Who, What, and now Why…

Today we move into the third realm of the Holy Twelve, and it is here that you meet the majesty and mys­tery that is the Gate of Awak­en­ing, the emer­gence of Intel­li­gence and the path to Self-Real­iza­tion. As the Ancient Wis­dom holds, all of Cre­ation is essen­tial­ly Spir­it, and so the “all” that is the Uni­verse, rang­ing from atoms to organ­isms, to plan­ets and stars and beyond, all of “that” is alive and con­scious as the one real­i­ty of the One.

But it is equal­ly true that there will come a time for each spark of the Divine, for each and every mon­ad of Spir­it in their nev­er-end­ing jour­ney of becom­ing, there is a quin­tes­sen­tial moment where that divine mon­ad moves from being mere­ly con­scious and becomes aware of being a self, to becom­ing self-aware.

This great moment in our spir­i­tu­al jour­ney is what we cel­e­brate at this time every year, as it is also for­ev­er some­where in your own chart too, for now we enter the por­tal and realm known as Gem­i­ni. This gift of self-aware­ness is re-told in many sto­ries through­out the ages of the world, whether it is of Prometheus bring­ing “fire” to humankind, or the “eat­ing of the fruit” from the tree of knowl­edge, or in ancient sto­ries from around the world, of when we were vis­it­ed by beings who impart­ed this gift of self-aware­ness to us.

Why, why are these sto­ries found every­where, and why are they so important?

Because it is by this move­ment into self-aware­ness and intel­li­gence that you were able to begin to become a more con­scious co-cre­ator of your­self. You became aware of time, of remem­ber­ing what came before, and how that shaped what you face now. And, and you became capa­ble of mak­ing a choice, of choos­ing the many pos­si­ble ways of view­ing an expe­ri­ence, of com­par­ing and fold­ing in what you knew from before to bet­ter under­stand what is before you now. And by learn­ing from your mis­takes, you were able to build bet­ter ways of being, so that you could meet the eter­nal now with ever more mean­ing, dis­cre­tion, deter­mi­na­tion, and faith in your capac­i­ty to grow and to change.

We became freer, and no longer bound to mere bio­log­i­cal process­es of evo­lu­tion­ary devel­op­ment; we took our most fate­ful step filled with the promise of our divin­i­ty becom­ing real­ized, but this step came with a cost as well. Because we lost our inno­cence, we lost our organ­ic con­nec­tion to one anoth­er and to the entire­ty of cre­ation. We were torn away from our essen­tial expe­ri­ence of one­ness with life, and we sub­sti­tut­ed our search for mean­ing and con­nec­tion out­ward­ly (and inward­ly) through our intel­lect and intel­li­gence, so that we could build our subjective/objective expe­ri­ences, of mem­o­ry, mean­ing, facts, and truths. Yes, to move for­ward as self-cre­ators we had to rebuild our rela­tion­ship with “the All”, and by each and every expe­ri­ence we made from that moment for­ward we tried to find our way back to the under­ly­ing real­i­ty of the One in all.

That is why this same gift of self-con­scious­ness is also seen and expe­ri­enced to this day as a loss or “fall” too. We lost our inno­cence, our immer­sion in nature and all beings with whom we jour­ney. Because of this loss, our inher­ent endow­ment of nat­ur­al wis­dom became more ten­u­ous, and though we grew and devel­oped our world by and through these tem­ples of knowl­edge, we often lacked a com­men­su­rate bal­ance of wis­dom and humil­i­ty. We flew clos­er to the sun, but we often fell into dark­ness by our seem­ing sep­a­ra­tion from the rest of cre­ation too.

But of course, these errors of com­mis­sion and our sins of omis­sion, these are made by our self-cast shad­ows, by fears forged by mere intel­lec­tu­al­ism, where thought is divorced from empa­thy, com­pas­sion, and love. So, yes, in our more iso­lat­ed thought-forms, held by the illu­sion of so-called pure rea­son, we felt apart and often lost our way.

But we were nev­er alone, nor will we ever be. When we lis­ten for the wind of the spir­it, to the whis­pers of our high­er self, we can remem­ber to feel and to use our intu­ition to slip beyond the lim­its of sim­ple rea­son; and we can use our rea­son to dis­tin­guish between our illu­mi­na­tions and illu­sions too. We can use this gift of self-aware­ness to quick­en our spir­i­tu­al awak­en­ing, while we find in our hearts, in our soul, and by the love of our high­er self the truth that we were not lost at all, nor could we ever be.

We are blessed to think and to feel, to be rea­son­able and com­pas­sion­ate, to be cer­tain yet for­ev­er-ques­tion­ing of our cer­tain­ty. We are made to grow into our full­ness of being of what we are, “ones of the One”, by using this gift of Gem­i­ni to be curi­ous, adapt­able, by delight­ing in our inge­nu­ity, by our capac­i­ty to hold more than one point of view or idea, to move con­stant­ly through the realms of thought by “the­sis, antithe­sis, and syn­the­sis”, striv­ing, search­ing for the answer to the ques­tion “why”.

Long, long ago we were giv­en a gift so that we might ques­tion, well, every­thing. To wan­der and won­der and to ques­tion, “the what and the why and the how” of it all.

Today, and for­ev­er in your essen­tial nature, let us cel­e­brate this gift of Gem­i­ni, the gift of self-aware know­ing, and of our becom­ing a more con­scious­ly car­ing, co-cre­ator of Creation.

Min­er­va by Abbott_Handerson_Thayer-1929

Astro­log­i­cal Mus­ings — Order and Dis­or­der – Indi­vid­u­al­i­ty ver­sus Com­mu­nal­i­ty, and our Moral Crisis

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

I thought it would be help­ful to pull back again and to assume a “big pic­ture” view of this moment in human his­to­ry. As many of you know, I like to focus upon the long-wave or the prin­ci­pal dri­vers of our spir­i­tu­al jour­ney by under­stand­ing the place­ments, pat­terns and mean­ings that are formed by the three out­er plan­ets, Uranus, Nep­tune, and Pluto.

As I have not­ed in numer­ous shows and post­ings, our present-day cir­cum­stances car­ry the echoes of ear­li­er his­tor­i­cal peri­ods, most notably the ear­ly to mid-1500’s and the late-1700’s. In both of those eras, a sim­i­lar series of place­ments and align­ments were hap­pen­ing that are very much like our own peri­od. And both of those peri­ods, like our own, were remark­able as to how they rep­re­sent­ed the end­ing of both a spir­i­tu­al-cul­tur­al and polit­i­cal-eco­nom­ic ordering.

But always remem­ber that the plan­ets only 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 us, by the com­plex of ener­gy-forms we humans weave upon this Earth, forged by the liv­ing spir­it of we human actors, so what we are faced with, both our dan­gers and our oppor­tu­ni­ties, this was made by our ances­tors and by you and me today. The chal­lenges we face today, we made, and there­in lies our true hope, for we can be the ones to make it bet­ter, we can make a bet­ter future if we try.

