Transcript of Radio Show: Where are we now – Pluto, Neptune & Uranus? (6/12/2022)
(If you wish to listen to the show instead, here is the link on BlogTalk or Apple Podcasts)
In just over one week, on June 21st, we will find ourselves at one of the four great Turnings of the Astrological calendar, the Solstice of Cancer. Which makes this is a good time to pause and reconsider what are the major Astrological themes and messages that are being imparted to us by our planetary companions during this year.
As I will often remind my clients and write about in my blog as well as here on the radio show, I believe we should understand the positions of the planets in the Zodiac, and their alignments with one another as they orbit around the Sun, as forming a dynamic spiritual system of illuminations, meanings and inspirations which can help us to better understand ourselves and our journey here on Earth.
The messages and meanings of a particular alignment of one planet to another, or indeed of them all, is formed by our understanding of the spiritual qualities that are held in each sign of the zodiac, combined with the qualities of being that are held by each planet. However, what this cannot determine nor indicate is the actual circumstances of the phenomena in question. The Zodiac and the planets do not form the actual content of any experience or event in question on any level of manifestation, whether we look at the atomic or chemical microcosms in their spirals and vortices of combinations, or at the more complex organic kingdoms, and indeed all the way up to the human kingdom and beyond. Each realm of being, each realm of life, creates and forms its own materials of manifestation, their own realities.
It is in this unfoldment of Spirit, in its multiple dimensions and realms of becoming, it is here we find the great pageantry of Spirit-Life-Consciousness, and that for everything and everyone we can note the birth or beginning of a manifestation, then follow the “Arc of Becoming” in that Energy-Form, and eventually we will come to, in this realm of physical being, the end of that form which many may misunderstand as Death. Because this is Truth, the entire Universe is alive and conscious and ceaselessly becomes the body of the One by means of these dances of Spirit through Space-Time, the whirling dancers of Light who weave the stories of Birth-Life-Death and Re-Birth.
So, what we can obtain through Astrology is a deeper understanding as to the nature of what was born (by examining the natal chart of that Life-Form or Entity), and then equally understand the Arc of its Existence as formed by the cycles of the planets between themselves and by the alignments they make to the chart of that being.
For our purposes as humans, as we seek to understand our human creation, our “self-made selves”, and our experiences in the world, that is to say the world we live and walk through each and every day, all the events and processes of our human lives, the disparate range of opportunities and dangers that we face, the joy or the suffering we encounter, all of this is our very own human reality and creation. We are responsible for this, as it is we who have made our world. Yes indeed, the very great part our reality has been made by us, passed down to us our ancestors, as it is we in turn who our forging our present-day reality on Earth, and at the same time creating the conditions for those who will follow us. As Shakespeare so clearly put it in his play “Julius Caesar”, when Cassius says to Brutus,
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
The whole purpose behind Creation, the essential nature of Spirit, is to be and become, to move from non-being into beingness by unfolding and extending from the spiritual hierarchies into the hierarchies of realities or of manifestations of which we humans are one part. We are here for one thing, to learn to be better humans, to become better creators and to take responsibility for what was passed down to us, and even more carefully with what we will bequeath to our descendants. So let us turn to our review of the major current influences as revealed to us by our companions in the heavens.
I want to stress as I have many times before, that if we look to one planet’s position, or to one planet aligning with a planet in a particular chart, we will fail to understand the full meaning and measure of what has happened or will happen. Though Astrologer’s will focus upon one factor or another as they determine the nature of an entity, or to determine what that entity is experiencing, the only way to truly understand is to try to hold all these indications and influences as being what they are, part of a larger and integral whole. Nevertheless, we will begin as we have done many times before, by considering the meanings and messages of the three outermost planets, Pluto, Neptune, and Uranus.
Pluto
Since 2008 and running until 2024, Pluto has been making its once in every 245 years passage through the sign of Capricorn. As I have noted before, when Pluto (which is the planet that rules the processes of birth-death-rebirth), passes through the sign that rules the forms of Reality and Institutional order, Capricorn, that these periods have been characterized by the ending of a particular Socio-Political system and the rise of a new order in history. Whether we look to the previous passages of 1762 to 1778, (which was the ending leading to the beginning and the birth of our present order), or to 1516 to 1532 or even to 1269 to 1287, each of these times heralded the “end of an age” and the seeding or beginning of a new one.
