nom­e­na of life.

Today we enter that most spe­cial “field of the lord” that we call Scor­pio, and at this time, and wher­ev­er Scor­pio is found in your chart, you enter what is the cru­cible or forge for Cre­ation. Here in Scor­pio you reach the ever-renew­ing heart of Spir­it-Life-Con­scious­ness. Scor­pio holds what is the foun­tain-source behind the whole of Cre­ation, which is that every­thing and every­one is formed, and grows and becomes ever more what they are to be by the agency of com­bi­na­tion, through the won­der of Alchemy.

In this month of Scor­pio, and wher­ev­er Scor­pio is found in your chart, you face the oppor­tu­ni­ty and chal­lenge posed by the “Cru­cible of Union.” From the small­est of par­ti­cles and beings, every­thing and every­one in the Uni­verse is formed by com­bi­na­tions. In the begin­ning, the One became the many, and from the atoms which com­bined with oth­er atoms, to the mol­e­cules join­ing with oth­er mol­e­cules, and organ­isms with organ­isms, and so on, this is how Cre­ation was made and con­tin­ues to be remade. In phys­i­cal terms the whole of Cre­ation can be seen as just Chem­istry; but when we reach the realms of self-aware cre­ators, we know this same pow­er of becom­ing as Alche­my. This is the heart of Scorpio.

In Libra, you pre­pare the spaces or frames for rela­tion­ship; but it is in Scor­pio that you enter into the heart of rela­tion­ship, as you forge your sacred unions with one anoth­er. The rea­son we say “sacred” unions is that all com­bi­na­tions require some form of sac­ri­fice, and that in order join, in order to grow, you must be will­ing to give up some­thing, to sac­ri­fice some­thing in order to make pos­si­ble the union with anoth­er. The expe­ri­ence of sac­ri­fice, of let­ting go of the less­er is how you grow into your greater self. The pain of sac­ri­fice is real, but the joy of rebirth and growth is greater. This is the way of Spir­it, to be and become through Union and Transformation.

It is in Scor­pio that you expe­ri­ence the great­est of heights and the low­est of depths, the bound­less joy of pierc­ing beyond the illu­sion that you are alone, as your heart leaps at the won­der of being made more whole with one anoth­er. But you will also face here the awful pain of when that union ends, when you must take your leave or when they must part from you. Tru­ly, in Scor­pio you face the truth behind all truths, and it leaves you with­out words, you are in deep­er waters here, and you have to work with your feel­ings to find your way.

For this is Truth, this is what it means to be an Immor­tal in a mor­tal world. You can­not expe­ri­ence Love with­out the agony of loss. You can­not have Joy with­out pain, for they are insep­a­ra­ble. If you did not feel these things as such, you would not, could not be human.

But always remem­ber, you have noth­ing to fear. You are an Immor­tal danc­ing through mor­tal realms. It is here that you will face the ulti­mate Truth; that all things must pass away. But it is equal­ly true that you will feel and know this Eter­nal Truth, you are part of the One who is Ever­last­ing. It is here in Scor­pio that you expe­ri­ence a know­ing beyond reason.

Here in Scor­pio, you hear the Song of the One, and as you wing your way through the stars you sing as does the Cre­ator, “There is no end­ing, there is noth­ing to fear, for I am an Immor­tal, danc­ing through mor­tal worlds”.

Astro­log­i­cal Mus­ings — Nep­tune and the USA chart (Octo­ber 23, 2022)

In my eighth show of 2022, we will con­sid­er the sig­nif­i­cance of Nep­tune mak­ing its sec­ond ever oppo­si­tion to its Natal posi­tion. I had hoped to include this in my pre­vi­ous show on Octo­ber 2^nd, and we will weave in the sig­nif­i­cance of the Plu­to return with the Nep­tune oppo­si­tion in today’s show.

If you wish to sug­gest a sub­ject or top­ic for a future show, please email me as I would be hap­py to hear from you. My email is: billattride@gmail.com.