Tri­ad of Spirit
The three out­er plan­ets must always be con­sid­ered or held togeth­er as one. That is because they hold and form the hier­ar­chy of ener­gy-forms of what I call the Tri­ad of Spir­it. It is these three out­er plan­ets that hold as one the prin­ci­ple behind the pow­er of Spir­it, which is the “Pow­er of Becom­ing” held in each mon­ad of spir­it. This is the essen­tial nature of every­thing, of what is known as Swab­hā­va, which is that every ener­gy-form or par­ti­cle of cre­ation is formed by “the self that is becom­ing”. Uranus, Nep­tune, and Plu­to are for us the avatars of the “Three as One”, which we know as the Mind, Love and Will of the One.

Uranus is the Avatar and vehi­cle of Mind or Indi­vid­u­al­i­ty for us, the alchem­i­cal agent or Ener­gy-Form that holds one of the essen­tial root forms or qual­i­ties of spir­it, which is that every­thing and every­one is part of the Mind of the One. This means that every sin­gle part of Cre­ation is Alive and 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 one essen­tial qual­i­ty of Spir­it, that each par­ti­cle of Spir­it is formed as an Indi­vid­u­al­i­ty, each one of us is a unique spark of the Divine.

Nep­tune is the Avatar and vehi­cle of Divine Love for us, the alchem­i­cal agent or Ener­gy-Form which is the pri­mal or root form of spir­it which we expe­ri­ence as the uncon­di­tion­al love of the One. The whole of Cre­ation is formed of the One, the body of the One is Cre­ation, rang­ing from the most mate­r­i­al of sub­stances to the most sub­lime and ethe­re­al of Ener­gy-Forms, every­thing and every­one is formed through and by Divine Love. Through Nep­tune we are held togeth­er by our mutu­al attrac­tions with and for one anoth­er, bring­ing us the gifts of love, empa­thy, and com­pas­sion. The essen­tial qual­i­ty of Nep­tune is the coun­ter­bal­ance to that of Indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and Uranus, it is the equal­ly pow­er­ful essen­tial qual­i­ty of Spir­it, which is Com­mu­nal­i­ty, which is that each one of us is held in ever greater cir­cles of fam­i­ly, com­mu­ni­ty, and fel­low­ship too, with our ulti­mate real­i­ty is that we are all held togeth­er as one in the One.

Plu­to is the Avatar and vehi­cle of the Will for us, which is the Alchem­i­cal agent or Ener­gy-Form that forges the expe­ri­ence for any being as “a one”, sep­a­rate in their own sacred space. Each par­ti­cle of Cre­ation, and each and every being, is formed from a spark of the Divine, by its Mon­ad, and it is by the will that it is formed as sep­a­rate from any oth­er par­ti­cle or being and held in the sacred space in which it exists and over which it pre­sides. 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 the will is turned back upon one­self rather than being used to tres­pass, or to dom­i­nate and con­trol or vio­late the space of anoth­er. Instead, we are here to join togeth­er in shared sacred spaces, our rela­tion­ships, that we have cre­at­ed in order to love, work, and live with one another.

The Three-in-One
Our dynam­ic and pro­tean lives formed by spir­i­tu­al growth and evo­lu­tion, held with­in the Space of the Will by Plu­to is pro­pelled by the inter­play and dynam­i­cal­ly shift­ing bal­ance between Nep­tune and Uranus, with one being the dri­ve to One­ness by Love for Com­mu­nal­i­ty, ver­sus the dri­ve to Indi­vid­u­al­i­ty by Mind for Inde­pen­dence. In our human-made worlds of fam­i­ly, tribe, com­mu­ni­ty, and nation states, the bal­ance between the com­mu­nal­iz­ing and indi­vid­u­al­iz­ing forces with­in our monadic natures cre­ates our jour­ney through the var­i­ous life­ways, cul­tures, and civ­i­liza­tions as we walk the path of spir­i­tu­al awak­en­ing for human­i­ty on this Earth.

Indi­vid­ual vs. Community
For us humans, this ten­sion between the Indi­vid­ual and their Com­mu­ni­ty has waxed and waned with­in any group­ing, cul­ture, and civ­i­liza­tion as well as between them. For exam­ple, when we look at the var­i­ous forms of lifestyle or life ways, like the Hunter/Gatherer, of the Farmer/Craftsperson or in our soci­ety for exam­ple of Rural/Suburban/Urban, we will see dif­fer­ing mix­tures and bal­ances of the rela­tion­ship between how much free­dom an indi­vid­ual may expe­ri­ence, and how much lim­i­ta­tion of their free­dom they do accept in order to live with oth­ers and in their communities.

It is most cer­tain­ly true that we would not be human with­out one anoth­er. We are a social species, and with­out fam­i­ly, com­pan­ion­ship, and com­mu­ni­ty we would not be able to live at all. Some form of com­mu­ni­ty is essen­tial for all human beings, for their shared sense of belong­ing to some­thing larg­er and more encom­pass­ing, and because that very com­mu­ni­ty pro­vides the care one needs in the ear­li­est years of life, and over the lifes­pan cre­ates the con­text of mean­ings, val­ues and beliefs which form each indi­vid­ual in that com­mu­ni­ty. As I like to say, we are more of a “we than an I”.

A Moral Order
To forge and main­tain these com­mu­ni­ties, this dynam­ic and inte­gral bal­ance of our Indi­vid­ual and Com­mu­nal natures leads to a con­stel­la­tion of mean­ing, a sense of what is right and good in our con­duct with one anoth­er, form­ing our moral com­pass of how we should live for our­selves and for oth­ers too.

This Moral Order, and the bal­ance of Indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and Com­mu­nal­i­ty wax­es and wanes with­in any sys­tem, and over the arc of his­to­ry for any sys­tem. As the beliefs behind the order evolve, and the struc­tures of rela­tion­ships evolve with them, there are peri­ods of more gen­er­al agree­ment and accep­tance for the group, com­mu­ni­ty, or cul­ture with this moral order.

But in times of cri­sis or change as we most cer­tain­ly face today, these com­mon­ly accept­ed norms of con­duct, of what is moral and right, of the bal­ance of indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and com­mu­nal­i­ty, may bend and break down as dif­fer­ent indi­vid­u­als, mem­bers and groups pull apart to form their own par­tic­u­lar sub-group or groups. It may lead to peri­ods of great con­fu­sion and con­flict, espe­cial­ly when a divide occurs with­in a group or nation, and the res­o­lu­tion to a restored moral order may only be secured through some great con­flict, as in our very own Civ­il War in the 1860’s.

1500’s, 1700’s and Now
As I have not­ed many times before and since 2008, we are wit­ness­es to the “end of an age” lead­ing to the birth of a new one. We are going through the break­ing down of an old Moral Order, and the neces­si­ty of build­ing a new one. Prin­ci­pal­ly I have attrib­uted the tim­ing of this trans­for­ma­tion to the pas­sage of Plu­to through Capri­corn as the end of the age, and then its move into Aquar­ius as the strug­gle to estab­lish a new order, which is what we are now expe­ri­enc­ing from 2024 until 2044. If we look at the major shifts in pre­vi­ous peri­ods in his­to­ry, we will see that there are sig­nif­i­cant insights for our time as well.

