Tran­script of Radio Show: Amer­i­ca at a Turn­ing Point — Plu­to and Nep­tune in 2020 and 2021

Our main top­ic today is about the cor­re­spon­dence of ener­gies or res­o­nances regard­ing the plan­ets in terms of their orbital paths, and how long they take to make a cir­cuit around the Sun. The plan­ets form these def­i­nite ratios with one anoth­er, and it is inter­est­ing that the out­er plan­ets of Uranus, Nep­tune, and Plu­to form a ratio of one to two to three.

In oth­er words, Uranus’ orbit is about 84 years and you dou­ble that rough­ly to get to Nep­tune’s orbit of 164 years, and then by three times that we have the orbit of Plu­to which is 245. It is not an exact 1 to 2 to 3, but just like we humans, the plan­ets are indi­vid­u­als too, and they speed up and slow down and bob­ble and weave just like we do. So, every­thing is not a per­fect one thing or anoth­er, but indi­vid­u­at­ed and indi­vid­ual in nature.

But we find this gen­er­al ratio cor­re­spond­ing to many things. Because of these ratios, the plan­ets line up with them­selves, (and with the plan­ets in any chart), and they will have a res­o­nance or har­mon­ic of meet­ing up at the same times or off­set by a cer­tain amount of time, which will rein­force their mes­sag­ing. I found it kind of fas­ci­nat­ing that right now we have in the USA chart two big align­ments hap­pen­ing simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, over­lap­ping with one anoth­er, which they have done in the past.

Plu­to
I have been talk­ing, as you know, quite a bit about Plu­to and in many episodes, and that from 2008 to 2024 Plu­to is march­ing through Capri­corn, (and it has not been back there for 240 years) and indeed this is this what is com­ing up here in 2021 and 2022, which will be Pluto’s return to the USA Plu­to which is the first time it has hap­pened, so it is big.

If we look at Plu­to lin­ing up with Plu­to, and because we have Mer­cury oppo­site to Plu­to in our Natal chart for the USA, there is a res­o­nance of this hap­pen­ing through­out our his­to­ry that seems to deal with our ques­tion about how we think of our­selves (Mer­cury) and how we deal with these ques­tions of val­ue, and in our capac­i­ty to have con­trol, self-con­trol or be under the con­trol of oth­ers (Plu­to).

For instance, if I was to look at this his­tor­i­cal­ly, Plu­to kept mov­ing along after the birth of our coun­try in 1776 and formed its first major aspect to itself and to Mer­cury which hap­pened in the late 1840s into the 1850s. That is when this coun­try was grap­pling with ques­tions about how we were going to devel­op in terms of our econ­o­my and cul­ture, as we were mov­ing towards a crit­i­cal divi­sion between a freer sys­tem in the North and a slaved base sys­tem in the South, that a strug­gle was form­ing in our coun­try between a slave or free econ­o­my, and whether new states would be admit­ted as either slave or free.

When we flash for­ward to the 1930s, that is when Plu­to is oppo­site to Plu­to and con­junct Mer­cury. That is what we have in the 1930s and FDR and the New Deal, and there is once again a restate­ment of eco­nom­ic, polit­i­cal, and cul­tur­al life.

We flash for­ward again to when Plu­to squares to Plu­to and Plu­to squares Mer­cury, and that was in the ear­ly 1980s and that is the era of Rea­gan, where the mod­el set in place in the late 1930s into the 1940s was bro­ken, and we had a new way of divid­ing up the wealth and well-being of our coun­try between the var­i­ous sectors.

That brings us to our time, and here in 2020 and 2021 and 2022, Plu­to again lines up with Plu­to and Plu­to lines up with Mer­cury, and again we are address­ing the same ques­tion: Is our soci­ety based upon a clear divi­sion that is equi­table and mean­ing­ful between the dif­fer­ent sec­tors and how they share in the wealth of this coun­try, or have we reached a break­ing point in terms of how unequal the bal­ance is between those who have and those who have not?

Nep­tune
Well, fold­ing that into some­thing else we can look at the pat­tern­ing as revealed by the plan­et Nep­tune. Nep­tune is extreme­ly impor­tant in a chart. (Plu­to rules the will in the sense of integri­ty, and are we respect­ing our own space and keep­ing our­selves with integri­ty in our own inter­nal spir­i­tu­al space, and equal­ly respect­ing and not infring­ing or vio­lat­ing or tres­pass­ing upon the space of oth­ers). Nep­tune is the prin­ci­ple of our vision and dream, of our spir­i­tu­al self. The dream of Amer­i­ca, of any­one, is held by the plan­et Nep­tune. When it is lin­ing up with itself, we are ques­tion­ing or ask­ing, “what is the dream of America?”

We start with Nep­tune in Vir­go in the USA chart, right at the top of the chart, so it is part of this dream struc­ture that is quite strong, and we go from 1776 and by the late 1850s and Nep­tune is oppo­site to Nep­tune. And, we are deal­ing with the first great exam­ple of our coun­try, of com­ing to a head over this divi­sion, will we be a “slave coun­try” or will we be a “free coun­try”? The dream of Amer­i­ca is split between two dif­fer­ent soci­eties, North and South.

And there were great debates and strug­gles over that. And, of course, the great­est speech or one of the great­est speech­es ever giv­en at that time, and peo­ple refer to this again and again through­out our his­to­ry since then, was Lin­col­n’s great “house divid­ed speech” dur­ing the Lincoln/Douglas debates when he was run­ning for Senate.

Abra­ham Lin­coln - “A house Divided”
So, I would just like to quote him in terms of what he was faced with at that time, what the coun­try was faced with at that time, which of course is like our time. Because what is hap­pen­ing here in 2020, in 2020 and 2021 and 2022, Nep­tune is once again oppo­site our Nep­tune. And just like then these words hold true, and the words of Lin­coln are:

“…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.”

And here we find our­selves in the begin­ning of the 2020s, with a coun­try that seems utter­ly divid­ed between cities and the rur­al states, between peo­ple of mixed back­grounds and diver­si­ty and peo­ple who are iden­ti­fy­ing as “white”. And so, we are strug­gling once again with the iden­ti­ty of Amer­i­ca, what is the dream of this coun­try, what shall we do with this dream, is cer­tain­ly some­thing that we are strug­gling with now, just as our great ances­tors strug­gled in their time with their great division.

I hope and believe it will not be resolved by war; I do believe we can find a way through with a call­ing to, as Lin­coln said, “the angels of our bet­ter nature”, but it is cer­tain­ly a time where we see divi­sions with­in and between one anoth­er that are grow­ing and mount­ing. It has reached such a the point where, as Nep­tune would say, “we are all con­fused, we are all dis­il­lu­sioned, and we are sim­ply not under­stand­ing one anoth­er”, because some of the basic fram­ing and visions, the par­a­digms that we are liv­ing through in these dif­fer­ent cul­tures and sub­cul­tures do not hold together.

E Pluribus Unum — Out of Many, One
We must find our way back to com­mon­ly held views or an agree­ment upon what is com­mon to us, in order bring us togeth­er in this time of great divi­sion and mis­un­der­stand­ing. Whether we can do so or not depends on you and I and every­one else reach­ing across that divide and find­ing ways in which we can work togeth­er to make it bet­ter for one and all; to real­ize that there are more things that we hold togeth­er than hold us apart.

But we are cer­tain­ly being divid­ed from one anoth­er and framed that way by var­i­ous instru­ments and vehi­cles of the mod­ern age, and these are mak­ing use of that divi­sion for their own prof­it and well-being. We must not suc­cumb to that siren call of divi­sion and of mak­ing the oth­er “the oth­er”, but we must see that every­one for the most part wants what we want, and we need to find a way to do that.

Plu­to and Neptune
I would point to anoth­er great moment in our his­to­ry, also when Plu­to was lined up with Mer­cury and Plu­to, and when Nep­tune was lined up also; it was when the Nep­tune con­junc­tion occurred. So, we had Nep­tune start­ing in Vir­go, and it reach­es its first oppo­si­tion to itself that was the great divide of the Civ­il War and it came around back to itself and we had a Nep­tune con­junc­tion, a return of Nep­tune in the late 1930s when FDR was in office. Roo­sevelt put out as one of his great state­ments on how we should try to build a bet­ter world, over­com­ing the divi­sions of the time, between Fas­cism and Social­ism, and the wars that ensued. What he talked about was our need to work at devel­op­ing and hold­ing to the “Four Freedoms”.