Here is the main link to Astrologer Bill Attride Radio:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/astrologerbillattride

Here is the link to the show on Sun­day Octo­ber 23^rd @ 2 pm EDT:

https://www.blogtalkradio.com/astrologerbillattride/2022/10/23/astrological-musings-neptune-and-the-usa-chart

The phone num­ber to call if you wish to ask a ques­tion dur­ing the live show is: (516) 531‑9638

Please join me on Sun­day Octo­ber 23^rd @ 2 pm EDT as we look at the cur­rent astro­log­i­cal indi­ca­tions and what they mean for you.

If you miss the show, it will be avail­able as a Pod­cast short­ly after on BlogTalk or my Apple Pod­casts.

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

As we move through the last quar­ter of 2022, I thought it would be help­ful to con­sid­er once again the inte­gral sig­nif­i­cance of what is hap­pen­ing in the USA chart at this time. Not only is there the first-ever Plu­to return to its Natal posi­tion this year, but there is also the ongo­ing oppo­si­tion of Nep­tune to Neptune’s posi­tion, and that oppo­si­tion is only the sec­ond time in its his­to­ry. The com­bi­na­tion of these two align­ments (along with some oth­er sig­nif­i­cant align­ments) has informed, guid­ed, and shaped this crit­i­cal year in US history.

What we see is that the four major align­ments of the Plu­to with itself in the US Chart, the wax­ing square, the oppo­si­tion, the wan­ing square and now the return, pro­vide a unique win­dow into one of the more fun­da­men­tal and con­se­quen­tial shapers of US history.

But as in any chart inter­pre­ta­tion, we must begin with what the Natal or birth chart indi­ca­tions hold for each plan­et, and then con­sid­er their cycle of rela­tion­ship to see the “how and the why” of the cir­cum­stances that unfold­ed in ear­li­er peri­ods, and by these analy­ses we might bet­ter under­stand their sig­nif­i­cance for us now. When we con­sid­er the three out­er­most or trans­for­ma­tion­al plan­ets, Plu­to, Nep­tune and Uranus, their natal indi­ca­tions and evo­lu­tion­ary influ­ences over time should be very impor­tant indeed.

Con­tent of History
But I also need to remind us of this fun­da­men­tal and unwa­ver­ing Truth, that “what” hap­pened, and what is hap­pen­ing now, what is the con­tent of the his­to­ry of Unit­ed States, or of any coun­try or nation or peo­ple, it is that their cir­cum­stances, what was their past and is their present, these real­i­ties were not cre­at­ed or formed by the plan­ets. Rather, as I under­stand it, the plan­ets hold the Ener­gy-Forms that inspire, inform, and guide our jour­ney on Earth, but the actu­al con­tent of what is formed, of what hap­pened and will hap­pen, that real­i­ty is made by the com­plex of ener­gy-forms of we on Earth, forged by the liv­ing spir­it of us human actors, by our ances­tors and by you and me today.

Tri­ad of Spirit
More­over, though I wish to focus most­ly upon Plu­to, and also some­what on Nep­tune now (or in our next show), we have to remem­ber that for us in our solar sys­tem, the three out­er plan­ets must always be con­sid­ered or held togeth­er as one. That is because, at least for me, they hold and form the hier­ar­chy of ener­gy-forms of what I call the Tri­ad of Spir­it; the out­er plan­ets hold as one the Prin­ci­ple behind the pow­er of Spir­it, which is the Pow­er of Becom­ing, (“The Self that is Becom­ing”), of the mys­tery and majesty of the whole of Cre­ation, and for us in our solar sys­tem, Plu­to, Nep­tune, and Uranus hold as the avatars of the “Three as One”, which are the Will, and the Love and the Mind of the One.