1500’s
Over 500 years ago, the pas­sage of Plu­to in Capri­corn was from 1516 to 1532, and the sub­se­quent strug­gle to cre­ate a New Order with Plu­to in Aquar­ius was from 1532 to 1553. In Europe, his­to­ri­ans date this peri­od to the end of late Mid­dle Ages and feu­dal­ism, and to the so-called rise or expan­sion of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion. With the fall of the one Catholic order after Mar­tin Luther’s the­ses, the break­ing of the par­a­digm of a divine immutable order of the uni­verse fueled by sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­er­ies, this led to a great dis­rup­tion in the order­ing of the moral, eco­nom­ic, cul­tur­al, and polit­i­cal orders in Europe. The attempt by the Catholic King­doms to main­tain their pow­er led to dev­as­tat­ing wars between them and those who broke away to form Protes­tant realms. The old order, with its feu­dal sys­tem based on land­ed pow­er and the one Catholic Church was giv­ing way to the rise of absolute mon­archs accom­pa­nied by a new eco­nom­ic order empow­er­ing a grow­ing mer­can­tile class. But I believe that per­haps one of the most trag­ic Plu­ton­ian expe­ri­ences of death and rebirth in this peri­od, was the Span­ish con­quest of the Aztec and Incan empires in North and South America.

1700’s
The most recent pas­sage of Plu­to in Capri­corn was from 1762 to 1778, and the sub­se­quent strug­gle to cre­ate a New Order with Plu­to in Aquar­ius from 1778 to 1798. His­to­ri­ans char­ac­ter­ize this peri­od as age of Enlight­en­ment and the age Rev­o­lu­tions, with the rise of the sci­en­tif­ic method of inquiry, the rise of lib­er­al ide­ol­o­gy, and with it the Amer­i­can colonies engag­ing in our Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War against the King­dom of Great Britain, and the over­throw of the Monar­chy in the French Rev­o­lu­tion. The world was turned upside down again, the old moral order ques­tioned and thrown down and the lib­er­al order that spread from this time became a norm for many peoples.

Though both these Plu­ton­ic peri­ods of trans­for­ma­tion rep­re­sent­ed the end of an age and the start of a new one, the Nep­tun­ian influ­ence for each peri­od was quite dif­fer­ent. And I believe this will help us to under­stand which peri­od is more like our own and what that might mean for us.

Plu­to in Capri­corn and Aquar­ius – Nep­tune in Virgo/Libra or Pisces/Aries
On its own, Plu­to in Capri­corn is the end of an age, and Plu­to in Aquar­ius her­alds the birth of a new insti­tu­tion­al order. But when we weave into that expe­ri­ence the influ­ence of Nep­tune, we can see how dif­fer­ent each Plu­to pas­sage will be. Giv­en the ratio of their orbital peri­ods, it turns out that Nep­tune will be pass­ing through either Vir­go or Pisces, and then move onto Libra or Aries when­ev­er Plu­to is in Capri­corn and then moves into Aquarius.

With Plu­to as the Avatar of the Pow­er of Alche­my or the shaper of Spir­it-Mat­ter, and the wield­er of the Will, and Nep­tune as the Avatar of our Fields of Dream and Imag­i­na­tion or the ves­sel of our Hopes or Fears, the type or kind of re-shap­ing and re-form­ing by the pas­sages of Plu­to in Capricorn/Aquarius can be dis­cerned by the very dif­fer­ent influ­ences ema­nat­ing through Nep­tune mov­ing through Vir­go then Libra ver­sus Nep­tune mov­ing through Pisces then Aries.

Nep­tune in Pisces-Aries or Virgo-Libra
What I believe we will see is that the pro­tean trans­for­ma­tions of the Nep­tune in Pisces peri­od, gives birth to a re-dream­ing of the dream, lead­ing to a very bold restate­ment of a new Moral Order or Iden­ti­ty as the new Age emerges when Nep­tune goes through Aries. This is what occurred in the 1500’s and is sim­i­lar to what we are expe­ri­enc­ing today. Let’s com­pare the place­ments of Plu­to and Nep­tune in the 1500’s to that of the 1700’s.

Pluto/Neptune in the 1500’s
In the peri­od of the 1500’s, with Plu­to in Capri­corn and then Aquar­ius, and Nep­tune in Pisces and then Aries, the entire Euro­pean order­ing of life was turned upside down. The moral struc­ture of the social order was defined by faith, from the Divine Right of Kings and with the order­ing of belief hier­ar­chi­cal­ly arranged from Pope to Priest to the peo­ple. This world was smashed by the Ref­or­ma­tion, which turned that social order and way of mean­ing com­plete­ly around. Faith became per­son­al, it emanat­ed from the per­son­al expe­ri­ence of the “Word of God”, as the bible was now avail­able in the com­mon tongue. Faith became Indi­vid­ual, and no longer medi­at­ed by the priest­hood and Pope. And over time a grow­ing sense emerged that humans should order their lives around the sanc­ti­ty of the indi­vid­ual con­science, and this informed and shaped the need to orga­nize our insti­tu­tions towards self-rule and democracy.

Pluto/Neptune in the 1770’s
When Nep­tune was in Vir­go and then Libra in the 1770’s, the dreams of that Plu­ton­ian end­ing of an age and reorder­ing were focused through the cri­tiquing, defin­ing, and refin­ing lens of Vir­go. That is because when Nep­tune is in Vir­go, we are asked to reimag­ine how we order our world, how we find our order of life with­in our­selves, and then in the Libra peri­od we move from this with a renewed sense of self into the attempt to forge a new space of rela­tion­ship for our mutu­al benefit.

Rather than the strug­gles over Faith and Belief as in the 1500’s, the strug­gles in the 1700’s were over the Ideals about polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic rights, it was about prin­ci­ples, rights, and the rule of law. I believe we might want to approach every Virgo/Libra time of a Plu­to trans­for­ma­tion as the result of, maybe the refine­ment and com­ple­tion of what began in the pre­vi­ous Pisces/Aries peri­od that came before. That is in the Pisces/Aries phase would be the pri­ma­ry peri­od of rad­i­cal change, as we expe­ri­ence the dis­solv­ing of an old order and the begin­ning of a com­plete­ly new order, and that this leads to the refine­ment or adjust­ment and restate­ment of the new moral order in the Virgo/Libra phase.

Our Time
If that is so, what can we under­stand about our own peri­od, and by com­par­ing our peri­od with the 1500’s rather than the 1700’s? What I believe that means is that we are expe­ri­enc­ing a shift that is much more fun­da­men­tal, much more rad­i­cal, requir­ing us to make a much big­ger shift in our beliefs and in our moral order. The par­a­digm that has more or less been the dom­i­nant order­ing of mean­ing since the 1500’s, which over­threw and led to the fall of a more faith-based cul­ture and moral­i­ty and the rise of a sys­tem where sci­ence and rea­son became the new faith, that moral uni­verse is cer­tain­ly chang­ing if not ending.

Just as our ances­tors in the 1500’s faced a rad­i­cal epis­te­mo­log­i­cal cri­sis, a cri­sis of how they knew and how they under­stood what is true about their world, so do we now too. As has been quite evi­dent to most of us, and cer­tain­ly since Nep­tune entered Pisces in 2010, our agree­ments about what is fact ver­sus fic­tion, what is true ver­sus false have become very dif­fi­cult to dis­cern for even the most rea­son­able as well as the most intu­itive among us.