FDR and the Four Free­doms – Free­dom from Fear
The Four Free­doms for him were: First is Free­dom of Speech and Expres­sion, and he said for “every­where in the world”; the Sec­ond Free­dom is for every per­son to wor­ship God in their own way, every­where in the world; the third is Free­dom from Want which trans­lat­ed into world terms means eco­nom­ic under­stand­ings which will secure to every nation a healthy peace­time life for its inhab­i­tants, every­where in the world; and his great­est call­ing, of course, and it res­onates down the halls of his­to­ry, the fourth free­dom is the Free­dom from Fear, which trans­lates into world terms means a world­wide reduc­tion of arma­ments, of weapons of war, to such a point that in such a thor­ough fash­ion that no nation will be in a posi­tion to com­mit an act of phys­i­cal aggres­sion against any neigh­bor, any­where in the world.

Well, I know we are far from that free­dom from fear, but it is a goal, it is a dream that we should hold dear in our hearts if we are going to make it through these upcom­ing years. Because cer­tain­ly the world we know is falling apart, and it is not com­plete­ly lost, the world we had. We must pre­serve, pro­tect, and main­tain the val­ues, the struc­tures, and the insti­tu­tions that are still viable and car­ry­ing out their nec­es­sary duties of meet­ing one anoth­er’s needs, which is what we use them for. But cer­tain­ly, right now, we are deal­ing with the shat­ter­ing of our con­sen­sus and under­stand­ing of what our life is to be based upon.

Life, Lib­er­ty and the Pur­suit of Happiness
Much like our ances­tors faced the divi­sion between North and South, we face a divi­sion with­in our­selves and with­in our com­mu­ni­ties, and through­out this coun­try that must be addressed. And it must be addressed by hold­ing high to the ideals that we found­ed this coun­try upon; that we are here in a com­mon fel­low­ship, pledg­ing our­selves to one anoth­er, our “Life, Lib­er­ty and the pur­suit of Happiness”.

We must pre­serve, as much as we can, all Life and pro­tect it; we must have Lib­er­ty, which means to nev­er infringe upon the rights of any oth­er and to hold each oth­er sacred in terms of our sacred selves; to pur­sue Hap­pi­ness which means to encour­age and make pos­si­ble the means by which every per­son is able to meet the great­est degree of their own self-real­iza­tion and self-fulfillment.

Hap­pi­ness is not hav­ing more things, it is being your­self and being able to reach the finest expres­sion of that self by liv­ing in com­mu­ni­ties, by work­ing with one and for anoth­er, so that we cel­e­brate our diver­si­ty, cel­e­brate our indi­vid­u­al­i­ty, and we do not deny or den­i­grate it.

This is the dream of Amer­i­ca and Nep­tune rules our dreams. And right now, we are con­fronting what will be the dream or the restate­ment of dream that will get us through these dark times. I am always hope­ful, that in the long run every­thing is going to work out, but I know things looked dark right now. And every­one should be remind­ed that our ances­tors went through very dark times indeed and they came through it shin­ing, by build­ing a bet­ter world.

We are not done yet of course there is a lot of work to be done but this is our hour to stand and shine for truth, for love, and for one another.

Tran­script of Radio Show: A Deep­er View — Plu­to and the USA Mercury

What I would like to do today is pick up on things I have been talk­ing about for some time. As I did last week, I will talk about these peri­ods and moments in his­to­ry or in the world’s unfold­ing of events, and that there are plan­e­tary cycles with­in cycles. We look prin­ci­pal­ly at the main dri­vers of large and long range cycles, and they are held by the three out­er plan­ets: Plu­to going through Capri­corn from 2008 to 2024; and Nep­tune going through Pisces from 2011 to 2026; and Uranus going through Tau­rus from 2018 to 2026.

All these are quite potent, pow­er­ful forces and have inter­est­ing inter­sec­tions with oth­er his­tor­i­cal peri­ods that I men­tioned last time and with what’s hap­pen­ing now, and you can always lis­ten to that show if you want to hear that or read the tran­script, or find more on the blog about this stuff as well.

I thought today, though I will always keep in mind these uni­ver­sal ener­gies that are affect­ing the plan­et, we are also affect­ed in indi­vid­ual ways. You can also look at a chart of any enti­ty whether it be a com­pa­ny or a leader of a coun­try or a coun­try itself, you can look at their birth chart and get some indi­ca­tion as to what that coun­try or enti­ty may be going through.

Mun­dane Astrology
This kind of astrol­o­gy is called Mun­dane Astrol­o­gy or world­ly astrol­o­gy, not look­ing at humans or humans and their pets and oth­er kinds of things, but look­ing at look­ing at these larg­er enti­ties formed and often last­ing for many more years than a human. We look at these same ener­gies mov­ing through their charts to see what it might indicate.

Plu­to & Mer­cury in USA Chart
What I men­tioned in the last year or two, build­ing up in the USA chart, is a par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant aspect that is occur­ring this year. These long-wave aspects build in like a Bell curve, com­ing as a wax­ing of ener­gies that reach their cli­max at the most exact moments. This year in the USA, we are expe­ri­enc­ing this triple pass of Plu­to going back and forth over the USA Mer­cury. The exact time, not that it mat­ters for our pur­pos­es, is the end of Feb­ru­ary the mid­dle of July and the begin­ning of 2021.

We would expect this ener­gy to hold steadi­ly, since Plu­to hard­ly moves at all dur­ing the year. What is strik­ing about this align­ment is that this same aspect exists in the USA chart. The Unit­ed States was born with the plan­et Plu­to ris­ing in its Sec­ond House of resources and val­ue, (and the val­ue of any­thing is shown by the 2nd house). Where­as in the 8th house, Mer­cury is locat­ed and is oppo­site to Plu­to, (and the 8^th house rules how we join our val­ues togeth­er and com­bine our assets and resources, to do what we can­not do alone). In a Nation­al chart or a mun­dane chart, the 8^th would include things like inter­na­tion­al affairs and inter­na­tion­al trade and inter­na­tion­al finance and activ­i­ties that we are doing not by our­selves but in com­bi­na­tion with oth­ers. For a nation that means with oth­er enti­ties or nations for the most part and how we com­bine with them, and so this very much deals with our under­stand­ing of our own val­ue and wealth and our trade and wealth with oth­er nations and things of that nature.

But more espe­cial­ly, on anoth­er lev­el, Plu­to deals with, as I’ve been talk­ing about, the will and willpow­er. The cen­tral con­cern of Plu­to is to help us as indi­vid­u­als, or any enti­ty, to form and cre­ate its own sacred space that it exists and abides with­in; and, to turn that ener­gy back on itself in order to achieve greater self-mas­tery and self-deter­mi­na­tion. But often these ener­gies are mis­ap­plied and mis­used by those who live in fear or with a more neg­a­tive view­point, and then they will try to use this ener­gy-form to con­trol or vio­late the spaces of oth­ers, which is why we often have “hell on earth”.

Pluto/Mercury Aspect in USA chart
So, in this regard, this is what is hap­pen­ing with­in the USA chart and its rela­tion­ship to the plan­et Mer­cury, which is the plan­et that rules com­mu­ni­ca­tions, the mind, and thought forms. So, this shows a very intense ener­gy form at the out­set of the USA’s con­sti­tu­tion and struc­ture to do with com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and the pas­sion­ate belief we would have in our thought-forms, ideas, and beliefs.

It is some­what quite well known in many cir­cles that Amer­i­cans can be a lit­tle off putting because we think we are right, all the time. We think our way is the best way and the only way; and that is where we make a mis­take. We do have great ideals and great aspi­ra­tions, to be this great exper­i­ment where all peo­ples come togeth­er and blend togeth­er. But then we our­selves can fall into dog­ma­tism and rigid­i­ty in our own think­ing when we press the case for being all know­ing or hav­ing the only answer, which is not true.

Yet, because Plu­to rules trans­for­ma­tion, rebirth and renew­al and Mer­cury brings the mind to bear, this pow­er that the USA does pos­sess is one that is very direct­ly tied to our pow­er in terms of delv­ing deep­er than oth­er peo­ples might do to under­cov­er under­ly­ing truth. That is why this coun­try has always excelled in terms of research and trans­for­ma­tion­al knowl­edge. I would say that with Plu­to ris­ing and Mer­cury oppo­site in our 8th house, and the fact that Plu­to rules the 8th sign of Scor­pio, I would say the USA is a very “Alchem­i­cal Country”.

Alche­my
What does that mean? Alche­my, like our mod­ern term of chem­istry, is how every­thing is made and cre­at­ed through com­bin­ing with oth­er things. Noth­ing exists by itself; every­thing is a com­bi­na­tion with some­thing else to make some­thing greater. And, in that process we elic­it growth and change and the unfold­ment of the entire cos­mos, (as in atoms devel­op­ing into larg­er atoms, and mol­e­cules devel­op­ing into larg­er mol­e­cules, and life­forms devel­op­ing and mul­ti­ply­ing, all through com­bi­na­tions and elic­i­ta­tions of growth and change). So, this is the very pow­er that dri­ves life itself. It is quite fun­da­men­tal, and one could say that in our coun­try we are dis­cov­er­ing the secrets of life (and oth­er coun­tries are as well), which is very amaz­ing (and scary).