Plu­to is the Avatar and vehi­cle of the Will for us, the Alchem­i­cal agent or Ener­gy-Form that brings togeth­er any enti­ty or being as “a one” in their sacred space. Each par­ti­cle of Cre­ation, and each and every being, is formed from the spark of the Divine, by its Mon­ad, and by the will is sep­a­rat­ed from any oth­er par­ti­cle or being by the sacred space in which it exists and over which it pre­sides. The emer­gence of the many ones from the One, pro­ceeds as a series of inter­sec­tions and com­bi­na­tions of these many fields of the ones to form greater or larg­er ones, (atoms, mol­e­cules, organ­isms, plan­ets, stars, and galax­ies). The lit­tle wills of these ones, form the phe­nom­e­na of attrac­tion and repul­sion on the phys­i­cal plane for the mate­r­i­al real­i­ty of objects and organ­isms (as in grav­i­ty); and this prin­ci­ple of sacred spaces unfolds hier­ar­chi­cal­ly pro­ceed­ing down­ward from the One to all the realms, as we can see the more sub­lime exer­cis­es of the will form­ing the push­es and pulls on the astral, emo­tion­al, men­tal, and spir­i­tu­al planes too. As beings become ever more self-aware, like we in our human king­dom of life, the expe­ri­ence of the will leads us to our spir­i­tu­al awak­en­ing, which is that we are to learn to use this gift of the spir­it for ever greater self-con­trol or self-mas­tery, so that it is turned back upon one­self rather than used to tres­pass, or to dom­i­nate and con­trol or vio­late the space of another.

Nep­tune is the Avatar and vehi­cle of Divine Love for us, the Alchem­i­cal agent or Ener­gy-Form that is the pri­mal or Root Form of Spir­it, which is this, the Uncon­di­tion­al Love of the One. The whole of Cre­ation is formed of the One, the body of the One is Cre­ation, and rang­ing from the most mate­r­i­al of sub­stances to the most sub­lime and ethe­re­al of Ener­gy-Forms, every­thing and every­one is formed by Divine Love. By Nep­tune, Cre­ation is held togeth­er by our mutu­al attrac­tions with and for one anoth­er. For at the root of the Truth of Nep­tune is this, that there is but One Life and there is but One Spir­it, and every­thing is ulti­mate­ly the Divine Love as the Root Ener­gy-Form of Cre­ation. The great illu­sion that all forms of Cre­ation are seek­ing to move beyond is our sep­a­ra­tion from one anoth­er, and that in truth we are one with the One (“as we were in the begin­ning, so shall we be in the end”). This is why Nep­tune holds for us the gifts of Com­pas­sion and Empa­thy, of Divine Love and Sac­ri­fice, as it cease­less­ly seeks to move us beyond any lim­it­ed form of our expe­ri­ence and real­i­ty so that we might embrace and expe­ri­ence a more com­plete expe­ri­ence of the One. The gifts of Dream­ing and Imag­i­na­tion, of mov­ing beyond a more lim­it­ed real­i­ty-form into a more encom­pass­ing one, this is the Nep­tune jour­ney of Spir­it. The dan­ger lies in become ensnared by fan­tasies and illu­sions that sep­a­rate one­self from the greater truth of the One, which will lead to false forms of love, as in nar­cis­sism, obses­sions, and pro­jec­tions of fear upon anoth­er or others.

Uranus is the Avatar and vehi­cle of Mind or Indi­vid­u­al­i­ty for us, the Alchem­i­cal agent or Ener­gy-Form that holds the oth­er essen­tial Root Form or Qual­i­ty of Spir­it, which is that every­thing and every­one is part of the Mind of the One, which means that every sin­gle part of Cre­ation is Con­scious. From the dimmest forms of aware­ness to the most sub­lime con­tem­pla­tions of the hier­ar­chies of the “shin­ing ones”, the qual­i­ty of Mind is the foun­da­tion for that oth­er spe­cial essence of Spir­it, Indi­vid­u­al­i­ty. As much as each mon­ad of Spir­it has the Ener­gy-Form of Will and is also made by the Ener­gy-Form of Love, each Mon­ad is also endowed with the Spir­i­tu­al qual­i­ty of Self-Becom­ing, of what we call Swab­hā­va. This essen­tial nature of Cre­ation means that each and every part of Cre­ation is an indi­vid­ual mon­ad, with its own spe­cial­ness or Quin­tes­sence, and that every mon­ad is on a jour­ney of becom­ing a com­plete and freed Mon­ad, a Divine­ly Aware spark of the Divine, anoth­er shin­ing one in the body of the One.