And when the foun­da­tions for know­ing what is right or wrong, of dis­cern­ing truth from false­hood fail you, when you can­not know for cer­tain about so many things, when doubt over­whelms hope, it is then that you find your­self in a world where your moral foun­da­tions and prac­tices are bend­ing, fail­ing, and falling, and you find your­self in a world where seem­ing­ly any­thing is pos­si­ble, and noth­ing is true.

How can you know right from wrong, truth from fic­tion? Rather than the medi­a­tion of truth and fact being adju­di­cat­ed by some trust­ed hier­ar­chy of author­i­ties, whether that be in the realms of Faith, Sci­ence, Cul­ture or Pol­i­tics, we find our­selves cap­tured by our indi­vid­u­al­is­tic par­a­digm that emerged in the 1500’s. Because of this “indi­vid­u­al­is­tic dilem­ma”, which is now fueled and accel­er­at­ed by the dig­i­tal alche­my of our inter­con­nec­tiv­i­ty to immense data­bas­es of data and infor­ma­tion, (but unfor­tu­nate­ly for the most part not of Wis­dom or Humil­i­ty), we find that many peo­ple believe that they can fash­ion and for­mu­late their own ver­sion of real­i­ty from a self-curat­ed menu of data and points of view, which they have gath­ered from self-select­ed sources, and the vast major­i­ty of these so-called facts have not been rig­or­ous­ly test­ed and vet­ted by knowl­edge­able and trust­ed sources.

And with­out the means to sort facts from fic­tions, the truth from half-truths and lies, we are at the mer­cy of the storms whipped up by those who prof­it from out­rage and fear. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, what we have cre­at­ed is a chaot­ic cacoph­o­ny of truths and half-truths, of rev­e­la­tions and delu­sions, of wis­dom and nonsense.

What can you do?
What can we do; what can you do?

We must begin with the heart of Cre­ation, which is that the entire­ty of the Uni­verse is the One. Truth is not to be found over here or over there; Truth is eter­nal and omnipresent, and it is what forms every par­ti­cle of Cre­ation, includ­ing the stars and plan­ets and you and me. The Truth is with­in us as much as we are held in a ver­i­ta­ble ocean of truth that is the cos­mos itself. And it is this immutable real­i­ty that makes truth knowable.

What this means is that whether you go inwards to lis­ten to the qui­et, still voice of your high­er intu­itive self, or you choose to go out­ward­ly to observe and learn from realms rang­ing from the most ethe­re­al to the most sub­stan­tial, you will come to truth. You may (or should) turn to those who came before you, to the seers and teach­ers through­out the ages, who left pearls of wis­dom and truth to guide your steps, and you equal­ly should look to those who live by this light as they pre­serve these gifts by their con­duct and ser­vice here today.

But for your­self, as in every life, you must hone your own spir­i­tu­al intu­ition and under­stand­ing by doing what we have done since the dawn of our awak­en­ing, you must share what you have observed and under­stood with oth­ers; and, most impor­tant­ly, you must equal­ly let them share what they have dis­cov­ered with you. You can­not find the way by your­self because you are made of one anoth­er, and you need one anoth­er to lift the veil of mis­un­der­stand­ing, to hone your dis­cern­ment by tem­per­ing your under­stand­ing in the cru­cible of shar­ing, con­trast­ing, and renewing.

You must remain where you tru­ly are, with­in your own spir­i­tu­al tem­ple, for it is by your Tri­ad of Spir­it that you will stay on the roy­al mid­dle path of Truth.

So, by Uranus use your high­er mind to free your­self from more lim­it­ed per­spec­tives so that you may per­ceive the indi­vid­u­al­i­ty, com­plex­i­ty, and diver­si­ty in all the realms of life that form the cosmos.

By Nep­tune, open your heart to “the greater under­stand­ing”, as you feel what your mind can­not yet per­ceive, so that your love remains cen­tered in the Uncon­di­tion­al love by which all things are made.

By Plu­to, remain cen­tered in your will, so that you may main­tain your integri­ty and self-con­trol, like the dia­mond body of spir­it that shines in your spark of the Divine.

As I have said before, the Light of Truth is with­in you, and you can obtain and secure it by an Open and Ques­tion­ing Mind, that is held from excess­es by Uncon­di­tion­al Love, and togeth­er with your Rea­son and Com­pas­sion, you remain firm­ly cen­tered in your high­er spir­i­tu­al nature by your Cen­tered Will.

I know that is a restate­ment of what I say all the time, but I think it deserves repeat­ing giv­en the time we are in right now. I know it is a very trou­bling time, with trou­bles far and wide and near at hand, and all of us are try­ing to find our way through this to make the right choice or a bet­ter choice, to turn away from fear and turn towards kind­ness and love.

You know that what we do and how we treat oth­ers mat­ters, and we real­ize that those indi­vid­u­als who are trou­bled, who are per­haps bring­ing about harm to them­selves and to oth­ers, that most of that is because of fear. Peo­ple who are not in con­trol of them­selves, because they are not being guid­ed by their high­er nature, it is because of this that they cause harm.

If we can approach one anoth­er with under­stand­ing and open­ness, with­out judg­ment, but with under­stand­ing and com­pas­sion, we might be able to melt that fear away. We can hope to open one anoth­er’s hearts, so that we can have these deep con­ver­sa­tions and con­nec­tions which may hope­ful­ly build and cre­ate the new moral order that we all are here to make hap­pen for one another.

Astro­log­i­cal Mus­ings — Order and Dis­or­der – Indi­vid­u­al­i­ty ver­sus Com­mu­nal­i­ty, and our Moral Crisis

In my fourth show of 2024, I want to return to a theme I have addressed over the past many years, which is how sim­i­lar our time is to two pre­vi­ous peri­ods in his­to­ry, the ear­ly 1500’s and the late 1700’s. We are at the end of an age and the begin­ning of a new one. What kind of end and begin­ning might it be?

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 April 28^th @ 2 pm EDT:

https://www.blogtalkradio.com/astrologerbillattride/2024/04/28/astrological-musings-order-and-disorder-april-28–2024

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 April 28^th @ 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.

What are you made of?

Today we move into the sec­ond realm in the Cir­cle of the Liv­ing Ones, the sign of Tau­rus. Always some­where in your chart, and espe­cial­ly at this time every year, you will find great wis­dom, inspi­ra­tion, align­ment, and peace from this sacred ves­sel of value.

For the past 30 days, the light behind cre­ation has illu­mined your expe­ri­ence of your self-aware­ness, of what I call your “pres­ence”, which is how you learn to strive to meet each moment upon your path with aware­ness and prop­er inten­tion, where you move-yet-remain-for­ev­er in the space of the One, in “the eter­nal now”. It is by Aries that you meet the first gift of Spir­it, here in the open­ing of the Fire Signs you explore and find your sense of your­self, as you must answer the first ques­tion of life which is, “who are you?”

But per­haps a more pro­found mys­tery is before you here, because in Tau­rus you encounter the sec­ond ques­tion in your jour­ney of becom­ing. It is in this sacred space that you “sim­ply” need to under­stand “what are you?”, that is, what are you made from, what is the val­ue of you?