What happens during such a period is brought about because the solutions that were formed and made into a new Socio-Political order, restructurings which were needed to resolve the problems that the previous age had created, these solutions and restructurings for that previous crisis bring about their very own problems over time. This is because the nature of the solutions of the previous order’s crisis creates over the next 250 years their own series or sets of problems, and the now existing order cannot resolve the inherent contradictions it now faces. The breakdown of the old ordering of institutions ultimately creates a catharsis of transformation, of death and rebirth, leading to actions and reactions that will eventually coalesce into the seeding of a new order in the next passage of Pluto, and that is when Pluto moves through the sign of Aquarius. The last periods for Pluto in Aquarius were from 1778 to 1798 and 1532 to 1553. Though we are going through the ending of an Age, and it is hard as we have seen, given the history of what happened in those previous times with Pluto in Aquarius, we must understand there will be much work to do to bring about our new Order from 2024 onwards.
Pluto is the vessel of the Will, of Power of Control, and as it goes through Capricorn, we have seen the last gasps of the old orders of power and the beginnings of a new understanding about Will and Power rise and emerge from this deconstruction.
But as I noted before, without considering the next outer planet, we will miss a big part of what is happening during each passage of Pluto in Capricorn.
Neptune
In a previous show I noted the integral relationship of the passages of Neptune during the period when Pluto was in Capricorn. Because of the nature of their orbital time periods, it turns out that while Pluto is in Capricorn, Neptune will be in either Pisces or Virgo for much of that time. I find this correspondence to be extremely interesting and helpful in understanding the differences we can see between one period of Pluto in Capricorn and the next.
Whereas Pluto holds as the Avatar of the Will and Power, Neptune holds as the Avatar of Belief and Faith. The influence of Neptune moving through the Signs can be seen as the story of the unfoldment for shifts in Consciousness, because Neptune holds the Dreams and Illuminations, which may soar to the greatest heights of Unconditional Love and yet at other times devolve into Illusions, as to how Reality is conceived, experienced, and lived.
In our period of Pluto in Capricorn from 2008 to 2024, Neptune has been in Pisces from 2011 and remains there until 2026. Whereas in the previous period of 1762 to 1778 it was in Virgo, and then in Pluto’s Capricorn passage from 1516 to 1532 it was in Pisces like in our period. That indicates to me that our time of 2008 to 2024 is much more like the 1500’s than the 1700’s; our time is more Piscean in nature while the 1700’s was more Virgoan. What might that mean?
For me, the periods with Neptune in Virgo would be more about order and structure, more practical and critical with regards to the shifts of faith that were occurring in the 1700’s. Whereas in the 1500’s as now with Neptune in Pisces, I would see that as the most likely to produce the widest swings in matters of belief and faith, of dreams and fears. That is because when Neptune is in Pisces the boundaries between the various realms of life and meaning are more protean and permeable. Certainly, in Europe in the 1500’s, the split of the Catholic church into numerous protestant faiths, along with the rise of a new political economy, was accompanied by extreme expressions of fervent devotion, and tremendous divisions between peoples and faiths as to what constituted truth and what was real.
That struggle over the “phenomenal architecture” of the world, where there is a very real struggle over the very nature of good and evil, of what is right and wrong, between the light and the darkness, well that seems to be prevailing again in our time. Whereas the crisis in the 1700’s presented itself as a struggle about the political order, of the struggle between an order based on the Hierarchy of King and Subjects versus the Right to Self-Determination, in our time as in the 1500’s, it seems that the divisions between individuals and groups has a more extreme quality, in that it is characterized by a fundamental split as to the nature of reality itself. There are so many competing stories of what is true, versus half-truths versus what is seriously delusional that we cannot even agree to listen to one another, and we certainly do not understand one another.
The structure of Will and Power in any construct, is made meaningful, believable, and true by the Faith and Dreams of that time. For the Plutonian Will to work, it must be guided, shaped, and yet equally restrained by the Neptunian message of the Divine, which is ultimately experienced as Unconditional Love. When this balance breaks down, as we see all around us now, we find a world where Institutions fail to fulfill their mission, and the people see the promise of a better world forsaken, and we equally see the authorities charged with the responsibilities to address the needs of the times, failing to do enough of what is right for the common good, or abusing their power for selfish ends. Hope is lost in the fog and confusion of a world that no longer makes sense or works. As William Butler Yeats famously wrote in his poem “The Second Coming”:
“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold…The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
We will see what the next passage of Neptune will bring, when it makes the shift from Pisces into Aries in 2026. Just as Pluto in Aquarius indicates the great work of building a new order will have begun, that re-birth of Pluto will be guided and inspired (as it was in the 1500’s) by Neptune’s movement through Aries.