Three-in-One
The dynam­ic of spir­i­tu­al growth and evo­lu­tion, held with­in the Space of the Will by Plu­to is pro­pelled by the inter­play and dynam­ic bal­anc­ing of these sec­ond and third qual­i­ties in every mon­ad, by Nep­tune and Uranus, with one being the dri­ve to One­ness by Love for Com­mu­nal­i­ty, ver­sus the dri­ve to Indi­vid­u­al­i­ty by Mind for Inde­pen­dence. In all the realms of Cre­ation, and cer­tain­ly in our human-made worlds of fam­i­ly, tribe, com­mu­ni­ty, and nation states, the bal­ance between the com­mu­nal­iz­ing and indi­vid­u­al­iz­ing forces with­in our monadic natures ever con­tin­ues to forge the path of spir­i­tu­al awak­en­ing for human­i­ty on this Earth.

So let us now turn and con­sid­er the influ­ences that were brought to bear by the birth of the Unit­ed States and the mean­ings that are held by Plu­to and by Nep­tune, and the impor­tance of their align­ments in the past and now.

Plu­to USA
The USA was “born” with the plan­et Plu­to as the ris­ing plan­et, (the first plan­et to cross the ascen­dant or hori­zon line after birth), placed in the Sign of Capri­corn and in the Sec­ond House of the chart. I have com­ment­ed upon the sig­nif­i­cance of this Natal place­ment in many pre­vi­ous blog posts and radio shows, but it will cer­tain­ly help our under­stand­ing if we restate it again.

Tra­di­tion­al Mun­dane Astrol­o­gy would list the sec­ond house as rul­ing a nation’s wealth, as in tax­es, stock shares, bonds, exports, and insti­tu­tions that deal with monies like banks, trad­ing hous­es and the like. This is what many observers who hold to the pre­vail­ing mate­ri­al­is­tic view of real­i­ty would call the “wealth of a nation”.

And though it is true that this is the con­ven­tion­al mea­sure of the wealth of a nation, I and many oth­ers believe we should approach the ques­tion with a more mean­ing­ful mea­sure, the eter­nal Val­ue of the Liv­ing Spir­it, from Love, where the hap­pi­ness and well­be­ing of all life-forms is the stan­dard of mea­sure for val­ue. If we exclude, though we can­not and should not, all oth­er life-forms that abide in a country’s realm, the val­ue of a nation is tru­ly to be found in the well­be­ing of the peo­ple of that land.

Spir­i­tu­al­ly, the val­ue of each per­son or of a peo­ple is found­ed upon their spir­i­tu­al devel­op­ment, their intel­lec­tu­al rig­or, their emo­tion­al integri­ty, and their phys­i­cal well­be­ing, and it is this which cre­ates the true wealth of any com­mu­ni­ty, which is the val­ue they have in one anoth­er and deter­mines the val­ue they will make togeth­er or with one anoth­er. The val­ue of a per­son, or a peo­ple is not fixed; and cer­tain­ly, with Plu­to in the sec­ond house of val­ue for the US, it would be by the pow­er of rebirth, renew­al, and trans­for­ma­tion that the USA would cre­ate the wealth of the nation; that this pro­tean expe­ri­ence in the growth of human poten­tial would form the con­tent of US his­to­ry. To form any tru­ly spir­i­tu­al union, we make sac­ri­fices for one anoth­er, and this is the very means by which we change and grow; we are asked to sac­ri­fice our less­er qual­i­ties, our egos, in order to com­bine with anoth­er through our deep­er val­ues, and it is by this that we release the pow­er of trans­for­ma­tions and renew­al for one anoth­er. This is essen­tial nature of spir­it at the heart of Plu­to and Alchemy.

Addi­tion­al­ly, the Sign of Capri­corn is rul­ing the USA’s Sec­ond House, (and is the Sign that Plu­to is in), which indi­cates that the val­ues of the USA would be root­ed in Truths that have “stood the test of time”, what we would call more or less ever­last­ing spir­i­tu­al truths. That these truths would form the bedrock of val­ue or foun­da­tion for the nation, embod­ied into the Insti­tu­tions of the nation and enshrined into the laws that pro­tect all sacred unions and the Union of the nation itself.