You and I may feel and think that we are a sin­gle, dis­tinct, sep­a­rate being. We cer­tain­ly have this intu­itive expe­ri­ence of being a “one”, which ulti­mate­ly comes from the gen­tle whis­per­ings of our high­er self, from our pre­cious mon­ad or atman, our inner­most spark of the divine. But we are real­ly made from a com­pos­ite of many ener­gy-forms, of many lives and bod­ies, rang­ing from the seem­ing­ly dense mat­ter forms of our cells and organs onto ever more insub­stan­tial forms, ris­ing through our phys­i­cal body with all its mol­e­cules and organs, into our astral body, to our emo­tion­al body, into the low­er and high­er men­tal bod­ies, and final­ly held as one by our high­er spir­i­tu­al self.

Whether you take the path of faith or the path of sci­ence, by meta­phys­i­cal alche­my or by phys­i­cal chem­istry, the uni­verse is formed by com­plex inter­sec­tions of ener­gy-forms. We and all of Cre­ation are tru­ly a field of ener­gy-forms that are inti­mate­ly inter­con­nect­ed with one anoth­er, as we are immersed, sur­round­ed, and inter­pen­e­trat­ed by all the ener­gy fields and forms with whom we jour­ney. The Uni­verse is in fact a Field of fields, a Holo­gram of holograms.

Accord­ing to the Ancient Wis­dom, (and more and more by mod­ern sci­en­tists too, though they use a very dif­fer­ent par­a­digm), the Uni­verse is formed at its most fun­da­men­tal lev­el by pure Spir­it, which in its essence is just the most ethe­re­al­ized form of Mat­ter, just as Mat­ter is the dens­est man­i­fes­ta­tion of Spirit…in effect, they are tru­ly one and the same, for all these ener­gies, fields, and beings are real­ly the Mind, Body and Spir­it of the One. I like to say, we are spir­it danc­ing through the mate­r­i­al worlds, wing­ing our way through the cos­mos, becom­ing ever more con­scious co-cre­ators of Creation.

You are a unique dew­drop of the one Divine Light; you are Spir­it-Life-Con­scious­ness whose most sub­lime ener­gy-form is held by your pre­cious mon­ad, itself formed as a tri­ad of Atman, Bud­dhi, Man­as. From these three-in-one, you unfold and form the denser bod­ies or vehi­cles required for exis­tence here on Earth.

So, exact­ly what are you made of then, what is it that cre­ates the val­ue of you? It is quite evi­dent that moment to moment, day after day, from the begin­ning of your life until the end or your days, you will expe­ri­ence the value(s) of your­self as wax­ing and wan­ing, as warp­ing and weav­ing into new qual­i­ties and quan­ti­ties of val­ue and mean­ing. With so much vari­a­tion in any one day, or year or dur­ing your entire life, what is it that forges and forms the essen­tial or root val­ue of you?

The Root of all val­ue, the pri­mal Ener­gy-Form that shines through all the innu­mer­able hier­ar­chies of Spir­it-Life-Con­scious­ness in the Uni­verse is this: it is the Uncon­di­tion­al Love of the One. This foun­tain-source of Light and Love is in all of us as it is in every sin­gle par­ti­cle of Cre­ation. The ever­last­ing Truth behind Cre­ation and in each one of us is that we are all “price­less”, for we are made of the Uncon­di­tion­al Love of the One, and we are here because of this Love, and we are here to live by this Love.

Yet you and I are imper­fect, so that for the most part we do not expe­ri­ence our­selves as price­less at all. We are not ful­ly formed or per­fect­ed humans because our self-real­iza­tions, whether bod­i­ly, emo­tion­al­ly, men­tal­ly, and even spir­i­tu­al­ly, are not yet what they can be and will be someday.

You and I are on a jour­ney through many forms and lives, and we are here for one rea­son only, to learn to become a bet­ter human, to be more attuned and aligned with our high­er self. But to do this we must learn to choose what is more per­fect from less per­fect, to be more lov­ing, and less fear­ful, and this takes many days, years, and lives; we make our­selves into what we will be by many joy­ful and painful expe­ri­ences until we become a ful­ly awak­ened One, a being of pure Light and Love.

So, what you expe­ri­ence as val­ue ris­ing and falling, that is real. Some days you feel on top of the world, and on some you may feel as if the world is on top of you! But you should know this, that as much as the arc of your life and the val­ue of you will wax and wane in any life, it will also, because of what you are tru­ly made of, you will rise and reach towards the inevitable, as the phys­i­cal strength of your youth will yield to the gifts of spir­i­tu­al wis­dom and grace as you age.

Indeed, it is this very arc of your life, of pow­ers wax­ing then wan­ing, it is this which will bring the fun­da­men­tal truth home to you, that you will only find ever­last­ing peace in the val­ue that will nev­er diminish.

Yes, the heart of you, your spark of the Divine and the Love it holds will remain as you were in the begin­ning and will always be, for it is the source of all mea­sures, beyond all mea­sures. You are human now, but that is mere­ly the form of your self-real­iza­tion at this point in your nev­er-end­ing jour­ney as a one of the One. But you need to under­stand that you are a spark of the Divine who is on a nev­er-end­ing jour­ney of the “Self-That Is Becom­ing”. You are a mon­ad, an unfold­ing Spir­i­tu­al Fire of Life-Spirit-Consciousness.

Yes, it is in Tau­rus that you appre­ci­ate the Divine made real, the infi­nite poten­tial of Spir­it made to shine in the sun­rise and the sun­set, in the flow­ers and trees, in the oceans and moun­tains, in the moon and the stars…and for­ev­er in you.

Behind it all, shin­ing through one and through all,

Is pure, uncon­di­tion­al love.

That is how you came to be, that is why you are.

This is what you are.

Love.

Astro­log­i­cal Mus­ings — 2024, A look ahead Part 3 – More Nation­al Charts and World Leaders

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

Today I would like to exam­ine the charts of coun­tries and world lead­ers that we did not cov­er in the last two shows, and if we have enough time I may cir­cle back to the USA and look at the His­to­ry of the USA through the lens of its series of Pro­gressed New Moons as I men­tioned briefly in our last show.

Per­son­al Astrol­o­gy exam­ines the char­ac­ter and life of indi­vid­ual peo­ple. Mun­dane Astrol­o­gy, which we are work­ing with today, uses many of the same tech­niques but applies them to the world of nations, orga­ni­za­tions, and their lead­ers. In our last show, we looked at the chart of the USA with regards to 2024, and also exam­ined the charts of Joe Biden and Don­ald Trump. We then exam­ined the Astro­log­i­cal indi­ca­tions for the charts of Ukraine and Rus­sia, along with Zelen­sky and Putin. We also exam­ined Chi­na and Xi Jin­ping, North Korea, and Kim Jong Un, and Israel and Ben­jamin Netanyahu.

I will cer­tain­ly come back to con­sid­er the USA chart through­out this year, as well as Joe Biden and Trump, along with Ukraine, Rus­sia, and Israel, but I thought that it would be good to look at some oth­er major play­ers on the stage of world his­to­ry here in 2024.

Iran
Since we end­ed our tour of oth­er nations last time with Israel, let us con­tin­ue with the con­di­tions of the Mid­dle East and start with Iran and its leader Ali Khamenei. Iran was expe­ri­enc­ing in 2023 a major tran­sit of the plan­et Nep­tune, a con­junc­tion over both its Mars and Mer­cury, and in 2024 Nep­tune con­tin­ues to con­junct Mercury.