Uranus
To complete the overview for our present time, we need to bring in the third Avatar of the triad of Spirit, Uranus. It is the purpose of Uranus to hold the Innovative, Creative and Mindful nature of Spirit. As much as Neptune rules and holds the questions of Faith, Uranus brings in the counterpoint of Reason and Critical thinking. Together they hold the Energy-Forms of the Reasoning Mind and the Intuitional Spirit. They can also be seen as the holders of the integral relationship between Individuality (Uranus) and Communality (Neptune). Both these qualities are necessary, but they vary in their intensity and integration, sometimes in balance with one another and sometimes one prevailing as more dominant in different societies and times.
As we have noted often, Uranus’ position during this period seems significant too, as it is moving through the Sign of Taurus from 2018 to 2026. Taurus is the vessel of Value, and from it we eventually come to understand that what stands behind all measures and manifestations of value is the one everlasting Value, Divine Unconditional Love; that everything and every being is a spark of the Divine, and all are precious in the Love that is the One.
What this means as Uranus moves through Taurus is that our understanding and experience of value is being “shook up” by Uranus, which is also known as the ruler of shocks, surprises, and earthquakes. Uranus shakes us and breaks us from our attachments to lesser understandings (in this case with regards to the question of our values and hierarchy of value), not to harm and disturb us but to wake us up, to make us open our eyes with wonder again. Uranus is the liberator, and it helps us to be free from self-made filters that limit our understanding; it brings the gift of an open mind so that we might see once again, “with the eyes of a child”.
I have also noted that Uranus holds a special relationship of correspondence with Neptune (that is like the harmonics of Neptune with Pluto), in that one orbit of Neptune equals two of Uranus. Uranus is in Taurus every 84 years or so, and the last times were, 1935 to 1942, 1851 to 1859 and 1768 to 1775. In world history, and certainly for American history, those years stand out as moments when earthquakes shook the world of ideas for the concepts of value. For our period, the period most like our own is 1851 to 1859, which were the lead up to our Civil War, and that is the last time that Neptune was in Pisces while Uranus was in Taurus, just like now. Once again, we have the alternation of Neptune being in Pisces or Virgo, while Uranus moves through Taurus. Once again, we are at a time that bears a striking resemblance to another time in history, and much the same themes as to how we value one another are before us once again.
In our present time we are once again faced with the Plutonian realm of Will and Power breaking down institutionally, so that the hierarchy of order and responsibility fails, and individuals and groups assume their own authority to challenge the existing order, to wield their uncentered and so unspiritual power, laying claim to rights that are not rooted in truth, as for example seen in the seditious mob shouting as they stormed the Capitol on January 6th saying, “this is our house”.
We find that the Neptunian Realm of Faith and Belief, no longer held together by a functioning hierarchy of institutional structures, devolving into each person and group assuming their right to be the determiner of what is true or false, and so our common understanding is broken, and half-truths rooted in fear fuel an atmosphere filled with suspicions, mistrust, and isolation.
Finally, the gift of Uranus, of having the capacity to think “outside the ordinary”, to be a contrarian, devolves into unmoored assertions of fictions as fact, as a veritable tsunami of lies swamps the realm of mind, so that the act of being contrary is not to help free one another’s minds but is used as a battering ram to sow confusion and doubt where nothing is true, and so everything become impossible.
Given where we are, what are we do? I do have hope, as I do know that humans have faced the darkest of hours and still found their way back into the light. Why? Because the Light never left, nor will it ever go out. The Light of the One it is at the heart of each and every one of us. We only need to remember, who and what we are, and then act by and through that understanding. In all that we do, we must remain centered and purposeful with the wisdom that begins with this, that the Universe is formed by Love and is made of Truth.
When we do stand fast and aligned with our spirit, we know that there is truth, and it is love. We know that there is hope because we have faith. We know that our faith is not rooted in a teaching or a book, but it is instead a living faith founded upon the spark of the Divine shining in every one of us. When we listen to that quiet, gentle voice reminding us of who we are, then we will know what to do and how to do it.
We are on the path of Light; and that Light is Love.