With Plu­to the Avatar of the Will and hold­er of the Pow­er of Alche­my being in the Unit­ed States’ Sec­ond House, we would expect that the USA would be a Cre­ator of Val­ues by being a trans­former of val­ues through the pow­er of Alche­my. At the very incep­tion of the USA, as indi­cat­ed by this place­ment, the nation was found­ed upon a union, a join­ing by agree­ment among its mem­bers to pledge their lives and sacred hon­or to one another.

The USA was the first nation to be found­ed not on race, or reli­gion, or eth­nic­i­ty or any pri­or des­ig­na­tion; the USA was found­ed upon a Prin­ci­ple, it was to be a Covenant Nation, a join­ing, a fusion or Alchem­i­cal Nation of Trans­for­ma­tion. As it is declared on the seal of the Unit­ed States, it would be “A new order for the Cen­turies”. Found­ed upon a covenant com­pact, where all were to be equal before and pro­tect­ed by Laws that we agreed to, we would enshrine and pro­tect the Sacred Spaces of our unions and Union.

But that promise of equal­i­ty and jus­tice was trag­i­cal­ly bro­ken from the very out­set, and this calami­tous his­to­ry of wrongs forms the great bur­den of Kar­ma that the Unit­ed States has yet to address. Rather than a foun­da­tion in Spir­it and Free­dom, the Unit­ed States was made by the expro­pri­a­tion of lands and geno­cide of native peo­ples, and by the enslave­ment of peo­ples tak­en from their home­lands and held by ter­ror against their will as the prop­er­ty of others.

For much of US His­to­ry, the mea­sure of wealth, and the exer­cise of pow­er which flows from it, has often been nar­row­ly defined so as to exclude the vast major­i­ty of peo­ple from being as val­ued as they should; the exer­cise of pow­er was cir­cum­scribed and lim­it­ed to the few who held pow­er by land­ed or finan­cial wealth, so that far too many had lit­tle con­se­quen­tial pow­er, and were thwart­ed in their abil­i­ty to achieve their hopes and dreams.

Progress was made, and then reversed, time and time again. The lib­er­a­tion of the slave pop­u­la­tion after the Civ­il War, pro­duced a very brief peri­od of greater self-deter­mi­na­tion dur­ing Recon­struc­tion. That progress was bro­ken by a deal between Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans in 1877 that end­ed the Fed­er­al over­sight of the for­mer slave states, who then quick­ly estab­lished a sys­tem of law (and ter­ror) that pre­vent­ed any mean­ing­ful progress for almost anoth­er 100 years.

So let us look at the three pre­vi­ous align­ments of Plu­to to itself in the USA chart and see how that may help us under­stand the present return of Plu­to. Though the inter­ven­ing minor align­ments can prove illu­mi­nat­ing as well, these major turn­ings will be most help­ful. Again, our focus will remain upon the ques­tion of val­ue, prin­ci­pal­ly the essen­tial val­ue of the peo­ple and their pow­er to help one anoth­er to ful­fill their dreams.

Plu­to Square Plu­to 1848–50
The first major align­ment of Plu­to to Plu­to in the USA chart was the wax­ing square of 1848 to 1850. Cer­tain­ly, bring­ing its influ­ence to bear upon, but only exact after the Mex­i­can War of 1846–1848, the first major align­ment of Plu­to to itself can be seen as set­ting in motion the final, fate­ful steps that led to the Civ­il War. The grow­ing strug­gle to lim­it or extend slav­ery, was actu­al­ly the prin­ci­pal rea­son for which the Mex­i­can War was fought. The real “cause” of the Mex­i­can War were Amer­i­can slave­hold­ers and their polit­i­cal allies, who need­ed fresh lands to pur­sue their mono-crop cul­ture, (a sys­tem which con­tin­u­ous­ly exhausts the land, requir­ing new lands). The push by south­ern states to extend slav­ery through­out all the new­ly seized lands of Cal­i­for­nia, Ari­zona, New Mex­i­co, Neva­da, and Utah led to a com­pro­mise which includ­ed a much tougher Fugi­tive Slave Law.