Mars in a nation’s chart rules the ener­gy-form of the actions that hold a nation togeth­er or dri­ve it apart, and equal­ly the char­ac­ter­is­tic man­ner in which it meets up with oth­er state and non-state actors on the world stage. Iran has its Mars in Pisces, which means it would hold itself togeth­er by Faith (or Fear), and that it would “defend” and define itself as being in a strug­gle to pre­serve and extend its faith, to some­times act as a mar­tyr, and to act some­times with sub­terfuge or decep­tion. With Nep­tune, the ruler of Pisces on Mars in 2023, Iran would cer­tain­ly have leaned into these actions with even greater inten­si­ty, so that its inter­nal mea­sures of cohe­sion and exter­nal mea­sures of defense or aggres­sion would have been extreme as well, with obscure or hid­den means to main­tain inter­nal con­trol and out­ward defens­es or offen­sive actions.

Mer­cury rules all forms of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and net­work­ing in a nation whether that be trans­porta­tion phys­i­cal­ly or mes­sag­ing sys­tems, so it is like the ner­vous sys­tem as well as the “mind” of a nation, and there­fore indi­cates edu­ca­tion, lit­er­a­ture, intel­lec­tu­al mat­ters, and schools. With Nep­tune con­junct Mer­cury for 2023 and 2024, Iran’s mes­sag­ing could have seen more than its nor­mal lev­el of mis­di­rec­tion and subterfuge.

In addi­tion, all through 2023 Iran had Plu­to oppo­site its Jupiter. Jupiter rules a nation’s com­mon val­ues, beliefs, and truths; it rules its ide­olo­gies and reli­gion or reli­gions. Of course, giv­en that Iran is a state defined by one reli­gion, Shi­itism, it is also the means to polit­i­cal con­trol as well as the gov­ern­ing prin­ci­ple of Iran’s rela­tion­ship to the rest of the world. With Plu­to going over Jupiter, Iran would on the one hand see itself under tremen­dous pres­sure from the oth­er world actors, need­ing to rein­force their defense against the threat of being dimin­ished or defeat­ed in a bat­tle of faith, and equal­ly feel the need to increase their attempts to spread their “truth”, to sup­port oth­er Shia com­mu­ni­ties and to con­vert oth­ers. Now with Plu­to mov­ing beyond Jupiter, I would expect Iran to pull back some­what in its attempt to expand its influ­ence for now.

If we look to the chart of the leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, (for which we have no time of birth, so one has to be a more cir­cum­spect in delin­eations), it is prob­a­bly not sur­pris­ing, but cer­tain­ly reaf­firm­ing, that both the tran­sit­ing Nep­tune and Plu­to were very active in his chart in 2023 too. Nep­tune was con­junct his Jupiter, the plan­et of truth and belief, and so he was going through a rather chal­leng­ing year of ques­tion­ing and con­fu­sion, less con­fi­dent and uncer­tain as regards his under­stand­ing and moti­va­tions. More­over, this tran­sit, espe­cial­ly for an old­er per­son, often­times indi­cates a health issue regard­ing the liv­er or pan­creas. Mean­while, Plu­to was squar­ing his Sun, so he most cer­tain­ly felt the need to pro­tect his pow­er and bound­aries, and per­haps push back quite strong­ly against any real or imag­ined threats to his pow­er. Both these tran­sits are fad­ing away, again pos­si­bly indi­cat­ing a more sub­dued leader and Iran.

Sau­di Arabia
For Sau­di Ara­bia in 2023, the main tran­sits were Nep­tune con­junct the Moon and Sat­urn con­junct Venus. The Moon in a nation’s chart rep­re­sents the mass­es, what we call the com­mon peo­ple and also the entire pop­u­la­tion. It is the ves­sel of pop­u­lar opin­ion and mass move­ments. With Nep­tune on the Moon, the peo­ple of Sau­di Ara­bia were expe­ri­enc­ing a dis­solv­ing of their pre­vi­ous sense of them­selves as they dreamed and won­dered about who they are and who they are becom­ing. The mood of the pub­lic was shift­ing from one under­stand­ing into anoth­er. Venus in a nation’s chart is the val­ue of the nation, sort of “the glue” that holds a peo­ple togeth­er to form a state or nation. The likes and loves of a peo­ple hold them to one anoth­er and to their state with­out force but by affec­tion, as real­ized in the arts, enter­tain­ment, and oth­er shared plea­sures. With Sat­urn con­junct Venus, the peo­ple of Sau­di Ara­bia, and maybe even more the women of Iran, (as Venus can be seen as rul­ing espe­cial­ly too), were “not feel­ing the love” in 2023. Whether the dis­sat­is­fac­tions were formed inter­nal­ly by some loss of val­ue includ­ing eco­nom­ic con­di­tions, or by a weak­en­ing or break­ing down of rela­tion­ships exter­nal­ly, and so equal­ly form­ing a test of agree­ments with oth­er nations or oth­er world actors. I cer­tain­ly could see the cri­sis in Gaza, Israel, and the rela­tion­ships with both of them and oth­er states in the Mid­dle East, that this would cer­tain­ly have been a major source of the loss of val­ue for Sau­di Arabia.

And in 2024, Nep­tune is squar­ing Nep­tune, while Uranus is trin­ing the Sun and Jupiter. Nep­tune in a nation’s chart is the vehi­cle for the visions, dreams, and ideals of a bet­ter future. Whether a return to a gold­en age, or dreams of a new age, Nep­tune inspires but can also lead to delu­sions, decep­tions, and dis­il­lu­sion­ments. With Nep­tune on Nep­tune, Sau­di Ara­bia is in the midst of won­der­ing and wan­der­ing regard­ing what is “the good”, or what is our nation­al dream, for 2024. The Sun in a nation’s chart rules its char­ac­ter and core ener­gy-form and will often indi­cate the supreme author­i­ty or leader too, whether they be pres­i­dent, prime min­is­ter, king, or queen. It often shows the cen­tral char­ac­ter or per­sona of a nation, the sto­ry or myth that it projects to the world. The influ­ence of Uranus brings change, hope­ful­ly cho­sen and not imposed, to move towards a more expan­sive and truer expres­sion of the enti­ty in ques­tion. It can bring shocks, sur­pris­es, and upsets, but the whole pur­pose behind Uranus is to lead to lib­er­a­tion and free­dom. But if mis­un­der­stood and mis­ap­plied it can lead to rebel­lious­ness and extremes of con­trari­ness and defi­ance. Here with a trine, there is a much high­er like­li­hood of a growth in the Sun nature, so that Sau­di Ara­bia (and its ruler) will be more inclined to move in a direc­tion of inge­nu­ity, inno­va­tion, and open­ness to change, and that this will also be seen with regards to its approach to its truths and teach­ings with Uranus on Jupiter.