But still, what does it mean for us now as a nation to be deal­ing with this Plu­to tran­sit over Mer­cury, what might it tell us? Well it is mak­ing us reex­am­ine, (as Plu­to march­es through our sec­ond house and lines up with Mer­cury), and deal with this ques­tion of our sacred space and each per­son­’s con­scious­ness; and it reminds us that we may mis­use that pow­er if we are not care­ful, when we try to force ideas upon one anoth­er, or one group to anoth­er, so that peo­ple become obsessed with their think­ing and nar­rowed in their under­stand­ing. Then, rather than hold­ing truth and delv­ing to a greater truth through humil­i­ty and open­ness to a greater under­stand­ing, we end up try­ing to beat each oth­er up with our points of view and “truth”, which is cer­tain­ly hap­pen­ing out there in all dif­fer­ent forms and medi­ums in our world right now.

What hap­pens is that nobody is lis­ten­ing, and every­body is shout­ing at one anoth­er, and we do not find the truth because it gets drowned out in all this noise. So, there is a need for all of us to step back as indi­vid­u­als and take con­trol of our own minds; we need to see how our thoughts and ideas are being swayed and pushed by forces bend­ing them beyond our under­stand­ing. And this holds true not just for thoughts but also for our val­ues, because this is the House of the USA val­ues. Of course we all know and have heard about how our tastes and long­ings, our fears and our hopes, are being shaped by oth­ers who are gath­er­ing all this data on us, and they are learn­ing how to shape our own thoughts and aspi­ra­tions and desires and buy­ing habits, they are shap­ing our val­ues through algo­rithms and all this big data.

Val­ue of a Nation
And again, that is what I would want us to con­sid­er, that if the 2nd house is the House of Val­ue: what is the val­ue of a nation? I’ve talked about this many times, and many peo­ple would con­sid­er in a tra­di­tion­al house chart of a nation, that it is that country’s stocks and bonds, and oil and coal and gas, and all the nat­ur­al resources, and that is the wealth and pros­per­i­ty of that nation. And though I would grant, that on a phys­i­cal lev­el there are phys­i­cal facts that can make one nation have more of these so-called “nat­ur­al resources” than anoth­er. But what I would pre­fer to focus upon, giv­en that we’re deal­ing with humans, and look­ing at things spir­i­tu­al­ly, is that the real source of val­ue of course in any­thing is Spirit.

And there­fore, the val­ues of a nation would then come from its peo­ple, in terms of deal­ing with the human con­di­tion. There­fore we would look at this type of hier­ar­chy of val­ues in terms of our expe­ri­ence of one anoth­er as human, and how we work towards bring­ing out the val­ue and self-worth and lead­ing to the self-ful­fill­ment of every per­son in this nation (of course even in this world) in order to reach the high­est lev­el of a cul­ture and an expe­ri­ence for one and all.

So, these nat­ur­al resources can have val­ue, cer­tain­ly. And what is of val­ue to any cul­ture can change. Obvi­ous­ly, if you are in a cer­tain kind of agrar­i­an cul­ture cer­tain things are use­ful to you. But if you are in a very indus­tri­al kind of cul­ture oth­er things that look like they were use­less now take on great val­ue, like min­er­als and such. So, it varies our expe­ri­ence of the val­ues of this world around us, but our fun­da­men­tal val­ue, the source of val­ue, is the val­ue we have for and between one another.

And so, this is what is going through a trans­for­ma­tion right now as we address this ques­tion of how we work this notion of val­ue in our life. We real­ize that indeed, though we saw humans hav­ing val­ue by the sweat of their labor, and com­bin­ing with var­i­ous resources they were able to pro­duce added val­ue through that effort, (and some were then able to accu­mu­late that val­ue to build larg­er orga­ni­za­tions and insti­tu­tions of value).

Com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of Humans
What is our val­ue, what is your val­ue, in this Amer­i­can econ­o­my? We have come to real­ize this: We are the prod­uct now! There is a whole indus­try devot­ed to exam­in­ing us, to col­lect­ing our “data”, in order to fig­ure out our wants and desires, our fears and long­ings, through all these algo­rithms, so that they can “sell us”. We are what they are sell­ing to others.

So, we have to say: “wait a minute, what is my val­ue and why are you using it in this fash­ion to dri­ve our expe­ri­ences and make us go in this direc­tion ver­sus that direc­tion?” This is a call­ing for all of us to think about how we hold sacred our val­ue and wish to pro­tect our pri­va­cy to what­ev­er extent we wish, and open in oth­er ways to every extent we wish, because these ques­tions have not been addressed but need to be addressed at this time. Because oth­ers may be abus­ing us as a val­ue, and that they seem­ing­ly can own us, and slice up and dice up this infor­ma­tion and share with oth­ers for mon­e­tary gain.

Those are some things that are sort of swirling in my mind about this ques­tion of val­ue for our country.

His­to­ry of Pluto/Mercury Tran­sits in USA Chart
But again, what is also inter­est­ing his­tor­i­cal­ly is to look at oth­er points in his­to­ry in which Plu­to made this align­ment to Mer­cury. And, as I have men­tioned before, there were two such times. The pre­vi­ous two align­ments of Plu­to to Mer­cury was 1933 to 1937, and 1981 to 1983.

1930s
And so, I said to myself well let us com­pare those peri­ods and see what hap­pened at each of those moments. Well, obvi­ous­ly in the ear­ly 1930s, it was the begin­ning of the Great Depres­sion, the world came almost to a com­plete stop, and Amer­i­ca was tee­ter­ing at that moment between going one way and anoth­er. Some oth­er solu­tions through­out the world at that time was a fusion of cap­i­tal­ism and the state in terms of Fas­cism; and some went oth­er way towards a fusion of the state and the econ­o­my with Social­ism and Communism.

Amer­i­ca sort of found a way through, not doing one or the oth­er but try­ing to hold togeth­er you might say the labor move­ment and the cap­i­tal­ists and forge an agree­ment of how we would share the ben­e­fits and pro­tect peo­ple but also allow for rea­son­able growth. And there was a mod­el set in place then in the 1930s into the late 1930s that held until the late 1970s. And if we look at the eco­nom­ic mod­el­ing of that, and how the wealth was shared in our econ­o­my from the late 1940s, let’s say from late 40s after the war on up to 1980, the lines of dif­fer­ent income seg­ments in both the bot­tom per­centiles that the top per­centiles went in step with each oth­er, steadi­ly climb­ing so that pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and the gains and the wealth was being dis­trib­uted more or less fair­ly among the dif­fer­ent sec­tors. One could argue how fair, but fair­ly equitable.

1980s
But when we get to 1980 the lines com­plete­ly diverge. And I said to myself, “isn’t that strik­ing, that we were hav­ing this increas­ing­ly grow­ing but fair econ­o­my that broke down, what changed?” What changed in 1980 was the so-called Rea­gan Rev­o­lu­tion, where we cut the mar­gin­al rates of tax­es dra­mat­i­cal­ly; we were promised by cut­ting tax­es we would have extra­or­di­nary growth. George Bush the senior at that time, run­ning against Rea­gan for pres­i­den­tial office, said it is “voodoo eco­nom­ics”. He was right, because the promis­es of great growth pay­ing for the tax cuts and every­body would be made whole, every­body would ben­e­fit from this, did not pan out and for the next 40 years, from 1980 to now 2020, these lines have been diverg­ing. And the major­i­ty of peo­ple have had their incomes flat­ten­ing out, and their wealth decrease. And many of them were wiped out in 2008 when econ­o­my was crashed again by the finan­cial “titans” who sup­pos­ed­ly run these things; they broke the eco­nom­ic machine and it was nev­er fixed or made whole.

From 1980 to 2020, we have been expe­ri­enc­ing a grow­ing unfair shar­ing of our wealth that we all pro­duce. In fact in terms of the share of total US income held by the top 1%, it reached its high­est pro­por­tion right before the great crash in 1929, it got to its low­est lev­el and fairest dis­tri­b­u­tion of US income was reached in the late 70s, and ever since then it’s been climbing.

Inequal­i­ty in America
So this is part of what’s dri­ving our divi­sions now, (there are many oth­er changes that took place in terms of eco­nom­ic laws being changed, not just mar­gin­al tax rates, in terms of how invest­ment banks oper­at­ed, how dif­fer­ent things were hap­pen­ing in the econ­o­my) that led to a skew­ing of out­comes. But one fun­da­men­tal fact is, that unlike oth­er advanced indus­tri­al coun­tries, we changed our tax struc­ture in a dra­mat­ic way that dis­al­lowed the gen­er­al shar­ing of wealth in this coun­try and skewed it to the top 1%, to the top .1%, even the top 5%, and so the rest of us were left to strug­gle more and more to make ends meet.