From this moment of choice, “the die was cast”, and just like when Cae­sar crossed the Rubi­con, the ele­ments were set that would lead to the Civ­il War after Abra­ham Lincoln’s elec­tion in 1860. A strug­gle between two very dif­fer­ent ways of under­stand­ing what it means to be human, two very dif­fer­ent val­ue sys­tems, most espe­cial­ly in how we val­ue each and every human life, forced the USA to face its first great “cri­sis of val­ue”. That is what a square aspect presents, it is a turn­ing point, a fork in the road, and the deci­sion requires com­mit­ment to one way and a turn­ing away from the oth­er. It was an exis­ten­tial cri­sis between two whol­ly incom­pat­i­ble val­ue sys­tems, and only force would decide the issue.

Plu­to Oppo­site Plu­to 1936–37
The Oppo­si­tion is said to be the cli­max of a cycle of rela­tion­ship, when a rev­e­la­tion is at hand and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of reap­ing the reward of good efforts since the wax­ing square or fac­ing the con­se­quences if inten­tions and actions were inad­e­quate. In the mid 1930’s, the USA (and the world) were in the great­est eco­nom­ic cri­sis called the Great Depres­sion. Now that was a cri­sis in val­ue! The entire­ty of the eco­nom­ic order for the world came crash­ing down.

To con­front the fail­ure of the “free from reg­u­la­tion” mar­kets of the world, some coun­tries turned to fas­cism, some to com­mu­nism, but in the Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Franklin Roo­sevelt chose the path of reform and renew­al. With pro­grams like the New Deal, like Social Secu­ri­ty and Medicare, and new eco­nom­ic reg­u­la­tions and poli­cies, a trans­for­ma­tion and renew­al of US Val­ue, of the essen­tial worth and val­ue of the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion of peo­ple of the US led to an eco­nom­ic growth path that was more equi­table and just, and it last­ed for over 40 years. From the most con­cen­trat­ed income dis­tri­b­u­tion in 1929, the USA had its most equi­table growth in incomes across all per­centiles from the late 1940’s until the ear­ly 1980’s. The fun­da­men­tal idea behind all of this was that the essen­tial val­ue of the nation was its peo­ple, and they should be giv­en every oppor­tu­ni­ty to bet­ter them­selves, and that we should “invest” in one anoth­er, and by this spir­i­tu­al approach to our val­ue we would all benefit.

But begin­ning with the strug­gles to make the US soci­ety tru­ly more equi­table, with the Civ­il Rights move­ments and leg­is­la­tion in the late 1950’s and 1960’s, this push for true equal­i­ty fos­tered a counter-rev­o­lu­tion to what had been the New Deal Lib­er­al par­a­digm, which is known as Neo-lib­er­al­ism. The pro­po­nents of this the­o­ry sought to return the polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic reg­u­la­to­ry envi­ron­ment to the more unfet­tered cap­i­tal­ism of the late 1800’s. The claim was made that by slash­ing tax­es and reduc­ing reg­u­la­tions, and by return­ing the vast major­i­ty of wealth to the top per­centiles, the Unit­ed States could great­ly increase growth for the gen­er­al econ­o­my, and this would lead to a so-called “ris­ing tide that would lift all boats”. And it would be these poli­cies and their pro­po­nents who would come to pow­er in the next great turn­ing of Pluto.

Plu­to Square Plu­to 1982–1983
Just as the Plu­to square of 1848 to 1850 was a turn­ing point, so too was the square of 1982/83. But the dif­fer­ence is the 1840’s was a wax­ing square, which con­cerns a def­i­nite choice about the form or con­tent of what would emerge, it was a cri­sis of Action. For the 1980’s, the wan­ing square was a response to what was revealed at the oppo­si­tion of the 1930’s and required that a def­i­nite choice must be made the realm of mind, it was a Cri­sis in Consciousness.