Let us turn to the ruler of Sau­di Ara­bia, Moham­mad Bin Salman (Al Saud), and again we do not have a time of birth, so we must pro­ceed with some greater degree of con­di­tion­al­i­ty regard­ing our obser­va­tions. In 2023 and 2024, MBS is going through a very strong series of align­ments of Uranus to sev­er­al plan­ets in his chart. For 2023, he had Uranus squar­ing his Mer­cury and oppos­ing his Sat­urn, and in 2024 he has Uranus squar­ing his Mars. 2023 was going to shake up Bin Salman’s mind and thoughts (Mer­cury) and chal­lenge his under­stand­ing and expe­ri­ence of real­i­ty (Sat­urn). But through the chal­lenge to his Mer­cury, he would have had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to, or had to, open his mind, and con­sid­er oth­er data points and points of view. In the end, he would have hope­ful­ly expe­ri­enced the shock as free­ing him from a more lim­it­ed under­stand­ing so that he would have been able to grasp and work with new approach­es and solu­tions to the chal­lenges he faced. And with Uranus on Sat­urn, he would have had the expe­ri­ence of his old real­i­ty, his set of cer­tain­ties and struc­tures of his world, that they were chal­lenged and some­times bro­ken or thrown down. He might have seen this as a great loss dur­ing part of this peri­od but may have come around to real­ize that the old real­i­ty was not enough, and it was time to reset and cre­ate a new real­i­ty struc­ture in his life. I most def­i­nite­ly believe that the earth­quake in the mid­dle east ini­ti­at­ed by Hamas, and the ongo­ing cri­sis there was a major com­po­nent of this shift in real­i­ty for him.

For 2024, the tran­sit of Uranus over Mars holds even greater pos­si­bil­i­ties but equal­ly greater dan­gers too. MBS may be a Vir­go by his Sun type, but his Venus, Mer­cury and Mars are all in Leo. So, he wants to be a Leo with Venus, he thinks like a Leo through Mer­cury, and he acts like a Leo by Mars, and that Mars is the plan­et lead­ing his Sun around his chart, so it forms a very defin­ing and promi­nent fea­ture of his char­ac­ter. Mars is the plan­et of desire, of action, of our “thrust” in this life. A Leo Mars will forge a pur­pose­ful and strong type of lead­er­ship, but if mis­aligned or mis­un­der­stood can make a per­son pride­ful and arro­gant too. Mars in Leo will lead MBS to be a per­son who believes that he acts with respect and hon­or, and that he deserves to be hon­ored as well. But if he feels that he is being dis­ap­proved of or dis­re­spect­ed, well he could become very angry.

Uranus brings shocks, forc­ing a break but also elic­it­ing strong actions and reac­tions with Mars. It can man­i­fest as unfore­seen upsets or obsta­cles block­ing his aims and actions, and he might react with anger, and he may lash out, (which of course may only make things worse). Or he may respond to Uranus with under­stand­ing, hold him­self more in a man­ner of pos­i­tive self-asser­tion and lead­er­ship rather than aggres­sion. He may real­ize the time has come to pur­sue a new goal, or a new way to a goal, and if he does then he can be an agent of free­dom for him­self and for others.

Turkey
2023 was a chal­leng­ing year for Turkey, with a dev­ast­ing earth­quake in Feb­ru­ary, fol­lowed by less­er quakes, then tor­ren­tial rains and floods in those same earth­quake regions in March. I pre­fer to look at cycles and process­es and peri­ods of time, rather than any one moment in any chart. But it should be not­ed that Plu­to (the ruler of birth, death, rebirth) aligned with Turkey’s Uranus, (the ruler of earth­quakes) at the time of the Feb­ru­ary quake. Some­times a par­tic­u­lar moment and event does matter…

The major tran­sit for Turkey in 2023 was the favor­able Sat­urn trine to its Sun. Since the Sun rules the char­ac­ter of a nation and often­times the ruler, it indi­cates a peri­od where great progress can be made as a nation, and often by its ruler. That is quite inter­est­ing as in Erdogan’s chart he had Sat­urn mak­ing a con­junc­tion to his Sun all year and that would also favor an indi­vid­ual with regards to a major moment in their life. Many observers had pro­ject­ed that Erdo­gan would have faced a dif­fi­cult reelec­tion in 2023 after the Feb­ru­ary earth­quake exposed much of the shod­dy con­struc­tion that led to so many deaths, but with Sat­urn on his Sun exact­ly at the time of elec­tion, and with Sat­urn trin­ing the nation’s Sun, Erdo­gan won easily.

For 2024, Turkey is encoun­ter­ing a sig­nif­i­cant dou­ble-tran­sit. Nep­tune is squar­ing the Moon for 2024 and 2025, and Uranus is oppos­ing Jupiter. The Moon rules the pop­u­lace, and with Nep­tune, the uni­ver­sal sol­vent, the plan­et that dis­solves bound­aries in order to allow for trans­for­ma­tion and awak­en­ing, the mood and char­ac­ter of the peo­ple of Turkey will be great­ly changed by this expe­ri­ence. Rang­ing from the most sub­lime inspi­ra­tions of spir­it to the most illu­so­ry or delu­sion­al, Neptune’s touch will and does lead to the most uplift­ing expe­ri­ences and equal­ly the most dis­turb­ing. Cer­tain­ly, the peo­ple of Turkey will be deeply reex­am­in­ing the ques­tion, “what is the dream for our peo­ple”, yet equal­ly won­der­ing what kind of peo­ple or peo­ples are we? A cau­tion­ary note must be made, as the last time Nep­tune passed over Turkey’ Moon was in 1984, which is when the PKK, the Kur­dis­tan Work­ers Par­ty, a Marx­ist-Lenin­ist rev­o­lu­tion­ary move­ment began a cam­paign of ter­ror in south­ern Turkey. It is not a coin­ci­dence that Nep­tune rules social­ist and com­mu­nist move­ments, and though his­to­ry nev­er repeats itself, there are res­o­nances and echoes that ring through the halls of time. Mean­while, Jupiter, the plan­et that rules the com­mon val­ues and truths and faiths of a nation, is being opposed by Uranus, the plan­et that brings about a chal­lenge to the sta­tus quo by assert­ing the prin­ci­pal of free­dom and inde­pen­dence. That might cer­tain­ly tie into the Nep­tune tran­sit, com­bin­ing a move­ment with dreams for greater free­dom tak­ing action that shocks the peo­ple. But the dri­ve towards greater self-real­iza­tion and free­dom will swing both ways, and it should be not­ed that the two pre­vi­ous tran­sits of Uranus to Turkey’s Jupiter were in 1980, when the mil­i­tary seized pow­er in the third coup in Turkey’s his­to­ry. Civ­il lib­er­ties were cur­tailed as the mil­i­tary pushed back against both far-right and far-left move­ments and banned the Kur­dish lan­guage; and then in 2001, as the reli­gious par­ties were ris­ing to the point of tak­ing major­i­ty pow­er in Turkey, the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Court banned the pro-Islam­ic Virtue Par­ty in 2001. Then, in Novem­ber 2002, the Islamist-based Jus­tice and Devel­op­ment Par­ty (AKP) won in a land­slide election.