And so, what is hap­pen­ing here in 2020 is we are going to have this con­ver­sa­tion again about what is right. We should be look­ing at what hap­pened in the 1930s and com­pare it to what hap­pened the 1980s and see where we are now in the 2020s and say, “can we do bet­ter than this, how can we do bet­ter than this”?

This is part of the con­ver­sa­tion that is cer­tain­ly hap­pen­ing in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic side; it should be hap­pen­ing on the Repub­li­can side too, because if these increas­ing divides con­tin­ue this coun­try can­not be held togeth­er and we will divide up and fight one anoth­er or it will be imposed upon us, and we should agree to agree as to what is fair.

That is cer­tain­ly an espe­cial­ly impor­tant con­ver­sa­tion, that will be the con­ver­sa­tion here, as the 2020s begin. Just like we had this same reset eco­nom­i­cal­ly in the 1930s and again in the 1980s, count on there being a major reset of US under­stand­ing and rela­tion­ship to how we han­dle our wealth and val­ue, how there­fore we treat our peo­ple in this upcom­ing period.

Sat­urn and Pluto 
What is also strik­ing about this to my mind, is that at the same time that Plu­to is going over our Mer­cury, Sat­urn now every 29 years comes around the solar sys­tem, that’s how long it takes to make a com­plete cir­cuit of the solar sys­tem,  and this is the year that it’s once again lin­ing up with the USA Plu­to. The very plan­et we have been talk­ing about. Sat­urn lin­ing up a Plu­to is deal­ing with ques­tions posed by Sat­urn which is about ques­tions of author­i­ty, and how we struc­ture things in terms of, in this case, state orga­ni­za­tions or busi­ness orga­ni­za­tions or what­ev­er orga­ni­za­tion we are talk­ing about.

Sat­urn is in a sense the ruler and the leader, and the insti­tu­tion itself, the struc­ture of author­i­ty; and Plu­to is the issue of the will. So how does that author­i­ty wield the will that is put at its dis­pos­al. Again, I always say the will is this ener­gy that we have cre­at­ed by hold­ing our­selves with­in a con­tain­er and then direct that ener­gy out­ward to serve that enti­ty, and as long as whether you’re the head of a fam­i­ly, or the head of a com­mu­ni­ty, or the head of a com­pa­ny or coun­try, as long as you serve the ends of that enti­ty then you are safe and can wield that pow­er correctly.

But when you seize it for your own use or mis­use that author­i­ty, that is when you are brought down. What is hap­pen­ing here with Sat­urn going over the USA Plu­to is that we are deal­ing with this issue of how author­i­ties are wield­ing their will appro­pri­ate­ly, nei­ther over or under doing that, or are they in need of being restruc­tured because they have abused that author­i­ty, because the struc­ture or author­i­ties have let us down, which is cer­tain­ly a big com­plaint of late.

His­to­ry of Sat­urn Con­junct Pluto
So, in look­ing at the times that this hap­pened before it will be about every 29 years, the years that come out are strik­ing. It is 1932, that was when Roo­sevelt comes into office to try to heal the coun­try and move it on a path of good growth again, which took quite some time. 1961, when Kennedy came in and brought about cer­tain reforms and changes that that were fore­short­ened by his assas­si­na­tion. 1991, we go from the years of Rea­gan and Bush to the years of Bill Clin­ton. And now, it is hap­pen­ing again in 2020.

Each one seems to be a piv­otal moment in the rela­tion­ship between pow­er and the author­i­ty, between the state and how it wields its pow­er. So, there is a great strug­gle over who will wield pow­er and how pow­er should be exer­cised in our coun­try from the local lev­el to the state lev­el to the nation­al lev­el. In each peri­od, we had to address these ques­tions of how we wield author­i­ty and pow­er: Are the author­i­ties wield­ing it cor­rect­ly, have they done right by their office? These were the ques­tions in the ear­ly 1930s and the ear­ly 1960s and the ear­ly 1990s. In 2020, these very same ques­tions regard­ing the will and the author­i­ty con­front our coun­try once again.

Tran­script of Radio Show: The look ahead for 2020 

For today I thought we would look ahead and see what is com­ing. But of course in look­ing ahead we are always look­ing back because, unlike our civ­il cal­en­dar which we begin on Jan­u­ary 1 and ends on Decem­ber 31^st and every­thing is encap­su­lat­ed with­in that year, the plan­e­tary motions, being what they are, are rather longer than that. For many of them, they last tens if not hun­dreds of years; their “year”, if you will, can be as long as 250 years rough­ly with Plu­to, and 170 years with Nep­tune to get around the solar sys­tem once. Their align­ments are reg­u­lar­ly spaced out with regards to them­selves, and with regards to any indi­vid­ual chart, whether it is a per­son or com­pa­ny or coun­try. A lot of these phe­nom­e­na are what we call “long wave phe­nom­e­na” of the out­er plan­ets, of Uranus and Nep­tune and Plu­to. We con­sid­er them to be the fun­da­men­tal “beats”, set­ting the tone for a peri­od or an age, and so they are espe­cial­ly important.

Then we look at more inter­me­di­ate changes indi­cat­ed by the plan­e­tary motions of Sat­urn, two of those inter­me­di­ate plan­ets, but Sat­urn for itself and then Jupiter of course also; and then the inner plan­ets are much quick­er and get around with­in a year or so if not sooner.

Plu­to
So, we would tend to want to focus on these larg­er wave phe­nom­e­na and work our way in. Again, start­ing with the plan­et that I have been talk­ing about quite a bit now since the mid-2000s, antic­i­pat­ing its move into Capri­corn, and now it has been there for some time , it has been there since 2008 and remains there till 2024, we are deal­ing with Plu­to in Capricorn.

Capri­corn
And it is always impor­tant to under­stand, how do we derive this infor­ma­tion, where does this come from? Capri­corn is the sign of insti­tu­tions, that we take human needs such as they are, because we are deal­ing with humans obvi­ous­ly, and as opposed to spon­ta­neous­ly try­ing to meet the needs on the fly, moment to moment, we learn to sys­tem­atize and orga­nize things and cre­ate struc­tures with­in a fam­i­ly, with­in a com­mu­ni­ty, with­in a com­pa­ny or coun­try, region or coun­try, or inter­na­tion­al­ly, we cre­ate insti­tu­tions that serve to hold these ways of meet­ing needs and offer­ing ser­vices or mean­ing in life that last for a long time.

Giv­en that at the core of every­thing down here, through­out the whole uni­verse, every speck and minor part to the largest sys­tems are all made of one thing fun­da­men­tal­ly, Spir­it; and Spirit’s imper­a­tive is to become, to grow, which means to change. No mat­ter what sys­tem or struc­ture or econ­o­my or cul­ture we cre­ate may last for a very long time, but it does have an “end date”, where things have to be bro­ken down so new forms can take their place. Much like mov­ing from life to life, the spir­it leaves the body, it is not a death but it is a release from that phys­i­cal frame, which could no longer con­tain the spir­it and the need for that spir­it to con­tin­ue to grow.

Sim­i­lar­ly here, with Plu­to going through Capri­corn, since Capri­corn rules insti­tu­tions, (and I have not­ed this by look­ing at his­to­ry, and I was his­to­ri­an long ago and stud­ied many dif­fer­ent approach­es) and when I came across Astrol­o­gy I won­dered how it might pro­vide a way of fram­ing his­to­ry. And it was remark­able how these plan­e­tary motions weav­ing with one anoth­er, char­ac­ter­ize or sort of explained in an Astro­log­i­cal way what was the pur­pose of this change that a cul­ture or civ­i­liza­tion was going through.

Plu­to and the Will
It is rel­e­vant for help­ing us under­stand where we are right now. As Capri­corn rules insti­tu­tions, Plu­to is the plan­et, that I say, is the prin­ci­ple of the will, which is one of the three aspects of the divine with­in all of us. The will is there to cre­ate the bound­aries with­in our­selves, where­by we con­tain our­selves and hold our­selves with will, and pro­tect our­selves from any kind of tres­pass­ing or vio­la­tion. And equal­ly, restrain us from try­ing to over­ly influ­ence or affect anoth­er, we want to do this freely and will­ing­ly and choose to work togeth­er, not force our­selves upon one anoth­er. That is the great spir­i­tu­al crime of Tres­pass­ing, which of course, while it pre­vails on this plan­et, we have hell on earth. And when enough peo­ple respect the bound­aries one to anoth­er and help each oth­er, to lift one anoth­er up, and become more cen­tered and will­ful peo­ple in a self-con­trol­ling way, then we begin to estab­lish heav­en on earth.