Ronald Reagan’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign of 1980 pro­mot­ed the fic­tion that the trou­bles fac­ing Amer­i­ca stemmed from one source, and he ran on the slo­gan that “the gov­ern­ment is the prob­lem”. The Repub­li­can pro­gram to dis­man­tle the New Deal sought to reduce or elim­i­nate the gen­er­al sup­port for wel­fare and val­ue of all Amer­i­cans, which had been cre­at­ed by Social Secu­ri­ty, Medicare, and by eco­nom­ic reg­u­la­tions, and reforms, and also envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions and oth­er social pro­grams. Over­time, most repub­li­cans and many democ­rats fer­vent­ly believed in or con­sent­ed to this “faith”, that by reduc­ing gov­ern­ment tax­a­tion and reg­u­la­tion, and return­ing wealth to the few, that this would lead to an eco­nom­ic miracle.

What it has cre­at­ed instead is what we see around us today. The USA has dis­in­vest­ed in its peo­ple and phys­i­cal infra­struc­ture for over 40 years now. In 2022, we have the great­est inequal­i­ty in wealth that we have ever had, sur­pass­ing the pre­vi­ous gap of 1929. We are back at the next great turn­ing of val­ue, but this time it is a begin­ning, like a New Moon, because this year we are expe­ri­enc­ing the Plu­to return.

The Plu­to Return 2022
At each turn­ing of Plu­to for the past 246 years, the USA has faced the task of address­ing the fun­da­men­tal ques­tion, “what is the essen­tial val­ue of the nation?” As it was in at the found­ing moment, so it has been at every turn­ing, in the Civ­il War, in Roosevelt’s New Deal, and in Reagan’s Neo-Lib­er­al Rev­o­lu­tion, the response to Plu­to has been to rede­fine and reval­ue the val­ue of Amer­i­cans them­selves, of how they see them­selves and how they treat one anoth­er, and to answer the ques­tion, “what is the real Wealth of the Nation?”

But those pre­vi­ous turn­ings were reac­tions and respons­es to what was laid down at the found­ing of the USA, of the first full cycle of promis­es kept and those that were not. What we are faced with now is the very real oppor­tu­ni­ty (and per­il) of a new begin­ning. At a New Moon, or here at a plan­e­tary return, the ener­gy-form and what it rep­re­sents releas­es a flow of new poten­tial from the root-source. That means, if we can hold in our hearts and mind the true nature as to the source of val­ue of our Covenant Nation, then we may be able to build a more spir­i­tu­al ver­sion of the USA.

For me, I see our present day strug­gles over “who” is an Amer­i­can, over who gets to decide how we will gov­ern our­selves, all the many con­fu­sions, dis­cords and even threats of vio­lence, as con­firm­ing that we are exact­ly in this moment of the new begin­ning. It is not yet formed; it is emerg­ing and the sto­ry of how great or small will be our con­tri­bu­tion to the promise of Amer­i­ca is yet to be known.

What we can­not know is what is going to hap­pen with Pluto’s return, for we are too close to it, but it is hap­pen­ing through each and every one of us. But if we want to be builders of that bet­ter vision and ver­sion of Amer­i­ca, we must be guid­ed by what is spir­i­tu­al­ly and unde­ni­ably right.

Giv­en what was promised, and what has hap­pened, the return of Plu­to for me means we must pledge our­selves once again to this very long jour­ney towards equal­i­ty and self-ful­fill­ment for one and for all. If we are to restore the promise, but make it bet­ter than before, we must acknowl­edge that our great­est trea­sure is our peo­ple, and that we should endeav­or to help each per­son and every group real­ize their fullest poten­tial. We must remem­ber that what made every one of us, and in fact dri­ves the entire­ty of Cre­ation, is that “we are what we are” through the pow­er of com­bi­na­tion, forged by the mys­tery of Alchemy.

To do this work, we must sac­ri­fice for one anoth­er to build a bet­ter tomor­row. We must let go of our fears and cre­ate a space of for­give­ness for growth. We can take a small leap of faith, that starts with the under­stand­ing of the essen­tial good­ness of one anoth­er, and that each of us is not just capa­ble of but in fact must change if we are to grow.

We are the wealth of this Nation. And the source and mea­sure of this wealth is our love for one another.

We must remem­ber that we were made from love, and we are sim­ply here to love one another.