For Recep Erdo­gan, 2023 was a very chal­leng­ing but ulti­mate­ly a rather suc­cess­ful year, due in no small part to the favor­able inter­sec­tion of Sat­urn on his Sun while trin­ing the Turkey’s Sun. But 2024 may prove to be more chal­leng­ing for him as he will expe­ri­ence Uranus square his Plu­to. Yes, the same plan­et align­ing with Jupiter in Turkey’s chart in 2001 and now in 2024 is align­ing with the plan­et that rules pow­er and con­trol in Erdogan’s chart. And who was that leader that secured the tri­umph of the reli­gious move­ment and its new­ly formed par­ty, AKP, in 2001? Of course, it was Erdo­gan who led that par­ty to vic­to­ry. And he has wield­ed pow­er and con­trol as prime min­is­ter or pres­i­dent ever since. What does that mean for 2024? With Uranus it means change is here, and if prop­er­ly chan­neled by the human actor or actors, it will bring about greater free­dom, but if mis­un­der­stood and mis­han­dled it can lead to insta­bil­i­ty, dis­rup­tions, and in this case polit­i­cal earthquakes.

Unit­ed Kingdom
Let’s turn our focus to Europe now and con­sid­er what 2023 and what 2024 will be like for the Unit­ed King­dom. The major influ­ence in 2023 was the semi-square of Nep­tune to the UK’s Mars. Mars in a nation’s chart rules the ener­gy-form of those forces that inter­nal­ly hold a nation togeth­er or dri­ve it apart by asser­tion or aggres­sion, and equal­ly the char­ac­ter­is­tic man­ner in which it asserts itself with oth­er state and non-state actors on the world stage. The UK has its Mars in Tau­rus, and its expan­sion out­ward­ly was by being a mer­can­tile and colo­nial pow­er base on trade and manufacture.

Nep­tune dis­solves bound­aries so that a par­tic­u­lar struc­ture of real­i­ty must let go of that order­ing and move beyond to a new form of man­i­fes­ta­tion. But as a result, at least for us humans, it means that we will expe­ri­ence dur­ing such times of tran­si­tion some greater degree of uncer­tain­ty, doubt, and con­fu­sion. The last time Nep­tune lined up with the UK’s Mars, it was 2003 and Tony Blair and Par­lia­ment decid­ed to join the USA in the inva­sion of Iraq. In 2023, the mount­ing series of labor strikes and the lack­lus­ter recov­ery from the Covid dis­rup­tions has so deeply wound­ed the Con­ser­v­a­tive led gov­ern­ment of Rishi Sunak that if elec­tions were held the Labor Par­ty would tri­umph in a land­slide, (and an elec­tion will be nec­es­sary by at least ear­ly 2025). For his part, for much of 2023 and con­tin­u­ing through the first quar­ter of 2024 Sunak has been expe­ri­enc­ing a very chal­leng­ing dou­ble tran­sit, as Uranus formed a con­junc­tion to both his Mer­cury and Sun. Uranus brings shocks and sur­pris­es, some­times a pleas­ant sur­prise or dis­cov­ery, but also upsets and shocks of a dis­turb­ing nature. He is being chal­lenged to open his mind and deal with many dif­fer­ent prob­lems and points of views from oth­ers, and if han­dled well it will have stim­u­lat­ed his intel­li­gence to con­sid­er prob­lems in a new light and come up with inno­v­a­tive solu­tions. But no mat­ter what, the jug­gling of so many minor and major chal­lenges can cause men­tal exhaus­tion. Mean­while, with Uranus on his Sun, it brings to bear a very per­son­al ques­tion for him­self, which is, “does this role and respon­si­bil­i­ty I have, does it ful­fill me now or not?”.

For 2024, the Unit­ed King­dom will be expe­ri­enc­ing two major tran­sits, Uranus squar­ing Sat­urn, and for 2024 and 2025 Plu­to oppo­site Jupiter. Sat­urn in a nation’s chart is the hold­er of the State itself, the insti­tu­tions of the nation and the nature or degree to which the State and the Nation bal­ances order with free­dom, so it also rules the legal sys­tem, the civ­il ser­vice, and oth­er pre­serv­ing orga­ni­za­tions. With Uranus the dis­rupter and agent of free­dom going over Sat­urn, we should expect a gen­er­al shake­up in the State itself, (like a change in lead­er­ship, and remem­ber the con­ser­v­a­tives have been in pow­er since 2010, which means 14 years, basi­cal­ly half of a Sat­urn cycle). We should also expect that the con­tin­u­ing dis­rup­tions in labor unrest in the civ­il ser­vice, like in the Nation­al Health Ser­vice and oth­ers, will con­tin­ue but hope­ful­ly lead to new and inven­tive ways of pro­vid­ing such services.

The Plu­to oppo­si­tion to Jupiter is a deep­er chal­lenge. Remem­ber, Jupiter rules the com­mon val­ues and beliefs which hold a peo­ple or nation togeth­er, whether by cul­ture, reli­gion, sci­ence, or spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. Plu­to brings the pow­er of the will to bear, rais­ing the issue of con­trol and self-con­trol, and often leads to strong cathar­tic changes which may ulti­mate­ly bring about a rebirth. The last time Plu­to aligned with the UK’s Jupiter was 1984, which wit­nessed one of the most sig­nif­i­cant labor strug­gles in its his­to­ry, the coal miner’s strike. Prime Min­is­ter Mar­garet Thatch­er had pre­pared for this strug­gle and the state brought many pres­sures to bear upon the min­ers. Thatch­er pre­vailed and forced the union to con­cede in 1985, and pow­er of unions and the labor par­ty was broken.

For 2024–25, we can­not know in what form or in what area a strug­gle may arise forc­ing a break­down and renew­al of what holds the UK togeth­er, but we should expect that just as the UK moved from being shaped by pow­er­ful unions before 1984, some­thing sim­i­lar today that holds the peo­ple of the UK togeth­er will be test­ed and transformed.

For Sunak in 2024, the major tran­sit is Uranus oppo­site Uranus, while it equal­ly is squar­ing his dharma/karma lunar nodes. Uranus oppo­site Uranus is one of the mark­ers of mov­ing through what is com­mon­ly known as the mid-life cri­sis, which I like to call the mid-life time of oppor­tu­ni­ty. The Uranus-to-Uranus por­tion of this asks the indi­vid­ual to con­sid­er the last 20 or so years of their life and to see where they are now, and ask them­selves this, “are you ful­filled with this path, are you hap­py with your life, are you ‘being you’”?  It is a moment to look back and con­sid­er whether one wants to con­tin­ue on this path for the next 20 years or not.

So, Sunak is going to look at him­self, his life, his posi­tion and either decide to con­tin­ue or change his path. And, at the same time, the con­tact with Uranus to the nodes means that fate is forc­ing upon him a change in direc­tion. He may be influ­enced by meet­ing a new group or a per­son, and his life changes. He will cer­tain­ly expe­ri­ence shocks and upsets, but some of which may be quite lib­er­at­ing. No mat­ter what, there is change ahead for the Unit­ed King­dom, both as a nation as a whole, and most prob­a­bly in its leadership.

Well, I see that our time is down to when I would begin to respond to callers’ ques­tions, so I guess that is all we will cov­er for today. I do want to con­tin­ue at some point look­ing through this lens of Mun­dane Astrol­o­gy, and not only with regards to his­to­ry and cur­rent events, but also with regards to the very nature of peo­ples and nations and what is going on in the world, such as the world-wide phe­nom­e­non of the rise of author­i­tar­i­an groups, regions, par­ties and nations and why that is and what that means for the world at large and for us here in the USA. So per­haps that might be a good seed for the next show.