The pur­pose of the will is to make these bound­aries and struc­tures, but went these Plu­ton­ian ener­gies are mov­ing through a sign it tends to break­down and refor­mu­late that sign. So, Plu­to in Capri­corn, again from 2008 to 2024, like it was from the 1760s to the 1770s, and like the ear­ly 1500s, we have wit­nessed peri­ods where, as it is now, a time when the polit­i­cal, cul­tur­al, and eco­nom­ic order breaks down. Why?  Because it has out­lived its pur­pose. The things it erect­ed to solve cer­tain prob­lems now become the very imped­i­ments to future growth for Spir­it. It must be released so a new form can take hold.

Pre­servers, Cre­ators, Destroyers
We are see­ing insti­tu­tion­al break­downs, from the fam­i­ly on up to the nation­al and transna­tion­al struc­tures, because we are at the end of an age and the birth of a new one. So, as I say repeat­ed­ly, there are peo­ple on the plan­et now who are work­ing might­i­ly to pre­serve what can and should be in our cul­ture and cul­tures; as well as those who are trans­form­ing those mech­a­nisms and means of meet­ing needs and build­ing new insti­tu­tions or reform­ing the old ones; and then the peo­ple who are just destroy­ing, that is their pur­pose, is to expose the cor­rupt, the rot, and the inef­fec­tive­ness of these old struc­tures, as is true, and they take it down or break it apart. Every­body is play­ing their role here, in var­i­ous fashions.

This is the first thing we would con­sid­er, and since Plu­to con­tin­ues to go through Capri­corn now, we would want to see what it is affect­ing most strong­ly at any one time. What we are find­ing right now is that peo­ple are feel­ing this tremen­dous pres­sure of norms being bro­ken, and wills being bro­ken and they are being swayed in var­i­ous ways, through evok­ing our pas­sions and fears, to act in ways that are not as ele­vat­ed in con­scious­ness as they should be, and then we react to each oth­er and break apart from one anoth­er into these var­i­ous group­ings. Basi­cal­ly, it is fear that is dri­ving those who go to the low­er com­mon denom­i­na­tor or level.

Plu­to and the USA Mercury
What is hap­pen­ing this year in the USA chart with this? I spoke about this last year because things build in like a Bell curve over time. An ener­gy form wax­es in and reach­es a cli­max, then fades out again. And we were under this approach­ing ener­gy form of Plu­to com­ing over the USA Mer­cury all dur­ing 2019, and now it is ful­ly in place in 2020. It is a bat­tle with the Will and the Mind; and how we  deal with the neces­si­ty to hold, as a sacred space, each per­son­’s con­scious­ness, ver­sus the mis­use of will and pow­er to sway and influ­ence minds, whether it be “one on one” with­in a fam­i­ly or in groups, or larg­er group­ings of indi­vid­u­als. Peo­ple try­ing to use their pow­er or becom­ing inflamed and pas­sion­ate about some­thing, not try­ing to try to con­vince some­one through rea­soned debate, but real­ly try­ing to force the issue. There is a break­ing down of what we should respect, ulti­mate­ly, which is the sacred space of the oth­er. We should be respect­ing their con­scious­ness. You can­not force truth upon anoth­er; you can only elic­it their growth to reach a high­er lev­el of under­stand­ing, because the truth is all with­in us.

But right now this pow­er of sway­ing minds and hearts, whether through social media and the algo­rithms, whether dif­fer­ent peo­ple spout­ing through their var­i­ous vehi­cles of influ­enc­ing in media in dif­fer­ent forums, are push­ing out ideas and beliefs and sway­ing peo­ple to their side or against oth­ers. We are expe­ri­enc­ing a break­ing down of the integri­ty and sacred­ness of indi­vid­ual con­scious­ness, by hav­ing this forc­ing of ideas and beliefs, and by doing so we are break­ing the most impor­tant fac­ul­ty of “crit­i­cal rea­son”. That fac­ul­ty of rea­son is essen­tial, to build and hold our own minds true and fig­ure out things for our­selves and share with oth­ers. But when it becomes bro­ken, as it has been, there is no com­mon under­stand­ing, and peo­ple are being swayed by appeals to sort of “half-think­ing” or “wrong way think­ing” as opposed to clear­er thinking.

Plu­to to Mer­cury Historically
We have come through times like this before in the USA his­to­ry. We look at oth­er times that Plu­to lined up with Mer­cury, the last two times were 1933 to 1937 and 1981 to 1983. Both were crit­i­cal moments in the US his­to­ry, for vis­it­ing again and look­ing again at how we struc­ture our eco­nom­ic lives and well-being. The 30s with the New Deal and in the 1980s with the Rea­gan Rev­o­lu­tion, and it is inter­est­ing because in the US chart the Mer­cury and Plu­to are actu­al­ly lined up with each oth­er from the 2nd House of val­ues to the 8th House of col­lec­tive values.

Wealth and Inequality
And so it makes sense that we would, with­in the con­ver­sa­tion of how we hold our minds sacred at a time like this and try to help peo­ple pro­tect their bound­aries, that we are also deal­ing with the issue of how is it that we allo­cate and deal with the wealth of this coun­try and the val­ues of its peo­ple being embod­ied in that, and how they share in that. Our big, big ques­tion of the moment in in terms of our cul­ture and how divid­ed we are in terms of the dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth and what that means for eco­nom­ic growth and spir­i­tu­al well-being, are very big ques­tions that are front and cen­ter, as they were in the ear­ly 1930s as they were in the ear­ly 1980s. So here we are again. It is nev­er the same con­ver­sa­tion, of course, as plan­ets are lin­ing up, every­thing else is mov­ing around, oth­er plan­ets are in dif­fer­ent places, so there is no exact­ness in terms of the con­fig­u­ra­tion. But the rhyming and the rea­son­ing behind it is remark­ably sim­i­lar, if not the same.

Nep­tune
We will talk again more about this Plu­to and Mer­cury, and I want to get to all your calls. So, the sec­ond most impor­tant fea­ture in any year is of course what is Nep­tune doing? In an inter­est­ing way, Nep­tune also is going through a spe­cial sign, its own sign from 2011 to 2026. The  last time it did this was 1848 to 1862, a very crit­i­cal time, espe­cial­ly in Amer­i­ca, where there was a ris­ing wave of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and con­cern for the great sin of slav­ery, lead­ing to the “War of the States” over that very issue.

Nep­tune is the plan­et that, in a way, counter to Plu­to which estab­lish­es bound­aries in the sacred­ness of each indi­vid­ual, in their own sacred spir­i­tu­al space, and then shar­ing their spaces with oth­ers, Nep­tune is that counter that says yes, but the force that binds this whole uni­verse togeth­er, the force that breathes and gives life to all life and all con­scious­ness, because the whole uni­verse is con­scious, just on dif­fer­ent lev­els, is the one fun­da­men­tal val­ue or one fun­da­men­tal force, known as Uncon­di­tion­al Love.

So, Nep­tune’s role is to help us dis­solve beyond the bound­aries that are fram­ing things and see things more inclu­sive­ly, to see every­thing is part of one great life. So, when Nep­tune is strong it leads to a greater ris­ing in com­pas­sion and social move­ments and visu­al­iza­tions and cre­ativ­i­ty. So it is a won­drous time for peo­ple to become more per­cep­tive, more intu­itive and see things beyond what they were con­scious­ly see­ing; to intu­it and appre­hend things, just beyond the range of our words and knowl­edge as a con­crete fact.

But it also equal­ly, every plan­et has its neg­a­tive. Where Plu­to can lead to the rise of peo­ple abus­ing will and using guilt and manip­u­la­tion to dri­ve the sto­ry, as opposed to try­ing to help peo­ple take con­trol of them­selves. Nep­tune also when mis­ap­plied leads to out rise of delu­sion and escapism and con­fu­sion and decep­tion, these are the neg­a­tive influ­ences of Nep­tune in Pisces. Because we are now mov­ing in a place where there are less bound­aries, and so what is real­ly “real”, how do we deter­mine this?

So we will have moments of great illu­mi­na­tion and clear-see­ing; but also be grap­pling with all these sort of half-truths and things that do not make sense, and we can­not make sense of it, and “what do we believe”, “how do we know what we know” are impor­tant questions.

What is True
I would say we will start with the fun­da­men­tals, start with what we know to be absolute­ly true. Start with the core prin­ci­ples that have been there to guide human­i­ty from the begin­ning of time, in all the ancient teach­ings and all the ancient wis­dom, the sto­ry does not change, the Truth does not change, because they are Truths! We have to look with­in our hearts to find them and see them mir­rored in the world around us, in the plan­ets, in the plant life, and the ani­mal life, and in us, the truths are embod­ied in real life and liv­ing in spir­it. There are ways to get to them, always. “Walk in beau­ty”, Live in beau­ty”, “Be lov­ing” and it is shown to you.

This is the path. But it is a very con­fus­ing time, and so we are try­ing to pierce through that con­fu­sion to see what is real­ly “real”.

Uranus
Then we have Uranus, mov­ing through Tau­rus, from 2018 to 2026 also. The last time it did that was back in the 1930s, which is inter­est­ing. And, before that it was in Tau­rus in the late 1850s, inter­est­ing­ly. Uranus is the plan­et that deals with the need for each of us has to become a unique instance of spir­it, to become a free­think­ing being, to have a freer and freer mind, because we are on this path of self-con­scious­ness, of self-aware­ness, and so we need to free our minds con­stant­ly and be think­ing as a cre­ative spirit.

We want to lib­er­ate our minds and in this case Uranus’ influ­ence is mov­ing through the sign of Tau­rus, the Sign of Val­ue. There is a call now to renew our val­ues, to come up with new approach­es to: What is the val­ue of me; what is the val­ue of you; what is the val­ue of all that we have here? We need to real­ize that the way we had approached val­ues since the 1930s and ear­ly 1940s, that it now needs to be revis­it­ed once again as we restate and form a new sense of pro­por­tion­al­i­ty and val­ue in the world.

Sat­urn in Aquarius
So there these three beats, (Plu­to, Nep­tune, Uranus) mov­ing through and act­ing for many years here, and we will talk about oth­er align­ments that they make. Anoth­er big change com­ing up this year, we will talk a lot about it lat­er on the shows, is Sat­urn begins to make its move into the next sign, from Capri­corn where it has been since the end of 2017, and now moves dur­ing the course of 2020 back and forth from the end of Capri­corn into Aquar­ius and back again. Final­ly lin­ing up in Aquar­ius to stay for over two years in Decem­ber 2020.

We are mov­ing to a time where we go from the “tests of respon­si­bil­i­ty” and the “tests of self-ful­fill­ment” (Capri­corn), and tests of insti­tu­tions, to “tests of social con­scious­ness and com­mu­ni­ty”. So now we will see us all hav­ing to con­sid­er once again: “what is my hope and dream? My hope, my dream is to be hap­py with those who I can share this with, with those who make me hap­py and my hap­pi­ness is theirs.”

It is all about com­mu­ni­ty and friend­ship; it is about com­pan­ion­ship and social con­scious­ness. This is what Sat­urn will now stir up as a test for all of us. The ques­tion will be: Are you par­tic­i­pat­ing in a mean­ing­ful way to pre­serve your way of life, to make for a bet­ter future for your­self and your fel­low trav­el­ers; are you are you in this world as a mem­ber of a com­mu­ni­ty, or com­mu­ni­ties in a sig­nif­i­cant way? That will be very much on point.

Jupiter
Jupiter con­tin­ues to move through Capri­corn now, it entered in Decem­ber of 2019, and will catch up to Sat­urn in Aquar­ius at the end of the year, Decem­ber 2020. That is a sig­nif­i­cant align­ment indeed. Because Jupiter and Sat­urn repeat­ed­ly align every 20 years; it is one of the prin­ci­ple time­keep­ing ele­ments astrologers have used to look at a series of steps in a civ­i­liza­tion before it changes into anoth­er one, which hap­pens peri­od­i­cal­ly whether from inter­nal devel­op­ments and dynam­ics or exter­nal shocks and challenges.

The Great Mutation
For the last 200 years we have had Jupiter and Sat­urn form­ing con­junc­tions in Earth, a time of mate­ri­al­iza­tion. Because this is what they do, Jupiter and Sat­urn will repeat­ed­ly line up in one ele­ment or anoth­er for 200 years, and when they move into the next ele­ment, in this case air, for the next 200 years it is called the Great Muta­tion. And it seems to peri­odize times in his­to­ry where one ele­ment or the oth­er is dom­i­nant. So, this age we are com­ing out of was an age of man­i­fes­ta­tion, of earth­i­ness, of the phys­i­cal world and becom­ing ever more physicalized.

The next age is this age of air, the age of ide­al­iza­tion, often not­ed for great devel­op­ments in thought and rea­son and under­stand­ing. That is what is going to take hold here and last for the next 200 years. It is excit­ing, and many astrologers are think­ing about what this means for us. But cer­tain­ly, changes are com­ing giv­en all these series of alignments.

So, what I want to do in the next few shows is go into more detail, maybe about Plu­to in Capri­corn and how it is play­ing out in the world now, and Nep­tune and Uranus. But also talk about the par­tic­u­lar align­ments oth­er charts, like the USA chart which not only has Plu­to going over Mer­cury but also quite inter­est­ing­ly, Sat­urn is going over Plu­to, and I will take a look at what that might be in future shows.

Sat­urn to Plu­to in USA chart
It is inter­est­ing, that every time Sat­urn con­juncts Plu­to (in the USA Chart), it seems to mark an espe­cial­ly impor­tant peri­od. The last few times was again back in 1932, and then in 1961 and in 1991, and now. So, every 29 to 30 years, this Saturn/Pluto align­ment is sig­nif­i­cant for us. Because in the USA chart the plan­et Plu­to is the ris­ing plan­et; it is the plan­et that sort of defines us. We are a trans­for­ma­tion­al nation, and we look at the val­ues that we have and hold, because Plu­to is in our sec­ond house, and we are con­stant­ly rework­ing these val­ues, con­stant­ly trans­form­ing them, remak­ing and remold­ing things.

We are a coun­try that is deeply involved in what I call the “alchem­i­cal work”, of Alche­my. We are not­ed for this, in terms of our capa­bil­i­ty as a nation dri­ven by this pow­er. When plan­ets are going over that point in our chart it is some­thing to quick­ly take note and ask, what does this mean now for the Amer­i­can story?

This is an inter­est­ing expe­ri­ence that we are hav­ing now, because it is about Sat­urn, which is the struc­ture with Plu­to, which is the will; you could say it is about Author­i­ty and the Will, Sat­urn to Plu­to. It is a big issue each time Sat­urn aligns with Plu­to, but espe­cial­ly their con­junc­tion every 29 years. So, we will be talk­ing about that some more.

Again if you have ques­tions you can cer­tain­ly ask me in the show now, or send me an email, and I am going to be writ­ing quite a bit about this in the blog in the next few weeks.

To Know Thyself

The Sto­ry of the Uni­verse is the sto­ry of Spir­it. It is the sto­ry of the unman­i­fest becom­ing Man­i­fest, of absence being filled with Pres­ence, of dark­ness being revealed as the Light. It is in so many ways the sto­ry of the One, “whose cir­cum­fer­ence is nowhere and whose cen­ter is every­where”, and that One becom­ing the many who are the body, the soul, and the mind of that very One.

This sto­ry is your sto­ry; it is you and I and all who came before us. We have made who and what we are by all the many lives and our sto­ries that we shared, by all these mind-forms that we made and formed into one anoth­er and into our world.

Today we cel­e­brate the next gift of Spir­it in the Astro­log­i­cal cal­en­dar, today we all begin our once a year jour­ney through the sto­ry that is the Sign of Gem­i­ni. The mean­ings and mes­sages of all the signs are ever-present with­in your con­sti­tu­tion, as you real­ly are made of all of them, just as is all of Cre­ation, as is the One.

But it is also true that each sign will shine a lit­tle stronger in its own very month. So, the ques­tion you must ask your­self now, “what does the Sign of Gem­i­ni mean to me, what does this sto­ry mean to me”? The shin­ing sto­ry of Gem­i­ni is about one of your most pre­cious gifts of spir­it, your Self-Aware­ness, and your fac­ul­ty of Intelligence.

The Ancient Teach­ings hold the Ori­gin Sto­ry: All of Cre­ation, all of Spir­it, in what­ev­er form it may be, is Life and is Con­scious. The very essen­tial essence of Spir­it, of each and every spark of the Divine, of every sin­gle Mon­ad of Spir­it is to grow, to become, and to unfold ever more the inher­ent­ly, almost infi­nite poten­tial of that Mon­ad of Spir­it. Tru­ly, it is said that we come from the stars, and our des­tiny some day is to become a Star.

One of the most pre­cious moments in the becom­ing of each spark of the Divine is when the Light of Self-Aware­ness is reached. The Sto­ry is the much the same through­out the cos­mos, and the ver­sion told of this for us is held by the “myth” of the bringers of the “Flame of Self-Consciousness”.

Once upon a time, the “gods” walked among us; it was the appoint­ed time when we were ready to “wake up”. These ancient myths and tales speak of Prometheus, Lucifer, Quet­zal­coatl, Loki and the Kumaras; what­ev­er their names, they came with a gift, the Light of Self-Aware­ness, the “gift of the gods”, which had also been bestowed upon them long, long ago. This is the Rib­bon of Light and Love, that streams through the hier­ar­chies of Cre­ation, hold­ing the Uni­verse togeth­er as the one Mind of the One.

With this gift of self-aware­ness, with the dawn­ing of objec­tive con­scious­ness, the next step in your jour­ney was tak­en, as you became aware through these twin pil­lars of Gem­i­ni of the way of the Uni­verse, of the dual­i­ties of cre­ation, of Spir­it and Mat­ter, of Sub­ject and Object, of “this and that”, which began most sim­ply for you as “I am that, I am not that”. And it was this, this unceas­ing, inces­sant need to expe­ri­ence Cre­ation in all its com­plex­i­ties, diver­si­ties, cor­re­spon­dences and con­nec­tions that stirred your glo­ri­ous and self-lumi­nous seed to sprout, you had to know, you had to under­stand “how all of this, how all of that”, is.

And, so what was awak­ened in you was that “sparkle in your eye”, that unquench­able thirst, that need to know your­self and your world, and so the lamp was lit that is known as your “Intel­li­gence”.

Intel­li­gence is part of this gift of spir­it, the fac­ul­ty of com­par­ing-con­trast­ing, of con­sid­er­ing the dual­i­ties that you expe­ri­ence as Subject/Object, and of all the divi­sions with­in and with­out, as your spir­it cease­less­ly seeks to find a way out of sep­a­ra­tion and divi­sion and find your way back to the One. The pow­er of Intel­li­gence is the abil­i­ty to see a sit­u­a­tion more com­plete­ly, to see it whole and make it whole. Between one way of see­ing or approach­ing a prob­lem or ques­tion, and anoth­er way of see­ing the issue at hand, the Intel­li­gence seeks for the “Third Way”, the path that usu­al­ly encom­pass­es some­thing from both those oth­er ways, and by so doing ris­es above them too. And, although you may cer­tain­ly do this by rea­son­ing with­in and for one­self, the process is most cer­tain­ly quick­ened when two or more of you put your minds togeth­er and find a bet­ter way.

Yes, your Intel­li­gence and Know­ing can­not real­ly func­tion by you and for your­self alone or apart from those with whom you jour­ney. As with all of Spir­it, as in all of Life, we are part of a greater whole, which is also part of an even Greater Whole. We are made by and through our inter­re­la­tion­ships with one anoth­er. The way you devel­op and engage your fac­ul­ty of rea­son­ing, an absolute neces­si­ty for your intel­li­gence to func­tion, is through you being able to com­pare, share, con­trast and cor­rect your thought-forms by and through your inter­ac­tions with many, many others.

This Truth of the “Way of Know­ing” is revealed in your very lan­guage. The word “Con­scious­ness” is made of two words, “Con” which means “Togeth­er” and “Scious­ness” which means “Know­ing”. Con­scious­ness means “Know­ing Together”!

Yes, this is your sto­ry, this is our story.

It is in this time of Gem­i­ni, and equal­ly so wher­ev­er Gem­i­ni is found in your own chart, it is here and there that you can­not help but won­der, “who, what, when, where and why?”

When you were born, the Uni­verse asked a question.

You are the answer.

The Key to Life, the Key to the King­dom of Light and Love, is this:

KNOW THYSELF!

Tran­script of Radio Show — Venus Ret­ro­grade & Dhar­ma in Gemini

Let us turn our atten­tion to the top­ic of today, which is actu­al­ly two, in that I would like to talk first about Venus and then talk about the nodes of the Moon.

Ret­ro­grade
When­ev­er Venus turns ret­ro­grade, and like all the plan­ets, except for the Sun and Moon which are not plan­ets, all plan­ets have this qual­i­ty of going ret­ro­grade. Which means for our pur­pos­es here on Earth, though all the plan­ets go around the Sun in the same direc­tion, they have the appear­ance for us on our plan­et to move back­wards against the back­drop of the stars for var­i­ous peri­ods of time.

Mer­cury and Venus, being inside the orbit of the Earth to the Sun, they “catch up” with us on the “inside track” and appear to loop around in space for that peri­od of ret­ro­grade, and then con­tin­ue on their mer­ry way.

Then for the Out­er Plan­ets, of Mars on out to Plu­to, we will pass them on the “inside track”, so that for a num­ber of months or many months, they will also ret­ro­grade. In fact, com­ing up this week we have Sat­urn turn­ing ret­ro­grade tomor­row (May 11), we have Venus turn­ing ret­ro­grade on Wednes­day the 13^th, and Jupiter turn­ing ret­ro­grade on the 14^th. So, this is a week with a lot of plan­ets turn­ing ret­ro­grade. I would just like to point out in terms of the out­er plan­ets like Sat­urn and Jupiter, it is because they are so close togeth­er now (in the sign of Capri­corn), that they are going ret­ro­grade at the same time.

Of course, we are prob­a­bly more famil­iar with Mer­cury going ret­ro­grade since we talk about it more fre­quent­ly because it hap­pens more often, at least three times a year. Mars goes ret­ro­grade about every two years, but all the out­er plan­ets will ret­ro­grade for sev­er­al months each year.

Venus Ret­ro­grade
For our pur­pos­es here, when­ev­er Venus turns ret­ro­grade, (and it does this about every 19 months, last­ing for about 40 days, which is an inter­est­ing num­ber because that num­ber is found in many spir­i­tu­al tra­di­tions), we are giv­en a very spe­cial oppor­tu­ni­ty, I would say, to also turn around, look with­in and re-exam­ine our val­ues which are inte­gral to our inner sen­si­bil­i­ties and for­ma­tive of our out­er qual­i­ties of being. Those val­ues held by the Avatar of Venus form our tastes and sen­si­bil­i­ties rang­ing from our phys­i­cal plea­sures, aes­thet­ic or artis­tic appre­ci­a­tions to our per­son­al love and social sen­si­bil­i­ties. Venus holds our likes (and dis­likes) with the things of this world, and with our affec­tions or antag­o­nisms with one another.

Tru­ly Venus, as the instru­ment of our order­ing or hier­ar­chy of val­ue, holds us to what we need, what we have and what we want in our life, rang­ing from the most basic or phys­i­cal of our appetites on up to the most sub­lime of affec­tions and expe­ri­ences we have and share with one anoth­er. I like to say, that the heart or bond of all rela­tion­ships is our shared val­ues, and that if we have enough com­mon val­ue we will hold togeth­er in good times but espe­cial­ly in try­ing ones as we have now, as true friends, as sin­cere col­leagues and trea­sured loved ones.

Dur­ing the peri­od of Venus ret­ro­grade, much like dur­ing the more famil­iar Mer­cury ret­ro­grade, its nor­mal­ly out­ward­ly direct­ed ener­gy-forms are turned inward, which means they move from a more or less pure­ly sub­jec­tive per­spec­tive or point of view to a more objec­tive place. This gift of Venus ret­ro­grade enables you to become more objec­tive or inward­ly focused upon the expe­ri­ences of val­ue in your life. As with Mer­cury ret­ro­grade, but now focused upon the ques­tion of val­ue not on how you think, you are able to shift your con­scious­ness and con­tem­plate your hier­ar­chy of val­ue more objec­tive­ly, less per­son­al­ly so that it is more removed from the cul­tur­al and social assump­tions that you may be unknow­ing­ly shaped and guid­ed by.

Many of your wants and needs, which arise from your val­ues, and ulti­mate­ly add up to form your val­ue of “you”, many of these have, cer­tain­ly at first, been uncon­scious­ly incor­po­rat­ed into you through your ear­li­est expe­ri­ences in your fam­i­ly and imme­di­ate neigh­bor­hood and cul­tur­al order. In child­hood and then beyond into your teens and even adult­hood, you may believe that you like or want or tru­ly need some­thing, because, well, because you always have, and those around you do too.

But as you con­sid­er these things or expe­ri­ences of val­ue you from a more dis­pas­sion­ate and objec­tive place, you may find that your likes and dis­likes are not so pre-deter­mined and fixed at all. You will prob­a­bly dis­cov­er that some or many things you feel or believe you must have, you will upon reflec­tion under­stand that you actu­al­ly do not need them at all.

You will let go or elim­i­nate some things in your life or some activ­i­ties or pas­times and that this will open a space with­in and around you. You will also real­ize that some things or expe­ri­ences you had not yet con­sid­ered mean­ing­ful or val­ued, that you now wish to enjoy and make these parts of your life.

It is quite prob­a­ble that the range of the val­ues you hold will move around, as the order that they are in may become rearranged, with some things or expe­ri­ences in your life mov­ing up or down in importance.

Flow­ing from this inner re-order­ing will be a new sen­si­bil­i­ty and rela­tion­ship to the world around you. Most espe­cial­ly, this refined/reformed under­stand­ing of the val­ue of you and of what you val­ue, will help you in your most impor­tant expe­ri­ence as human, your expe­ri­ence of val­ue that forms your rela­tion­ships with one another.

What we will see over the next six weeks, is that we will all ben­e­fit from a much need­ed reassess­ment of the nature of our val­ues, of what is tru­ly more mean­ing­ful and need­ed by each of us and for all of us. For it is our com­mon­ly shared val­ues, the glue of our part­ner­ships, com­mu­ni­ties, regions, nations and the world itself that will be illu­mi­nat­ed by this oppor­tu­ni­ty to re-con­nect to the most impor­tant val­ue from which all oth­ers are derived, the Love that made this world, and gives us all an undy­ing well of val­ue, the love we have in Spir­it, and the love we have for one another.

And, just as a point of infor­ma­tion the ret­ro­grade begins on May 13^th and runs until June 25^th, and the mid­point of its cycle is when Venus is pass­ing over the Sun, mak­ing the Venus/Sun Con­junc­tion will occur on June 3^rd around 1:45 pm here in New York City. It is said to be a moment where there is an align­ment between the Self and val­ue of the Self, and so that is when a seed or influ­ence might be felt by one and all, and that some­thing has changed and a new under­stand­ing is being released.

It will take some time to under­stand what that is, but it is like a New Moon for Venus with regards to us.

Lunar Nodes
Well then, let us take a look at this oth­er thing that is per­haps even more obscure for many peo­ple. Peo­ple may have found in their ses­sions with their Astrologer or read about these things, but what I have found in my prac­tice of Astrol­o­gy, and this is cer­tain­ly true for a num­ber of Astrologers, is that the insight pro­vid­ed by the posi­tion of the Moon’s nodes to be quite helpful.

The Nodes are not phys­i­cal objects. They are formed by the inter­sec­tion of two orbital paths, the orbit of the Moon around the Earth, and the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. So, it is like two cir­cles or ellipses that inter­sect at two points. Unlike the plan­ets, the nodes move through the Zodi­ac in reverse order, from Aries to Pisces to Aquar­ius and so on, and take about 18.6 years to make a com­plete revolution.

When the Moon in pass­ing the North node, it is mov­ing over the eclip­tic (the path of the Earth around the Sun) and moves from a lat­i­tude that is South to North; and like­wise, when it reach­es the South Node, it cross­es the eclip­tic again mov­ing into South lat­i­tude. Since we are look­ing here at the orbits of the Earth to the Sun, and the Moon to the Earth, the nodal axis is said to sym­bol­ize or link the pri­ma­ry rela­tion­ship of the two lights in Astrol­o­gy, the Sun and the Moon.

The Moon in the North­ern phase of its month­ly cycle is the time for the “build­ing of ener­gy-forms” or Spir­it, and the south­ern pas­sage is the time for reap­ing and Mate­ri­al­iz­ing peri­od. Sow­ing and Reap­ing, Dhar­ma and Kar­ma is how I like to describe it.

Sim­i­lar­ly for our pur­pos­es today, as the Nodal posi­tion moves back­wards through the Astro­log­i­cal Signs for 18.6 years, (and as they do so they move through each of our charts, and through the hous­es of that chart with regards to indi­vid­ual inter­pre­ta­tions), we can obtain valu­able insight about the ongo­ing focus of what is or should be our under­stand­ing in that time of what is our col­lec­tive Dhar­ma and what is our col­lec­tive Karma.

North Node in Gemini
Start­ing on May the 5^th of 2020, and last­ing until Jan­u­ary 2022, we now have the North Node of the Moon in Gem­i­ni and so the South Node is in Sagit­tar­ius. What does this mean for us?

The North Node in Gem­i­ni calls upon us all to focus our spir­i­tu­al devel­op­ment upon one of our more remark­able gifts, our fac­ul­ty of Intel­li­gence, and to use this “lamp of con­scious aware­ness” in prac­ti­cal terms to under­stand our­selves and our world. By doing so, we will be able to find bet­ter and more prac­ti­cal solu­tions to the issues and prob­lems that we face at this time.

Equal­ly, the South Node in Sagit­tar­ius reminds us that our exist­ing approach to under­stand­ing our real­i­ty will always be guid­ed by our pri­or expe­ri­ences, which have been assim­i­lat­ed and formed into our the­o­ries, sci­ence, and oth­er truths. These become our fram­ing or our lens­es that we look at the present real­i­ty with, because they cre­ate and form our present-day assump­tions and view­points. These uni­ver­sals have become crys­tal­lized into our par­a­digm of beliefs, truths and the abstract prin­ci­ples that guide us. They reveal and explain what we are encoun­ter­ing giv­en that frame­work, but it also means we can­not see or under­stand what does not fit with those assump­tions. We must remem­ber that our con­scious­ness is lim­it­ed, and we do not know what we can­not see or under­stand, espe­cial­ly if we do not even con­sid­er it possible.

We should resist the pull of the South Node, (but cer­tain­ly not dis­miss what we have learned to date either), because it would have us fall back upon or rest upon our too easy and ready answers, which have been formed by our ulti­mate­ly self-blind­ed and lim­it­ed rea­son­ing. Because even though this lev­el of Sci­ence or Belief or Truth does pro­vide a con­text of mean­ing for the phe­nom­e­na we encounter, they will also lim­it and blind us to what we may need to under­stand in the now. If we only look for what we expect to find and dis­miss what does not fit that pre­sumed view of real­i­ty, then we will miss what is “out there” or even “in us” because we have will­ful­ly cho­sen to ignore it.

The Gem­i­ni North Node is about remain­ing curi­ous and open. It is about the gift of open obser­va­tion and rely­ing more upon Induc­tive Rea­son­ing. It requires that we be flex­i­ble and agile and adept, by ques­tion­ing our assump­tions and remov­ing the ten­den­cy to dis­miss what does not fit with our pre­con­cep­tions. That way we can look at the phe­nom­e­na of what­ev­er we are encoun­ter­ing with a fresh per­spec­tive, with an open mind and heart.

The North Node in Gem­i­ni reminds us, as does the Sign of Gem­i­ni gen­er­al­ly, that as the ancient admo­ni­tion has it, we must approach the won­der of this uni­verse “with the eyes of a child and then you will see”. It is by approach­ing any mat­ter for con­sid­er­a­tion with won­der and open­ness, and with­out the pre­con­cep­tions and assump­tions that blind you to what is the greater real­i­ty that you face now, this is what is required now in our journey.

This win­dow of Gem­i­ni is about gath­er­ing many expe­ri­ences, many data points, and so you may begin to build a bet­ter or new­er set of cor­re­spon­dences and con­nec­tions between one thing and anoth­er. By build­ing inward­ly and out­ward­ly into an ever more encom­pass­ing web of inter­con­nec­tiv­i­ty, you and we will even­tu­al­ly form a large enough body or col­lec­tion of infor­ma­tion that will reveal a new under­stand­ing of the order behind it.

Cer­tain­ly, much of what we already under­stand, which has been held and ulti­mate­ly formed into more or less ever­last­ing truths will remain; there are cer­tain­ly some truths that are tru­ly eter­nal. But some if not many of the, shall we say, less­er truths as well as less­er cat­e­gories of knowl­edge and mean­ing, these will be shaped, per­haps sharp­ened, or couched into a more nuanced order­ing of mean­ing which will lead to a greater com­pre­hen­sion, a more inclu­sive under­stand­ing, and help us stay upon the path that is made of equal parts of wis­dom and humil­i­ty. The great souls know this: “The more you know, the more you will bow down to that which is beyond your knowing”.

This Gem­i­ni North Node approach seems rather time­ly, as we are cer­tain­ly deal­ing with a world that is rapid­ly chang­ing. We find our­selves in a world where our old assump­tions, prac­tices and very our way of life is not only not work­ing but is the root of our prob­lem. Many souls around the world under­stand and accept that this way, our way, of liv­ing on this plan­et is the cause of this cri­sis, both with regards to the imme­di­ate prob­lem of the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, but the real chal­lenge, of which the pan­dem­ic is but a symp­tom, and that is Cli­mate Change.

We are an intel­li­gent species; and many would agree that this is our “ring of pow­er”. It has been the means to the mate­r­i­al trans­for­ma­tions of our­selves and our world, but it has equal­ly, through­out our jour­ney, been an instru­ment of destruc­tion and pain too.

We are here, and we made what we face. The ques­tion is do we under­stand, and will we take respon­si­bil­i­ty for our cre­ation? Will we apply our rea­son and under­stand­ing in a man­ner that is guid­ed and informed by our com­pas­sion, humil­i­ty, and wis­dom? Will we under­stand that our first moth­er, Moth­er Earth, and all her crea­tures great and small, need us to remem­ber that we are all relat­ed on this Earth.

Yes, all humans are one fam­i­ly, and we all love our mothers.

But equal­ly all life on this plan­et is pre­cious to our Great Moth­er too.

Life is love; Love is Life.

Let us love one anoth­er, let us love all that lives.

And let us give thanks and love all moth­ers and the One Moth­er to us all.